Agency remuneration: payments by results - a fad, or the future?

James Best

The commission system for agency payment stubbornly survives. The author explains why, but argues that perhaps the time has come to change to payment by results.

Payment by results

- a fad or the future

James Best

The commission system stubbornly survives. other ways of remunerating agencies have evolved. But the most logical - payment by results - has always seemed too difficult. With improved ways of measuring ad effects, and given the right criteria and working arrangements, maybe its time has now come.

The principle of paying agencies for the value of the work they do seems a pretty fair one. After all, it is how the commission system evolved: media owners paid advertising agencies for successfully selling space in their publications to advertisers. No...

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