How to Run a Media Agency Review: Process, Timeline, and Stakeholders

Many media agency reviews begin with the invitation, before the brand knows what decision the review must settle or who holds admin rights on the ad accounts. MSIGHTS, a data platform vendor, notes that when an agency has built and run your campaigns, financial detail sits in its billing systems and results in ad server and DMP accounts it administers, so the data can be out of your reach just when a review needs it. This guide treats governance as the first stage of the media agency review process, then covers the timeline, stakeholders, a pitch scorecard, internal cost and transition. If you are still defining what a strong paid media partner looks like, GPI's guide to choosing a paid media agency sets out the evidence worth requesting before a review begins.

GPI treats an agency review as a measurement problem before a selection problem. The review should be chartered to answer one business decision, such as whether the current partner can deliver the next two years of growth at acceptable transparency, and every stage should produce evidence toward that answer. Pitch theatre does not count as evidence. Case studies, live exercises and fee proposals are claims until the methodology and limitations behind them are visible, and the same standard must apply to the incumbent and the challengers. A review that ends by retaining the incumbent on clearer terms is a success if the decision was made on documented evidence.

Decide Whether You Need a Review Before You Call One

Start with a commercial review when scope, staffing or terms can resolve the problem. TrinityP3, which sells this service, describes auditing operations, process, structure, capabilities, outputs and agreements to improve the existing relationship. Its 2023 categories remain a useful checklist. Reserve a competitive pitch for structural gaps the incumbent cannot close.

Triggers that justify a competitive pitch

Structural triggers share a feature: the incumbent cannot close the gap by working harder. A new channel or geography the agency has never bought, a contract expiring with no appetite to renew on current terms, an unresolved transparency concern about how inventory or technology margins are handled, or a merger that changes the buying footprint. Each of these changes what the partner must be, not how well it performs.

Triggers that a commercial review resolves faster

Performance triggers usually trace back to scope, staffing, process or commercial terms. Slow reporting, junior staff on the account, disagreement about what counts as success, or fees that no longer match the work can all be renegotiated. ID Comms warns that a media pitch is a massive undertaking that distracts staff and disrupts the incumbent, which is a reason to exhaust contract-level fixes before defaulting to a pitch.

The commercial review categories in the table follow TrinityP3's description; the pitch disruption point follows ID Comms.

The decision the review must answer

Write a one-page charter naming the trigger, business decision and conditions for retaining or changing the agency. Specify how to evidence value: reporting vendor Camphouse describes clients' demand for clear proof of agency performance. Ad Age's tracker records a brand assessing capabilities without a formal RFP, illustrating that capability assessment and a pitch are separate decisions.

Secure Your Data, Accounts and Contracts Before Anyone Is Invited

Settle agency data ownership before the RFI goes out, in this order:

1. Run a full data and access audit with your incumbent and internal IT, covering ad accounts, ad server and DSP seats, conversion tags and pixels, measurement vendor contracts, historical log files and reports, audience segments and creative assets.
2. Record who holds admin rights on every account and which legal entity each platform names as the account owner.
3. Compare what your contract says you own with what you can actually access today; the gap between the two is your transition risk.
4. Secure brand-owned admin rights on every platform, moving any shared or agency-held credentials to brand-controlled identities, before any agency is invited.

A brand that has to ask its incumbent for its own data in the middle of a pitch has already given up negotiating position, and it has signalled to challengers that the transition will be messy.

Where your data actually lives

The MSIGHTS guidance, written from a data platform vendor's perspective, describes three locations that routinely surprise marketers: campaign financials inside agency billing systems, performance results inside ad server and DMP accounts the agency administers, and adtech vendor relationships managed by the agency rather than the brand. Inventory each of these, then add the assets that sit around them: conversion tags and pixels, measurement vendor contracts, historical log files and reports, audience segments, and creative assets stored in agency systems.

One distinction matters throughout the audit. Data you legally own under contract and data you can practically access today are different sets, and the gap between them is your transition risk. Ownership language in a master services agreement does not help on a Friday afternoon if the only admin login belongs to a planner who has since left the agency.

Ad platform and ad server account ownership

For each platform, record three facts: which entity owns the account, who holds admin rights, and whether the brand can remove the agency's access without agency cooperation. Where the agency owns the account, ask whether it can be transferred or whether history will be lost on migration. Multi-brand advertisers should cover every business line; Ad Age's tracker described an Intuit US media review spanning several product brands, and an inventory that missed one brand's accounts would leave a hole in the transition.

The locations in the table follow the MSIGHTS description of where agency-run campaign data tends to sit.

