Margin Decay Curve

Image generators shift visual production from per-asset labor to API calls, but most pricing scales with usage. That creates a margin decay curve: as client volume grows, your cost per asset falls slower than your revenue per asset, and retainer profitability erodes. Agencies win high-volume work by treating the generator as a backend, not a design tool, and by modeling usage tiers before signing. A concrete example: Bannerify renders 10x faster than browser-based alternatives, which cuts turnaround time, but if you price a retainer on asset count without a usage ceiling, a single campaign spike can wipe out the margin. The framework says to set per-client render budgets, monitor cost per 1,000 assets, and renegotiate when volume crosses a threshold. Ignore the curve and you win the retainer but lose the profit.