The quick answer
Pick 100 Creatives if your brand already has a look and a product that sells, someone already runs your ad accounts, and the thing holding results back is a shortage of new static and video ads.
- Every engagement gets a written quote with a fixed total, in ranges from $4,000 to $50,000+. Nothing is charged until you approve it in writing.
- No monthly fee. You pay for a defined scope, and ongoing work can stop before the next billing date.
- Creative batches come back in 48 hours, and revisions within 48 hours.
- A brand intake before production covers visual language, model preferences, colorways and export specs, so the ads match the brand book you already paid for.
Pick something else if you don't have a brand yet (hire a branding agency), nobody competent runs your ad accounts (hire a media buyer or a marketing agency such as Darkroom), or you want one agency to choose angles, write scripts and review results with your media buyer every month (a performance creative agency such as Creative Milkshake).
Three businesses called a DTC agency
Search "DTC agency" and the results mix studios that design packaging, firms that manage seven-figure Meta budgets and shops that produce ads. They all sell to direct-to-consumer brands, and they all say "growth". They do different work, bill in different ways and fail in different ways, so comparing their prices side by side tells you very little until you know which type each one is.
| Type | What you get | What you still need | How it's usually billed |
|---|---|---|---|
| DTC branding agency | Positioning, name, logo, type, color, packaging, tone of voice, often the Shopify site | Someone to run ads, and a steady supply of ad creative | A project fee for a defined scope |
| DTC marketing agency (media buying and growth) | Ad account setup and management, budgets, targeting, testing plans, reporting; sometimes email and SMS | New ads to test, unless creative is included in the fee | A monthly fee, a share of ad spend, or both |
| DTC creative agency (ad production) | Static ads, video ads, UGC-style ads and the product imagery behind them | A brand to follow and someone running the accounts | A monthly subscription or retainer, or a quoted project |
A brand usually needs all three over its life, in roughly that order. The mistake that costs the most is hiring the wrong one for today's problem: paying a branding agency to fix a Meta account, or paying a media buyer to squeeze results out of the same four ads.
What does a DTC branding agency do?
A DTC branding agency answers "who is this brand, and how does it look?" The work ends in a brand book: the positioning line, the logo and its rules, typefaces, the color palette with exact values, packaging, photography direction and tone of voice. Many also design and build the Shopify store, because for a direct-to-consumer brand the site is the shelf.
You need one before launch, when a product is ready and nothing else is, and again for a rebrand, when the current identity is blocking growth or the brand is moving up in price. You don't need one because this quarter's ads underperformed. A branding agency rarely makes the dozens of ad variations a paid social account uses in a month, and the ones that do usually price them as a separate engagement.
Branding studios mostly quote per project, and few publish a number. One that does: Darkroom lists its Brand Studio from $12,500 and website development from $60,000, without saying whether those are one-off or monthly fees (Darkroom pricing, checked October 2026). Ask for a fixed fee, a list of deliverables and the number of revision rounds before you sign. Then ask who owns the source files. The brand book and the working files (not only the exported PDFs) are what every later vendor, including your creative agency, will build from.
What does a DTC marketing agency do?
A DTC marketing agency, often called a growth or performance marketing agency, runs the paid channels. It sets budgets, structures campaigns, launches tests, watches cost per purchase and reports on results. Some add email and SMS, landing pages and retention. The media buyer is the core of it: the person deciding where the next dollar of ad spend goes.
Prices are usually monthly. On its pricing page Darkroom listed paid media management from about $5,000 a month, and a separate performance creative service from about $8,000 a month (Darkroom pricing, checked October 2026). That split is common: the agency running your ads isn't necessarily the one making them. Bought together from one agency at those list prices, media management and creative start at $13,000 a month before any ad spend.
How a DTC marketing agency charges
Marketing agencies bill in one of three ways. Darkroom, which sells this service, describes all three in its own guide to agency costs, so read them as one seller's view of the market (Darkroom, marketing agency cost 2026, checked October 2026):
| Billing model | How it works | Darkroom's example | What to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flat monthly fee | The same fee whatever you spend on ads | $5,000 to $15,000 a month for a single service | Check how many channels and how many new ads the fee covers |
| Percentage of ad spend | A share of your monthly media budget | 10% to 20% of spend; $200,000 a month at 15% is $30,000 in fees | The fee rises every time you scale, whether or not the work does |
| Hybrid | A base fee plus a lower percentage above a spend threshold | $8,000 a month plus 8% of spend above $50,000 | Where the threshold sits, and whether creative is inside the base |
The same guide says most agencies charge 10% to 20% of ad spend or a flat fee, whichever is greater. Run that against your own budget before the first call. At $30,000 a month in Meta spend, 10% to 20% comes to $3,000 to $6,000, so a $5,000 flat floor is what you would pay. At $100,000 a month the percentage wins and the fee becomes $10,000 to $20,000. Below $25,000 a month in spend, a $5,000 floor is more than 20% of your media budget, which is the point to price a freelance media buyer as well.
What to check in a DTC marketing agency proposal
Four lines in the proposal decide whether it works for you. First, how many new ads a month the fee includes, who makes them, and what happens when the account needs more; Darkroom prices creative as its own line, and many agencies do the same. Second, which channels are in scope: Meta and Google are the usual pair, while TikTok Shop, Amazon and retention email are often separate fees. Third, who owns the ad accounts and the pixel. They should sit in your business manager, with the agency added as a partner, so you keep the history if you leave. Fourth, the notice period and any minimum term.