Contract clauses that decide how the transition goes

Before setting a review timeline, read the termination notice period, the data return and deletion clauses, and the IP terms. The notice period frequently dictates the earliest realistic transition date, so a review that ignores it produces a winner who cannot start. Data return clauses determine whether the archive above arrives in usable form or as a PDF. If the current contract lacks these terms, negotiate them into the review outcome, whichever agency wins.

Privacy obligations that transfer with the data

Audience segments and logs carry compliance obligations. One compliance vendor counted 19 distinct US privacy laws applicable by 2025, with eight state laws taking effect that year; the vendor sells compliance services, so treat the exact count as indicative. Confirm who is data controller and who is processor for every audience before anything moves between agencies, and record the consent basis for each segment. An audience that cannot be lawfully transferred should not appear in the RFP as an asset.

The Media Agency Review Process, Stage by Stage

Build the stage table below as a shared project plan, attach a named owner and a closing artefact to every stage, and send the agency review timeline to invited agencies with the invitation letter. Mercer Island Group observes that agencies are often asked into reviews with no clear process or timeline, and that participation is a business investment for them, so clients who are clear about process get better participation. Durations below are expressed as dependencies instead of week counts, because notice periods and planning calendars vary too much for a single schedule to hold.

1. Charter, brief and scope of work. Closes with a signed charter and a scope document.
2. Long list and RFI. Closes with RFI responses scored against published criteria.
3. Shortlist, chemistry and RFP. Closes with the RFP issued to a limited shortlist.
4. Pitch, live exercise and scoring. Closes with independent scores and a recommendation.
5. Negotiation, contract and announcement. Closes with a signed contract and agreed announcement.
6. Transition and first 90 days. Closes with a completed handover and baseline report.

Stage 1: Charter, brief and scope of work

Translate the charter into channels, markets, spend range and services in scope. Measured describes allocation across fragmented channels as a central planning problem; state how you will judge those choices. Bound the workload too. Ad Age reported a Coca-Cola media, data and technology review that excluded several major markets.

Stage 2: Long list and RFI

The RFI is a disqualification tool. Ask for capability, client conflicts, holding-company structure, indicative team seniority and commercial model. Keep the long list proportionate: every additional agency adds reading hours for your team and a wasted investment for an agency with no real chance. Sequence this stage against the incumbent's notice period and your planning calendar so that the eventual transition lands outside peak trading.

Stage 3: Shortlist, chemistry and RFP

Chemistry meetings belong here, before the RFP, so that fit is assessed when it is cheap to act on. The RFP should contain the full brief, the scorecard criteria and weights, the timeline, the data room contents and the rules for questions. Everyone receives the same information at the same time, including the incumbent if it is defending.

Stage 4: Pitch, live buying exercise and scoring

Replace the speculative full-year plan with a bounded live exercise on a real slice of the brief: one market, one quarter, one objective, using the data room. Ask each agency to show its allocation, its reasoning, and how it would test whether the allocation worked. A live exercise reveals planning logic and how a team handles ambiguity; it cannot show how the agency services an account at week 40, which is why staffing plans and references carry separate weight. Scorers score independently before any group discussion.

Stage 5: Negotiation, contract and announcement

Negotiate with the preferred agency while a second remains in reserve. The contract should carry the staffing plan, substitution clause, data ownership terms, audit rights and disclosure obligations that the scorecard demanded. Tell losing agencies promptly, in a call rather than a form letter, with specific feedback. Agency goodwill affects who accepts your next invitation.

Stage 6: Transition and first 90 days

Execution of the transition is covered later in this article. At the process level, this stage closes when admin rights, tags, audiences and reporting have moved and a baseline report has been signed by both agencies.

The case for publishing process and timeline at invitation follows Mercer Island Group; the channel fragmentation point follows Measured.

Who Should Be on the Review Team and What Each Role Decides

Complete a RACI with at most seven core members and record any consultant's accountabilities in the charter.

• Assign each role a decision right.
• Limit wider stakeholders to specific artefacts, containing the distraction ID Comms describes.
• Retain the final decision with the brand.

Executive sponsor

The sponsor signs the charter, funds the review and owns the decision. Any departure from the scorecard requires a documented reason.

Review lead and project manager

The review lead controls agency communication and parity; the project manager owns the timeline and data room. One person may cover both.

Media and analytics leads

Media and analytics leads assess allocation, evidence and test design. They also prepare the transition's measurement baseline.

Procurement and legal

Procurement and marketing must define value together before comparing fees, balancing cost and delivery quality. Legal owns data, IP and audit clauses.

Finance

Finance validates budget fit, billing and reconciliation.

