As agencies adopt generative AI, they are rethinking pricing to account for token-based compute costs. Some, like Merge and Big Spaceship, pass token expenses to clients as production costs, while others, including RPA and Anomaly, absorb them during testing phases.
Platforms such as Pencil use volume-based generation credits, negotiating bulk deals with model providers. Media agencies often treat AI as embedded infrastructure, charging nominal or at-cost fees rather than marking up usage.
Industry leaders argue the real financial shift lies in labour savings and performance gains, not token arbitrage, with future audits of AI usage likely.