The old agency model takes 10% of whatever you spend — so the bigger the budget, the bigger their check, regardless of whether anything works. We replaced that perverse incentive with a fixed retainer that shows up on your P&L like software.
Most agencies still charge a percentage of your media spend — usually 10%, sometimes more. Their incentive is to spend more of your money, regardless of whether it works.
That math made sense in 2005, when scaling spend meant scaling labor: more buyers, more analysts, more humans pulling reports at 11pm. It doesn't make sense in the AI era. Costs no longer scale with budget. Pricing shouldn't either.
Stellar runs lean. AI agents do the heavy lifting — buying, optimizing, reporting, testing. Our experts spend their time on judgment calls and creative bets, not on the parts a model can do faster. So we charge a fixed retainer, the same line item whether your spend is $10k a month or $10M. We show up on your P&L like software, not like a tax.
As you scale, the gap between what you'd pay an old-school agency and what you pay us widens. That gap is leverage. Real leverage.