The three ways agencies charge
A monthly retainer. A fixed fee for a defined scope: creatives, media buying, pages, reporting. The most common model for brands that run ads every month. Your ad budget is paid to TikTok and Meta directly and is never part of the fee.
A share of ad spend. The fee is a percentage of what you spend on ads. Simple, but it rewards the agency for spending more, not for selling more. If you accept it, cap it and tie it to delivered orders.
Per project. A launch, a landing page, a month of creatives. Good for testing an agency before a longer commitment.
What actually moves the price
How many channels (TikTok only, or TikTok and Meta), how many new creatives you need each month, whether landing pages and order follow-up are included, how many products or branches you have, and how much reporting and meeting time you expect. Two brands with the same ad budget can need very different amounts of work.
Beware of a fee that looks small next to your ad budget: the fee buys the thinking, and thinking is what stops the ad budget from being wasted.
Six questions to ask before you sign
- What exactly is in the scope?
Creatives per month, channels, pages, follow-up, reports, meetings. Get it as a list, not a paragraph.
- What number will you judge yourselves on?
The honest answer for a store in Egypt is delivered orders and what one costs, not reach, likes or platform-reported purchases.
- Who owns the ad accounts and the pixels?
You should. Ask for accounts opened in your name with the agency as a partner, so nothing is lost if you part ways.
- How long is the commitment?
Ads need a few weeks to learn, so a short trial is fair; a long lock-in with no exit is not.
- What happens in the first two weeks?
A serious agency starts with a diagnosis of where you lose customers, then a plan, then ads. If ads start on day one, ask why.
- Can I see the weekly report format?
One page, real numbers, a decision at the bottom. If they cannot show you one, you will not get one.
The short version
Ask for a diagnosis before a price, insist on owning your accounts, and judge the fee against delivered orders rather than against the ad budget. A fee that is cheap and does nothing is the most expensive one.