Avinash Kaushik Says Renegotiate Now – SEO Fees 25% To 75% Lower

Jul 17, 2026 05:30 PM - 1 month ago 13953

Avinash Kaushik spent astir 16 years wrong Google, has held elder client-side roles astatine companies for illustration Intuit and DirecTV, and now advises brands and agencies arsenic main strategy serviceman astatine Human Made Machine. So, erstwhile he tells marketers to renegotiate their agency contracts and expect savings of 25% to 75%, starting this month, it is worthy stopping immoderate other you are reading.

I person known Avinash for much than 20 years. He does not propulsion retired numbers for illustration that for daze value. He builds a model, shows his work, and dares you to reason pinch the math. In his latest Marketing < > Analytics Intersect newsletter, “Pay Less, Grow More, Agencies successful an AI-Era,” he does precisely that, and the statement reaches good past the capacity and imaginative agencies he names directly. Anyone moving SEO, content, aliases GEO work done an extracurricular partner should beryllium doing this aforesaid mathematics connected their ain statement this week.

Kaushik’s starting constituent is that 3 forces converged astatine once. AI sewage broadly, mostly smart, not conscionable smart astatine 1 constrictive task. The advertisement platforms hap to besides ain the foundational AI models moving underneath the campaigns those platforms sell, truthful intelligence showed up accelerated and is already wired into the devices agencies usage daily. And each strategy successful the stack now talks to each different strategy successful existent time, which does not make AI smarter successful the abstract; it makes AI smarter astir your circumstantial account. Put those 3 together, and you get what Kaushik calls the “we are not successful Kansas anymore” infinitesimal for each type of agency, media, creative, performance, brand, measurement, and yes, SEO.

The applicable consequence is that activity that utilized to warrant a monthly retainer is now handled by the level itself, and Kaushik says clients should expect 25% to 75% savings connected existing scopes of activity arsenic that displacement plays out, alongside 15% to 25% maturation successful fees for genuinely caller activity the aged statement ne'er anticipated. He is not arguing for a smaller narration pinch your agency. He is arguing that the money should move to different work.

Where The Old Contract Stops Making Sense

Kaushik breaks the aged agency scope into clusters, and the shape crossed each 1 of them is the same. Account architecture, keyword and assemblage structuring, and run build-out erstwhile ran astir a 5th of a emblematic contract’s cost, and he estimates that activity tin shrink by adjacent to 80% now that level algorithms grip segmentation and targeting amended than a quality squad slicing campaigns “for control.” Manual bid and pacing adjustments told a akin story, pinch AI already outperforming quality pacing decisions since precocious 2024, and Kaushik makes a sharper constituent present that deserves attraction beyond his ain newsletter. He argues that an agency jumping successful to “rescue” a dip during an AI learning rhythm is not helping, it is actively sabotaging the algorithm’s expertise to learn, and each 1 of those manual rescues resets the clock.

Reporting tells the aforesaid communicative from a different angle. Weekly decks, twice-a-week position meetings, and hand-typed commentary connected numbers that already unrecorded successful a dashboard utilized to eat adjacent to a 3rd of a contract’s costs by Kaushik’s estimate, and he thinks 60% of that tin spell distant now that AI-fronted information devices tin explicate what happened and why without a quality translating a spreadsheet. None of this intends the activity disappears. It intends the activity moves to a machine, and the agency’s existent occupation becomes deciding what the instrumentality should optimize toward, not building aliases reporting connected what the instrumentality already does connected its own.

The Contract Structure Kaushik Wants To Replace It With

Here is wherever the file stops being descriptive and starts being prescriptive, and it is the portion I deliberation SEO leaders will admit fastest. Kaushik wants agency fees divided 3 ways. A thin guidelines retainer, astir 40% to 50% of a now-smaller total, covers governance, steering, and information engineering. Project fees, different 30% to 40%, screen the activity that still needs existent quality judgment, imaginative concepting, analyzable strategical analysis, portfolio strategy. And an result incentive, the remaining 15% to 25%, ties straight to incremental profit aliases verified gross lift, ne'er to a platform-reported metric for illustration ROAS that the level itself has each inducement to inflate.

That past constituent is the aforesaid statement I person been making astir Citation Share of Voice and GEO measurement for the amended portion of this year. Kaushik’s informing against paying agencies a “percent of media spend” is structurally identical to the informing I would springiness immoderate SEO squad still paying an agency for deliverables, page counts, audits shipped, blog posts published, alternatively of paying for integrated gross really generated. A statement built astir activity ever rewards much activity. It ne'er rewards the judgement to do little and get more, and successful an AI-mediated hunt environment, judgement is the only point near that a instrumentality cannot afloat do for you.

What SEO Teams Should Actually Do With This

Kaushik’s ain examples tally done Performance Marketing and Google Ads, but the underlying mathematics applies conscionable arsenic straight to SEO and contented agency relationships, and present is really I would use it.

First, propulsion your existent SEO aliases contented agency SOW and benignant each statement point into 1 of Kaushik’s 3 buckets. Anything that looks for illustration keyword investigation busywork, manual rank tracking, aliases templated method audits belongs successful the “platform already does this” pile, because AI-driven crawlers, Google Analytics 4 anomaly detection, and automated method monitoring person closed astir of that gap. Be honorable astir really overmuch of your existent retainer is softly paying for that pile.

Second, propose splitting your adjacent renewal the aforesaid measurement Kaushik does, a smaller guidelines retainer for governance and information ownership, task fees for the activity that genuinely needs a strategist’s judgment, for illustration entity building, contented architecture for AI Mode and AI Overviews, aliases GEO strategy, and an result inducement tied to integrated gross aliases a verified Citation Share of Voice lift, not to a vanity metric for illustration keyword rankings aliases deliverable counts that immoderate AI instrumentality tin now make connected command.

Third, and this is Kaushik’s informing applied straight to SEO, make judge you ain your ain information earlier you renegotiate anything. GA4 access, Search Console, log files, and immoderate AI citation search you are moving request to beryllium successful your hands, not your agency’s, aliases you person nary leverage to inquire for immoderate of the above.

My Take

I do not deliberation this intends SEO agencies are becoming worthless, and neither does Kaushik astir agencies broadly. I deliberation it intends the agencies that past the adjacent 2 years will beryllium the ones that extremity trading hours and commencement trading the judgement a instrumentality still cannot supply, and the ones that support billing for monthly rebuilds and manual reports are going to suffer the customer earlier they suffer the argument.

Kaushik ends his portion pinch a statement I support coming backmost to. You tin salary for the past, aliases you tin salary for the present. After 20 years of watching agency-client relationships successful this manufacture evolve, I deliberation that is the correct frame, and I deliberation astir SEO teams are still penning checks for the past without realizing it.

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