Independent agencies are under real pressure right now. AI has flattened differentiation; holding companies are selling data products and cutting into margins; and clients are more willing than ever to take work in-house if they don’t see value.
Resonate CMO Meredith Albertson recently sat down with Jay Pattisall, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester, and Jonathan Ricard, Chief Strategy Officer at Resonate, for an in-depth conversation on the ways agencies can face these challenges. Jay’s practice covers the present and future of the agency sector, while Jonthan brings 20 years of experience at the intersection of data, marketing, and digital media in the agency space. Over the course of the session, these experts focused on a new competitive paradigm for agencies looking to compete with larger holding companies: the Marketing Operating System.
The Marketing OS is a strategic shift powered by AI capabilities and proprietary consumer data. It allows agencies to move their business models away from billable hours and services and toward recurring revenue based on data products and outcomes.
Here are three key themes that emerged over the course of the session:
Takeaway 1: The Framework for Your Marketing OS Matters
According to Jay Pattisall, agencies looking to embrace new business models can build their OS around what he calls the “platform” approach: a proprietary environment that your agency and your clients both work within. Pattisall detailed the five core features of the Marketing OS that derive from this approach:
- An interface that houses the apps and workflow
- An audience ID graph
- A media planning and activation portal that takes an audience-first approach to strategy, channel selection, and budget allocation
- An ideation sandbox for content development
- A production content supply chain
Jonathan Ricard focused on the need for a consumer-first approach, especially when AI is having such a large impact. As he explained, the right questions for agencies are, “What is the proprietary asset that helps your agency make better decisions when everyone has access to some level of AI? How are you going to actually offer something that’s provable, measurable, that can create incremental outcomes for your clients?”
Takeaway 2: You Have to Own a Consumer Data Layer (or Get Left Behind)
The holding companies realized years ago — at monumental expense — that they needed owned products built on proprietary data to generate recurring revenue and improve margins. Independent agencies can’t match the spend of that investment, but they can still compete on data quality.
“You don’t need to spend $2 billion to buy a data asset,” says Pattisall. “You need to take the data that you have and start enriching and matching it with your clients’ first-party data sets to create a repository of intelligence inside your organization that you wield.”
Ricard agreed, adding that, “There’s an imperative to own the consumer data layer for your clients, and be able to build products and services off of that.”
He also stressed the need for urgency and recency in how you construct that data layer. “If you built your plans for the business in January, by March they were out of data as consumers have changed around affordability, tariffs, gasoline prices, and hits to discretionary spending.”
Without a current, owned view of the consumer, your agency is flying blind. A unified consumer data layer that integrates first-party client data with current, individual-level signals is no longer a competitive differentiator: it’s the price of entry. The intelligence at the core of your layer is what separates agencies that win.
Takeaway 3: Shift from Selling Time to Selling Outcomes
Clients won’t keep paying hourly rates for work that AI compresses. As Ricard noted in the session, independent agencies he works with were already hearing from clients looking to renegotiate fee structures, “with the expectation that agentic solutions, or even just gen AI, was going to shrink the time requirement.”
According to our panelists, the answer is to make time irrelevant.
The shift to products that clients purchase or that agencies leverage on their behalf reframes the conversation around value. “It’s a different business model,” says Ricard. “But that’s what you should be worried about, not so much how long it takes to do the task anymore.”
Pattisall added that agencies must create the “algorithm of record” for their clients, built from the agency’s expertise, tools, and proprietary data working together. “You get selected for your algorithm,” he explained. “And it’s not any one element of it, but all those things working together.” This is what makes your agency unique.
For agencies building toward that model, predictive consumer intelligence (the individual-level understanding of why consumers act and what they’ll do next) is what makes that algorithm actually worth buying.
Ready to Take the Next Step?
The new Marketing Operating System is not a one-size-fits-all approach; whether you’re making major investments in your own consumer data layer or just beginning to assess your agency’s readiness, you need resources to help you take the next step.
The full, on-demand conversation between Forrester and Resonate is a great start. You can also join us on June 16 for our next session, “Agency Survival Guide: Own Your Data, Own Your Future.” Jonathan Ricard will once again be leading this session with practical tips for turning your owned intelligence into revenue for your Marketing OS. Register today to reserve your spot!
