As far back as 2009, we’ve been looking at value and an alternative to the billable hour. We never found a solution or approach that we felt worked for both the client and us as the agency.

But for 2026–well, we didn’t find a solution. But we felt that AI would put more pressure on the billable hour. Here’s what we wrote back on Jan. 7, 2026:

AI will begin to change the billable hour. Many industries bill clients by the hour, but some clients may question the practice, given the expectation that AI accelerates the creative process. The thing is: producing content with AI requires more time than you might think—you have to fact-check against AI-generated hallucinations and bring human insight to ensure the content is meaningful. Organizations will need to find updated ways to deliver value and may need to adopt a new approach to charging clients.

Recently, we saw a LinkedIn post by Sir Martin Sorrell, the founder of WPP plc., the world’s largest advertising and PR group, that discussed the future of the billable hour. Sorrell says: one agency is pivoting “toward subscription-based and output-based models that treat marketing more like software.” Furthermore, he says:

Our approach allows us to wrap senior expertise and machine-layer workflows into steady, recurring fees and align our incentives with the clients’ which actually improves over time. As models get smarter and our pipelines get faster, those efficiency gains show up as more output for the client—not fewer hours billed by the agency.

We don’t think this is right for every agency and client engagement. But we think it’s important to keep an open mind to innovative deliverables for clients.

We figure that we were ahead of Sir Martin, and that’s pretty cool.