The PPC Margin Squeeze: Why Agencies Must Sell Strategy, Not Bid Management

Native platform automation is absorbing the bid-management layer that agencies used to bill for, so PPC retainers priced on manual optimization hours are quietly deflating. Agencies that keep margin in 2026 will treat bidding tools as commodity infrastructure and move their billable value into audience hypothesis, creative testing frameworks, and landing page CRO. The tool stack still matters, but as a delivery cost center to be audited, not a value story to be sold.