What agency commission actually costs, next to a flat licence
An agency charges a retainer plus a percentage of every rand you spend on ads. The platform charges once a year, flat, regardless of spend. Move the sliders to your own numbers and watch where the two lines cross.
Your numbers
Defaults are a mid-size client running paid social year-round. Replace them with a real prospect's figures before you show this to anyone.
Media budget placed with Meta / TikTok / Google each month — same either way, it's not a saving, just the base the fees sit on.
Flat management fee the agency bills regardless of results.
Typical agency markup band is 10–20% of media spend.
One flat fee per client per year — see partnership-model.md for the platform's own pricing decision.
One-time, first year only — account, brand profile, campaign build.
Fixed at 0% — the licence model's whole premise is no markup on media spend.
Year one, side by side
Ad spend itself is identical in both columns and isn't counted as a cost difference — only the fee stacked on top of it.
Advertising agencyretainer + commission
Retainer × 12 months—
Commission on spend × 12—
Year 1 management cost—
FusionSplice platformflat licence
Annual licence—
One-time onboarding—
Year 1 management cost—
Saved in year one, same ad spend, same channels
—
— less than the agency
Why the gap grows with spend
The agency's cost is partly a percentage, so it rises with every rand you put into media. The licence doesn't move. This is the same comparison at three spend levels, licence and retainer held at what you set above.
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Breakeven
Month the platform's cumulative cost is overtaken by the agency's — from that point on, every month is pure saving.
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Assumptions: agency commission is billed monthly on placed spend; platform licence and onboarding are the only client-side platform costs modelled (media spend itself is passed through unchanged in both scenarios); figures exclude FusionSplice's own cost of running the platform. Replace every default with a real prospect's numbers before quoting.