Just found out most agencies are still charging clients for third party ad tech that's now free

I was digging through a client's invoice last week and noticed a line item for a $750 monthly 'audience insights tool.' I looked it up and it's literally a free feature inside Google Ads now. Called the account manager and they said 'oh that's just standard markup' like it's nothing. Then I checked three other agency invoices from different shops and two of them were charging for free dashboard tools too. One agency in Chicago was billing $1,200 a month for something that's included in the platform they already manage. Has anyone else caught their agency or vendor doing this kind of thing?

3 comments

3 Comments

shanem373d ago

$750 for a free tool. That's insane. I had a similar thing happen with a print shop once. They charged me $200 for "file optimization" on a run of business cards. I asked what that meant and they said it was just resizing the image and setting the bleed. I did it myself in five minutes. Makes you wonder what other stuff they're just marking up for no reason.

alex3073d ago

Did you ever go back and ask them to itemize their full invoice or did you just pay it and move on?

juliashah3d ago

Has anyone stopped to think about how this setup actually hurts the agency's own performance too? If they're billing for a free tool that does nothing extra, they're wasting time on fake line items instead of focusing on actual campaign strategy. The worst part is this stuff creates a culture where agencies get comfortable charging for air and clients never learn what their real problems are. Eventually the client figures it out and the whole trust goes poof. So the agency is screwing themselves in the long run just to milk a few hundred bucks now.