The pitch process is one of the most debated rituals in the agency world. What once felt like an adrenaline-fueled showcase of creativity has become exhausting and inefficient, marked by weeks of unpaid work, teams stretched thin, and rising costs for agencies and brands alike. These challenges are only magnified by the reality that pitching remains central to how agencies grow, compete, and win new business.
This puts leaders in a difficult position: The pitch isn’t going away, but the way it’s run needs to evolve to meet today’s demands. With clients asking for more ideas and faster turnarounds, agency leaders are under pressure to modernize how they approach the process. AI is also reshaping how work gets done, and clients increasingly want to understand the operational capabilities behind the strategic vision. This shift gives agencies that demonstrate tech-powered efficiency and AI readiness a distinct edge.
By building operational efficiency, demonstrating tech and data readiness, and using those capabilities to establish trust, agencies can transform the pitch from a resource drain into a competitive advantage. The pitch process may never be easy, but it can be managed in a way that benefits both agencies and their clients.
Pitches today demand a significant quantity of resources with little certainty of return. This imbalance of effort and reward leaves teams stretched thin and leaders struggling to balance growth opportunities with organizational wellbeing. “Agencies often feel like they’re giving away ideas, creative, and strategy—pouring their heart and soul into pitches with no guarantee of return,” says Michael Thill, Basis’ VP of Agency Development.
Beyond the time and energy invested, the financial implications are severe. In 2023, the 4As and ANA reported that the average non-incumbent pitch cost agencies more than $200,000, while brands typically spent more than $400,000 on the same process.
These costs are compounded by client expectations for faster turnarounds and more upfront ideas, resulting in a cycle that drains time, money, and energy on both sides. Without better systems in place, agencies must pour resources into a process that often undermines the very efficiency clients are asking for.
Pitches expose a critical tension: Clients expect more, faster, while inefficient processes, siloed systems, and shrinking profits put additional strain on agencies—pressures intensified for many by recent workforce reductions.
These challenges make efficiency one of the most compelling advantages in a pitch. Optimized team structures, Thill observes, offer a concrete way to demonstrate this efficiency. “If I’m an agency and I can show you that what a typical agency might need 10 FTEs for, I can do with seven—that money talks,” he says.
But efficiency doesn’t just come from cutting headcount. Without changes to workflows and data management, trimming staff only drives burnout and makes pitches harder to win. Agencies that are finding success often take a more strategic approach to operational improvements. Common strategies include using automation to reduce time spent on repetitive tasks and applying AI to strengthen recommendations. “Automation and AI are parallel. They’re different tools, but together they free up time so agencies can actually focus on the pitch,” says Thill.
The key to making AI tools work, however, is quality data. Clean, unified data systems allow AI to learn faster and deliver more accurate results, making it significantly more effective at driving efficiency. This frees up team capacity to focus on the strategic work that wins competitive pitches.
One of the biggest hurdles in pitch prep is simply getting to the right information. Too often, agencies struggle to pull past performance data, publisher insights, or resource models because systems are disconnected. Instead of drawing on a clear record of what’s worked before, teams can spend hours digging through spreadsheets or emailing partners for numbers. For instance, when adtech and martech platforms don’t work together seamlessly, agencies waste 12% or more of their time, budget, and employee effort.
Such losses show up acutely during a pitch. Pitches are fast-paced, with little room for delays or vague answers. “Even large agencies often don’t have a way to quickly access their own data for a pitch,” says Thill. “They’re forced to RFP partners and cobble insights together manually.” The result is a story that can come across as incomplete, no matter how strong the creative may be.
This is where tech can become a true differentiator. Agencies that work to unify data into a single source of truth often find they can surface insights more quickly, build accurate projections, and enter pitch meetings better prepared. For clients evaluating partners, this operational readiness signals both potential cost savings and—crucially—the ability to deliver measurable results. And since 90% of brands say ROI and outcomes matter more than cost when evaluating agency partners, demonstrating operational readiness and data maturity can be an advantage in a competitive pitch.
However, achieving this level of readiness requires more than just adopting new tools. Auditing existing tech stacks to identify gaps and redundancies, evaluating whether current platforms can integrate effectively, and determining what changes would genuinely improve workflow efficiency are critical steps many agency leaders overlook. The goal isn’t simply to have more technology, but to ensure the technology in place works together to support the team’s actual needs during high-pressure moments like pitches.
Earning trust in the pitch process is both critical and challenging. Clients want to see not just ideas, but proof those ideas can translate into performance and real business results. When agencies showcase past work, demonstrating how creative execution and media performance informed one another can be a powerful differentiator. Yet this is often difficult when creative and media teams—whether housed within one agency or operating as separate entities—work in silos without shared access to timely campaign insights. “Clients are frustrated that media doesn’t talk to creative. If you can connect those dots, you’ll stand out,” says Thill.
Some agencies are working to address this by investing in tech infrastructure that makes campaign performance accessible across all teams and partners. The goal is to create systems where insights can flow consistently, whether between in-house media and creative teams, or across separate agency partnerships. When this works well, it changes how teams operate. “If you have a centralized source of truth, every team—media, creative, finance, leadership—can leverage it to make better decisions,” Thill notes. During pitches, agencies that can demonstrate they’ve built this kind of operational capability may stand out by showing they’ve solved a problem many brands find frustrating.
Additionally, a strong tech stack today includes AI as a core component, and clients increasingly want to understand how agencies are implementing it responsibly. Agencies that have consolidated disparate data sources into a clean, reliable foundation can demonstrate—not just claim—AI readiness during pitches. This operational proof point builds credibility by showing both technical competence and thoughtful implementation, addressing client concerns about AI hype versus AI capability.
Agency leaders may not be able to fully eliminate the stress of pitching, but they can reshape the process to work in their favor. Tech isn’t a silver bullet, but automation, consolidated data, and strategic AI adoption can help make it possible to run pitches with greater efficiency and clarity. The result is a process that builds trust and shows clients that agencies can pair strategic and creative capabilities with operational excellence and tech readiness. As client expectations continue to evolve, agencies that invest in these proficiencies now position themselves to win and retain business over the long term.
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Looking for more insights on how AI is impacting agencies and the advertising industry as a whole? We surveyed marketing and advertising leaders from leading agencies and brands for our third annual AI and the Future of Marketing report. In it, you’ll find data on the most common and effective applications of AI today, the critical role of first-party data in maximizing the technology, how AI is reshaping jobs and teams, and more.
