Most of what a retainer buys is watching. Some of it is judgment. Software has genuinely taken over the first and has not taken over the second, and the honest question is which one you are paying for.
Split the retainer into the jobs it actually pays for. If your agency spends its month on the top half, software replaces it. If it spends its month on the bottom half, keep the agency and read no further.
This is the part retainers charge most for and the part a human does least well. Monitoring runs continuously instead of at whatever hour someone opens the account.
A cost spike matters on the day it starts, not in the monthly report. This is a threshold check, and machines keep thresholds better than calendars do.
Rules-driven work with a clear success measure. Buzz proposes the change and shows the reasoning before anything executes.
Aegis reads every proposed change and blocks the ones that look dangerous. You still approve; nothing runs behind your back.
Whether you want volume, margin, or a specific lead type is a business call. No tool can read that off your account.
The biggest wins in most accounts are not in the bidding. They are in what you are selling and how you say it, and that is still people work.
A good agency earns its fee here. If this is the value you get, software is not your replacement.
Kampaio connects to your own Google Ads account through OAuth. There is no agency MCC holding it, no history that walks out of the door with the contract, and nothing to migrate if you stop. If you have ever tried to leave an agency that built everything in its own account, that is the whole difference.
Tiers are $99, $199 and $399 a month depending on how much you want to approve by hand. Billing is not open yet; founding access is free until it is. See what each tier covers.
Thirteen pieces on agencies, consultants, pricing models and account ownership. Several of them will tell you to keep your agency. That is the point of writing them.
Connect the account, watch what Buzz and Aegis propose, and approve nothing you do not want. If it does not beat what you are paying for, you have lost an afternoon.
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