Agency relationships
Why brands leave their marketing agency (and what it says about what they need next).
Agencies tend to blame budget cuts when a client walks. Clients tell a different story: work that doesn't deliver, value they can't see and partners who never really understood the business. Here's what the research says, the signs it's happening to you, and how to work out what you actually need next.
Most brands don't fire their agency over one bad campaign. It happens slowly. Reports get longer while results stay flat. The senior people from the pitch stop showing up. Every meeting is a status update, and nobody is bringing you ideas.
Then a new CMO arrives or the budget gets squeezed, and the relationship is suddenly up for review.
Why do clients really leave their agencies?
The most useful long-running data comes from Setup, an agency search firm that has surveyed brands and agencies about their relationships since 2018. Its 2025 Marketing Relationship Survey, published in January 2026, asked clients why they had ended agency relationships. The top reasons were:
- Dissatisfaction with delivery: 61%
- Dissatisfaction with value: 61%
- The agency didn't understand our business: 44%
- Dissatisfaction with the relationship: 41%
- Dissatisfaction with the strategic approach: 41%
- Budget cuts: 39%
Value dissatisfaction rose sharply, from 36% in 2024 to 61% in 2025. More clients are asking what they got for the invoice.
The pattern isn't new. Setup's eight-year review, published in August 2026, shows the top reason shifting from strategic approach (43% in 2022), to value (53% in 2023), to delivery (48% in 2024). The labels change, but the theme holds: clients leave when the work stops moving the business.
Why don't agencies see it coming?
The same 2025 survey asked agencies why they think clients leave. 75% named client budget cuts and 55% named a change in client leadership. Only 18% named delivery, and just 3% thought clients left because the agency didn't understand the business.
That gap matters. If your agency believes relationships end for reasons outside its control, it has less reason to fix what is inside its control. Your quiet frustration may not be landing either: agencies often hear "we're reviewing budgets" when the real message is "we're not convinced this is working."
What the other research adds
Clients want to be challenged, and mostly aren't
A survey by the IPA, the UK advertising industry body, reported by Financial Promoter in July 2026, found that 85% of senior marketers highly value agencies that challenge briefs and assumptions, but only 37% believe their agencies deliver that level of critical thinking. This is the "lack of proactivity" complaint in data form: agencies that execute what they're told, and wait to be told.
Junior teams and the post-pitch fade
Seniority is a long-standing sore point. An older Agency Sparks survey of nearly 200 senior marketers, reported by The Drum in 2018, found 63% said team seniority was an important factor when choosing an agency, but only 26% said their primary agency never put junior talent on their account. The data is dated, but the complaint persists: the people who win the business aren't always the people who do the work.
Budgets are tighter, and agencies are an easy line to cut
Gartner's 2025 CMO Spend Survey found agencies took 21% of marketing budgets and 39% of CMOs planned to reduce agency spending, mainly by cutting underperforming relationships and renegotiating contracts, according to Marketing Brew in May 2025. Budget pressure doesn't usually end a strong relationship. It ends the ones that can't show their value.
More work is moving in-house
The ANA's 2023 in-house agency study found 82% of its members had an in-house agency, and 65% had moved work from external agencies to in-house teams over the previous three years. Yet 92% still used external agencies. In the IPA research, 25% of those bringing work in-house cited poor agency performance as the reason.
Relationships are lasting longer, which changes the signal
Despite all this, agency relationships are more stable than they used to be. The ANA and 4As reported in April 2025 that the average agency of record relationship now lasts about seven years, more than double the 3.2 years reported in 2016. Media-only agencies averaged 3.7 years, integrated agencies 7.3 years, and independent agencies outlasted holding company agencies (7.3 versus 5.8 years).
Longer tenure means fewer clients leave on a whim. When a brand does go, the gap has usually become too wide to ignore.
Signs your marketing agency isn't working
One or two of these can be a rough patch. Four or more, lasting over a quarter, is a pattern.
| Sign | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Reports show activity (impressions, clicks, posts) but never revenue, pipeline or margin | Nobody has agreed what success means in business terms |
| New ideas only appear when you ask for them | The agency is in execution mode, not partner mode |
| The senior team from the pitch is rarely in the room | Your account has been handed down |
| Every recommendation is more of the agency's own service | Advice and revenue are tangled together |
| You can't explain the fees, markups or who owns your ad accounts and data | A transparency problem waiting to become a trust problem |
| Bad news arrives late, or not at all | Communication is managing you, not informing you |
| They still can't describe your customer or margins in their own words | They don't understand the business |
If measurement is part of the problem, our guide on how to measure your marketing agency's performance sets out what to track, and our performance marketing audit checklist covers the paid media side.
Is it the agency, the brief or the strategy?
Most brands skip this question. If the real problem is upstream, a new agency inherits it. Work through it in order.
