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Lunio vs ClickCease (2026): Which Click Fraud Tool Fits Your Spend?
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Report

Paid Media in 2027: The Agency Playbook

This report reveals how AI-driven ad platforms will reshape client work in 2027, and how agency account managers can get ahead of it, based on a survey of 110 US agency marketers and consultants.

Agencies are moving client budgets into automated campaign types faster than their visibility can keep up, and 58% have already lost a client or had a retainer reduced over traffic quality or fake leads. With practical advice from Mike Ryan, Nils Rooijmans, Navah Hopkins, Matt Beswick and Fiona Darley, this playbook covers what's changing on every major platform.

Download the full report for the complete platform-by-platform playbook, survey findings and client checklists.

58% Lost a client or had a retainer reduced over traffic quality
75% Say creative is now Meta's biggest performance lever
74% Say clients are asking about ChatGPT ads
110 US agency marketers and consultants surveyed

What's covered?

  • Google: what AI Max, ads in AI Mode and agentic checkout mean for client accounts, with practical guidance from Mike Ryan and Nils Rooijmans
  • Meta: Advantage+ best practice for 2027, why creative is the new targeting, and what Meta's $18B settlement means for agencies
  • Microsoft Ads: why it's the growth lever most agencies under-use, with insights from Navah Hopkins and Matt Beswick's ground-up build framework
  • TikTok and ChatGPT ads: Search Ads, creator content and GMV Max with Fiona Darley, plus a sensible test posture for ChatGPT ads
  • Valuable traffic: why traffic quality has become a retention issue, and how agencies use verification to win and keep clients
The Agency Playbook

Why agencies are uniquely exposed

 

Agencies sit between the platforms and the client. As Google, Meta and Microsoft push more budget into automated campaign types like Performance Max, AI Max and Advantage+, account managers have less control over where spend goes, but remain fully accountable for the results. Only 8% of agency marketers fully trust the conversion data inside their clients' ad platforms.

And the fallout is very visible. When fake leads flow into a client's CRM, their sales team sees them first. That's why traffic quality has become a retention issue for agencies, not just a performance one. Clients rarely ask about it when they hire an agency. They ask on the way out.

From "is it a bot?" to "is it valuable?"

For twenty years, traffic quality came down to one rule: human means valuable, bot means fraud. In 2027, that rule breaks. AI agents now research, compare and buy on behalf of real people, while some humans click on ads or fill in lead forms with no intention of ever buying.

Agencies are being asked to make calls about this new kind of traffic without industry standards to lean on. And the largest group is already thinking in terms of verification, rather than reflexively blocking everything that isn't a person. This report explains why the question that matters now is whether traffic is valuable, not just whether it's human.

 FAQs

Who took part in the survey?

In September 2026, Lunio surveyed 110 US-based paid media practitioners: 67% work at digital marketing or media buying agencies and 33% are freelance or independent paid media consultants. In-house marketers were excluded.

The findings are paired with expert insights from contributors to Lunio's webinars and the Paid Media Lab podcast.

 
How often do agencies lose clients over traffic quality or fake leads?

58% of agency marketers have lost a client or had a retainer reduced over traffic quality or fake leads, and 81% have at least had clients raise concerns.

Yet only 19% are asked about ad fraud or invalid traffic in most new-business pitches. Corrupted CRMs were the most-cited cost of click fraud, at 39%.
Does AI Max increase invalid traffic?

Lunio's data shows invalid traffic rates rise by around 35% on average after advertisers enable AI Max, and among Lunio's retail customers, IVT on AI Max campaigns more than doubled in six months.

Yet while 45% of agency marketers say traffic quality has improved since enabling AI Max or Performance Max, 27% haven't measured it at all.

 
Should agencies be running ChatGPT ads?

Clients are certainly asking: 74% of agency marketers say clients at least occasionally ask about advertising in ChatGPT or other AI assistants, and 61% are already running ChatGPT ads or plan to test them within 12 months.

Measurement is still the biggest gap, so the report sets out a sensible test posture for 2027.
Should AI agent traffic be blocked?

There's no consensus yet. Asked how to treat an AI agent that completed a purchase on behalf of a real customer, 29% of agency marketers would block it and 29% would allow it.

The largest group, 36%, say it depends on whether the agent can be verified, which is exactly the shift from "is it a bot?" to "is it valuable?" the report explores.

 
What's inside Paid Media in 2027: The Agency Playbook?

The report contains a dedicated chapter for each major platform (Google, Meta, Microsoft Ads, TikTok and ChatGPT ads); new survey data from 110 agency marketers and consultants; expert insights from Mike Ryan, Nils Rooijmans, Navah Hopkins, Matt Beswick and Fiona Darley; Lunio's invalid traffic data; a chapter on turning traffic quality into an agency growth lever; and platform checklists and client conversation guides for 2027. It's completely free to download.

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