The Creative Supply Margin Curve in Social Media Ads

Paid social execution is commoditizing: bidding, budget pacing, and audience setup are now table stakes that any agency can buy. The margin sits upstream in creative supply and proprietary audience data, because two agencies running the same public model on the same brief now produce near-identical ad concepts. Agencies that own a repeatable UGC pipeline and first-party signal keep retainer pricing power; media-only buyers watch it erode.