Search consultant: when the role earns its fee

Consultants offer market knowledge and process discipline but add cost and may favour familiar networks. Ad Age lists reviews with and without consultants. Account complexity and internal capability should guide the choice.

A case study describes networks controlling pitch participation and retaining media volume when sister agencies compete. Ask who controls buying volume and trading benefits.

Managing the incumbent during the review

Tell the incumbent whether it is defending or transitioning. Defenders receive equal information and deadlines, with knowledge advantages recorded. Agree exit deliverables and service continuity separately with a departing agency.

The network dynamics referenced in this section come from the case study of network and independent agencies.

Scoring Agencies Against Evidence, Not Chemistry

Lock a weighted media agency pitch scorecard with the review team before the RFI is issued, publish the criteria to agencies, and score independently before any group discussion. GPI's paid media buyer guidance, linked in the introduction, reduces the choice to four anchors: documented outcomes, named senior operators on the account, measurement infrastructure beyond platform-reported ROAS, and a budget threshold that matches your spend. A review scorecard converts those into lines and adds fee transparency. For the documentation standard GPI applies when listing agencies, see the Growth Partner Confidence Score methodology, which is a useful reference when drafting RFP evidence requests.

Weighted criteria agreed before the RFI

Weights express the charter. If the review was called over transparency, fee transparency and audit rights carry more weight than planning creativity. Agree weights before seeing any agency, because weights set afterwards drift toward whichever agency the team liked.

Documented outcomes and how to verify them

Ask for case evidence with method and limitations, not results alone. A result without a measurement method is a claim. Ask what the counterfactual was, whether the outcome came from a test or from attribution modelling, and what else changed in the period. Connect creative, delivery and outcome in the agency's account without accepting that attribution demonstrates causation. Reference calls should ask the same questions of the client.

Named senior operators and staffing continuity

Require a staffing plan with named people, percentage allocation, seniority mix and a contractual substitution clause. The pitch team should be the delivery team, and where a substitution is unavoidable the brand should approve the replacement. Team substitution is a common durability failure and one of the cheapest to prevent at contract stage.

Measurement infrastructure beyond platform ROAS

Given audiences split across CTV, retail media, social, search, audio and traditional channels, per Measured's account, ask each agency how it would allocate and how it would test the allocation rather than merely report it. A related prompt comes from Deloitte Digital's 2025 investment trends survey, which found that organisations investing more in martech than working media reported 18% greater sales lift and 7% greater revenue growth than those weighted toward working media. The data is self-reported and correlational, and martech is defined broadly, so it does not prove that more technology spend causes growth. It does justify a scoring line for the agency's technology and data approach.

Fee transparency and commercial model

Request the commercial model in full: fee basis, how any inventory, technology or rebate value is handled, and what will be disclosed after award. Undisclosed value flows distort the fee comparison because a low headline fee may be funded by margins the brand never sees. Ask how the agency's network handles trading benefits, drawing on the volume-control point from the case study above.

Incumbent parity rules

Give every agency the same brief, the same information and the same time. Where the incumbent holds knowledge challengers cannot, record it in the scoring file and, where possible, add it to the data room. Scorers should note any line where the incumbent's advantage came from access rather than quality.

The first three criteria follow GPI's paid media buyer guidance; the technology line is prompted by the Deloitte Digital survey, with its self-reported basis noted.

Counting the Internal Cost of a Pitch

Complete an internal cost worksheet by stage and role and present the total to the sponsor alongside the charter. This section offers a method rather than a benchmark figure, since reliable published figures for internal pitch cost are hard to find. ID Comms describes a pitch as a large undertaking that distracts staff and disrupts the current partner; the worksheet turns that warning into a number the sponsor can react to.

Hours, not just fees

For each stage, list the roles involved and estimate hours per person for reading, meetings, scoring and follow-up. A purely hypothetical illustration: five core members spending twenty hours each on RFI reading and scoring consumes one hundred hours before any pitch is seen. Produce your own estimate before committing.

Delayed decisions and paused optimisation

Some costs do not show up as hours. Incumbents under review may become defensive, slowing approvals or avoiding risk. Campaign decisions wait for the review. Procurement and legal time is diverted, and senior attention leaves trading. Record these as an opportunity cost line even where they cannot be priced precisely.

Incumbent behaviour during a review

Expect service to change once a review is announced. Set explicit continuity expectations with the incumbent, agree how performance during the review will be judged, and monitor pacing weekly.

Reducing the cost without weakening the decision

Tighter shortlists, a bounded live exercise instead of a full speculative plan, a published timeline that cuts agency follow-up, and clear decision rights all reduce hours. The completed worksheet feeds the go or no-go decision and the choice between a pitch and the commercial review TrinityP3 describes.