1. Check the strategy
Can you state, in a sentence or two, who you're trying to win, why they should choose you, and what marketing is meant to achieve this year? If your leadership team would give different answers, no agency can succeed, because they're aiming at a moving target. This is the difference between digital strategy and digital marketing: agencies are usually hired to execute, not to decide what the business needs.
2. Check the brief
Was there a clear objective, budget, target customer and measure of success? Were approvals fast and feedback consistent? Vague briefs and slow sign-offs produce safe, average work.
3. Then check the agency
If the strategy is clear and the brief was solid, look at the agency honestly. Did they deliver what they said, on time? Did they bring thinking you didn't ask for? Did they raise problems early? Have you told them directly what isn't working, and given them a fair chance to fix it?
Setup's survey suggests this conversation is worth having: 83% of clients said they'd hire their current agency again if they changed jobs. Many relationships are recoverable once the real issue is named.
What to do next
Where you land in the diagnosis decides your next step.
- If the strategy is the gap, fix that first. That might mean a strategy engagement or senior leadership support such as a fractional CMO, before you change any agency.
- If the brief is the gap, rewrite it with your current agency, agree measurable goals and set a 90-day checkpoint.
- If the agency is the gap, plan a clean exit. Reviews are not cheap: the 4As and ANA's 2023 Cost of the Pitch study put average client costs at US$408,500 per review, with selection of a new agency taking more than three months, and 25% of marketers reporting delayed launches. Two-thirds of brands that ran a review kept their incumbent.
If you do decide to move, see what to look for in your next marketing agency and how to switch marketing agencies without losing momentum.
A note on the evidence: most of this research is US or UK based, skews toward larger advertisers and, in Setup's case, uses a small sample. Canadian mid-market brands may see different numbers, but the pattern of delivery, value and understanding outranking budget is consistent across years and sources.
How Three Dots Brands approaches this
When brands come to us frustrated with an agency, we start by finding out whether the agency is really the problem. Using our Think, Plan, Execute approach, we look at the strategy, the brief and the delivery together, then recommend the smallest change that fixes the gap, whether that's a sharper brief, a new strategy or a new partner. If you want an honest outside read, start with our marketing diagnostic.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most common reason clients leave a marketing agency?
In Setup's 2025 Marketing Relationship Survey, clients most often cited dissatisfaction with delivery and dissatisfaction with value, each named by 61% of client respondents. Budget cuts came sixth at 39%. Agencies saw it very differently: 75% believed budget cuts were the main cause. The survey is small, at around 100 responses, but the pattern has repeated for several years.
How long do client-agency relationships usually last?
The ANA and 4As reported in 2025 that the average agency of record relationship lasts about seven years, up from 3.2 years in 2016. It varies by type: media-only agencies averaged 3.7 years and integrated agencies 7.3 years. The sample is mostly larger US advertisers, so smaller Canadian brands may see shorter relationships.
How do I know if my marketing agency isn't working?
Common signs are reports full of activity but no link to revenue or pipeline, ideas that only come when you ask, a team that has quietly become more junior, recommendations that always favour the agency's own services, and no clear answer to what has changed in your business because of their work. If several apply for more than a quarter, it is time to diagnose the cause.
Should I fire my agency or fix the relationship first?
Fix first if the problem is your brief, your goals or your internal approvals, because a new agency will hit the same walls. Replace the agency if you have given clear goals and honest feedback and delivery or value still has not improved. Reviews are costly: the 4As and ANA found an average of US$408,500 in client costs per review in 2023, and two-thirds of brands that ran one kept their incumbent.
Sources
- Setup, "The 2025 Marketing Relationship Survey Results: The relationship gap is a delivery gap", 2026
- Setup, "Why do clients end agency relationships? 8 years of surveys point to a clear pattern", 2026
- ANA, "New ANA and 4As report reveals client-agency relationship tenure has doubled since 2016", 2025
- Marketing Brew, "Marketing budgets stagnate from 2024 to 2025" (Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey), 2025
- Financial Promoter, "IPA: What do marketers value from agencies?", 2026
- ANA, "In-house agencies no longer a trend, they're here to stay", 2023
- 4As, "Study: Average cost of agency review tops $1M" (ANA, 4As and Advertiser Perceptions), 2023
- The Drum, "Survey: Too many marketers are unlikely to recommend their agency" (Agency Sparks), 2018
Data limitations: Setup's 2025 survey had around 100 responses from brands and agencies. The ANA, 4As and Gartner figures come mainly from larger US or North American advertisers, and the IPA data is UK-based and taken from published coverage. The Agency Sparks figures are from 2018 and included as a long-running signal, not a current benchmark. None of these studies isolates Canadian brands. Figures are the most recent we could verify as of October 2026.