A related question shows up in our Search Console data word for word: "when should a DTC ecommerce brand hire a Google Ads agency instead of a freelancer?" Our answer is that a freelance media buyer suits one channel and a clear testing plan. An agency starts to make sense once you run Google and Meta together, need cover when one person is away, or want strategy, reporting and creative handled as one account. We compare the options for creative, rather than media buying, in creative agency vs freelancer vs in-house.
What a DTC creative agency does
A DTC creative agency makes the ads. That means statics for feed, stories and display sizes, video ads for Reels and TikTok, UGC-style ads, and the product and lifestyle imagery all of those need. New ads are what a media buyer tests, and a brand spending steadily on Meta runs through them fast. We work out how many ads a given budget supports in how many ad creatives do I need.
Creative agencies sell in three shapes, and the shape matters as much as the price:
- Performance creative agencies sell strategy plus production on a monthly fee. Creative Milkshake lists subscriptions from about $7,000 a month, says typical subscriptions run $7,000 to $50,000 a month, and quotes 3 to 7 weeks to delivery depending on scope (Creative Milkshake pricing, checked October 2026). Y'all, which focuses on DTC brands, quotes by scope (yall.co, checked October 2026).
- Ad creative subscriptions sell a queue of requests for a flat monthly fee. GetAds' Launch plan was about $1,750 a month for 1 active request (GetAds pricing, checked October 2026). Your team writes the briefs.
- Quoted batches sell a defined set of ads for a fixed total. That is how 100 Creatives works: a written quote from $4,000, with no monthly fee.
At the top of the market, enterprise subscriptions such as Superside start at about a $15,000 monthly minimum on an annual term (Superside pricing, checked October 2026). The full table of 21 services, from $14-a-month AI tools up, is on our ad creative agency pricing page.
The order to hire them in
Start from what is failing today. Four situations cover most DTC brands.
You have a product and no brand
Hire the branding agency first. Ads made without a brand book drift from one batch to the next, and you'll pay to remake them after the rebrand. A good brand book is also the most useful thing you can hand a creative agency later.
You have a brand, and ad spend is being wasted
Signs: campaigns restructured every week, no one can explain last month's cost per purchase, or the founder is buying media at midnight. Hire a media buyer or a marketing agency. More ads won't fix an account nobody is managing.
The account is run well, and results slide anyway
Signs: the same handful of ads has run for months, new tests stall because nothing new is ready, and your media buyer keeps asking for "more creative". This is the creative agency's job. Size the need first; if the gap is a steady stream of small requests, a subscription fits, and if it is a set of statics and videos for a launch or a season, a quoted batch fits.
You're moving the work in-house
Hire designers and keep a partner for overflow, or have an agency build the production pipeline your team runs. 100 Creatives builds those brand-trained pipelines, called Workflows & Engines, from $4,000 per build. We describe the handover in taking AI creative in-house.
Six questions to ask any DTC agency before you sign
Which of the three are you? An agency that says "all of them" should show you who does each part and how it is priced.
What exactly does the fee buy? A number of ads, a number of active requests, hours, or a share of ad spend. "Unlimited" plans are limited by active requests and turnaround; we worked through the math in unlimited ad creatives.
Who writes the briefs? Subscriptions usually expect you to. Performance creative agencies and quoted batches usually include it.
How do I leave? Notice periods, annual terms and minimums vary a lot between the pricing pages linked above. Read them before the first invoice.
Who owns the files? Get the layered source files, not only exports, so the next vendor or your own team can reuse them.
Is the portfolio client work or spec work? Plenty of agencies, us included, can't show client work because of NDAs. That is normal. Labeling spec work as spec work is the minimum you should expect. Most of our client work is under NDA, so our portfolio shows spec concepts, such as the Chobani spec work and ARMRA spec work, neither commissioned by the brand shown.
Where 100 Creatives fits
100 Creatives is a DTC creative agency in the narrow sense. We make static ads for Meta, TikTok and Google in feed, stories and display sizes; video ads made with AI video tools and art-directed by our team; and the product and lifestyle imagery those ads need, made without a physical shoot. For in-house teams we build brand-trained production pipelines. We don't build brand identities, manage ad accounts or buy media, so we fit best when a brand already has a brand book and a media buyer.
An engagement starts with a brand intake: visual language, model preferences, colorways and export specs. You then get a written quote with a fixed total in one of four ranges, $4,000 to $10,000, $10,000 to $25,000, $25,000 to $50,000 or $50,000+. Quotes are valid for 30 days and invoiced in advance, and nothing is charged until you approve the quote in writing. Creative batches come back in 48 hours. Starting prices for product photography and apparel programmes are on the pricing page.
An earlier version of this page described 100 Creatives as a full-service agency for consumer packaged goods brands, making brand campaigns, billboards, retail displays and creator content from a named senior team on a flat monthly retainer. That overstated what we do. If you need that range of work, hire a brand agency and an out-of-home or retail specialist for it, and bring us in for the paid social ads. For packaged goods specifically, our CPG creative agency page covers the same split.
Which should you buy?
Brand set, accounts run, ads running out
You have a brand book and a media buyer, and you need a defined batch of statics, AI video and product imagery for Meta, TikTok or Google, quoted from $4,000.
Pre-launch or rebrand
You need a name, identity, packaging or site. Ads come after the brand book.
Spend is being wasted
No one owns the ad accounts, or no one can explain the numbers. Agencies such as Darkroom list media management from about $5,000 a month.
You want strategy with the production
You want an agency to pick angles, write scripts and review results monthly. Creative Milkshake lists subscriptions from about $7,000 a month.