Hours cells are left for the reader's own figures; the disruption rationale follows ID Comms.

Managing the Transition Without Losing Live Campaigns

Build a transition plan with dated cutover steps, an admin rights checklist, and a baseline measurement snapshot signed by both agencies before the handover date. The plan executes the inventory created before the review, and it works whether the outcome is a switch or a retention on new terms.

Overlap period and handover plan

Sequence the transition around the incumbent's notice period and the trading calendar, and avoid cutting over during peak seasons or major launches. Agree an overlap window in which the outgoing agency continues to trade while the incoming agency shadows, and define the date on which responsibility for pacing and spend moves.

Account, tag and audience migration

Migrate in a controlled order with verification at each step, working through the locations MSIGHTS identifies: billing detail, ad server and DMP accounts, and adtech relationships. A workable sequence:

1. Admin rights on every platform and account.
2. Ad server seats.
3. DSP seats.
4. Tags and pixels, confirming each conversion tag fires under the new account before the old one is disabled.
5. Audiences, after confirming data controller and processor roles and deletion obligations with the outgoing agency, given the state privacy law landscape described earlier.
6. Reporting and dashboards.

Each step needs a named verifier and a test before the next begins.

Knowledge transfer from the incumbent

Structure exit deliverables: performance history by channel and market, learnings and test results, vendor contracts and contacts, current pacing plans and any committed inventory. Tie delivery to final payment where the contract allows, and schedule handover sessions rather than relying on documents alone.

First 90 days: baselines and measurement continuity

Set a baseline before changes begin. First-quarter movement can reflect seasonality, migration and the incumbent's exit; it cannot isolate the new agency's contribution. Record channel allocation alongside outcomes, following the planning problem Measured describes. If retaining the incumbent, apply the findings to revised scope, staffing and terms against the same baseline.

How GPI Evidence Standards Apply to Your Media Agency Review

The sequence in this article runs decide, secure, run, score, transition. Decide whether a pitch is the right instrument, secure your data and contracts, run published stages with named owners, score against evidence agreed in advance, and transition on a signed baseline. GPI's position is that agency claims should be assessed against their evidence, methodology and limitations, and that measurement should answer the decision the review was chartered to make. The four anchors in GPI's paid media buyer guidance, documented outcomes, named senior operators, measurement beyond platform ROAS and budget fit, describe the documentation worth requesting from every agency, incumbent included. GPI has not run agency reviews or client campaigns; its directory criteria are offered as a reference standard, not as experience. A review that ends by retaining the incumbent with a stronger contract and clearer measurement is a legitimate success. To understand how GPI evaluates agencies and discloses its ownership, read the About and ownership disclosure page.

FAQ

Should the incumbent agency be invited to pitch?

Invite the incumbent if the charter defines an outcome under which it could be retained; otherwise tell it early that the review is a transition. A defending incumbent must receive the same brief, data room and timeline as challengers, and any information advantage should be recorded in the scoring file. Inviting an incumbent you have already decided to replace wastes its investment and damages goodwill.

How many agencies should be on the RFP shortlist?

Size the shortlist by the internal hours your team can spend scoring properly and by how many genuinely different options you need to compare. Every additional agency multiplies reading, meetings and scoring for the core team, and agencies invest heavily in participation, which is why clear process and timeline improve participation. A smaller shortlist scored carefully produces a more defensible decision than a long one scored in a hurry.

What is a live buying or planning exercise and what does it prove?

A live exercise asks each agency to plan a bounded, real slice of the brief using your data room, showing allocation, reasoning and how it would test the result. It reveals planning logic and how a team handles ambiguity and questions. It cannot show how the agency will service the account months later, so staffing plans and references carry separate weight.

How do we stop the pitch team being swapped for juniors after award?

Require a staffing plan with named people, percentage allocations and seniority mix, and write a substitution clause into the contract that gives the brand approval over replacements. GPI's buyer guidance lists named senior operators as one of the four anchors the choice comes down to. Check the roster against the plan quarterly.

What should we ask about holding-company structure?

Ask which network entity controls buying volume and trading benefits, whether sister agencies are pitching, and how value flows between the agency and the network. The case study of network agencies notes that networks decide which of their agencies pitch and that losing to a sister agency is manageable because volume stays in the network. The answers affect fee transparency and your negotiating position.

Can a review end with retaining the incumbent and still be worth it?

Yes, if the review produced a stronger contract, a named staffing plan, clearer measurement and better data ownership terms. The charter should have stated in advance what outcome would justify retention. A retention decided on documented evidence is a better result than a switch made on chemistry.