As advertising companies embed generative AI functions into their work, they’re adapting their pricing fashions to account for the price of AI tokens.
Generative AI prompts and responses don’t come free of charge. LLM developers like OpenAI use tokens as a means of metering AI compute; the textual content you kind right into a immediate and the output generated by a mannequin are counted. The extra tokens processed, the extra compute is used and the upper the price. And whereas the tokens themselves value a fraction of a cent, they add up quick; a latest Coca-Cola advert marketing campaign required 70,000 prompts and hundreds of thousands of tokens, according to its makers.
“There’s no one model that’s the one silver bullet … you have to use a lot of different models and all of those have different token economics,” defined Johnny Rohrbach, co-founder and director of partnerships and operations at Silverside AI, a manufacturing studio backed by the founders of indie company Pereira O’Dell.
Marketing companies firms must determine whether or not to eat AI overheads, or move it on to shoppers. So far, there’s no single reply to that query. Digiday spoke to media homes, inventive companies, manufacturing retailers, full-service companies and consultants to grasp the lay of the land.
‘We can’t cost shoppers for one thing we don’t know goes to work’
At full-service company Merge, token prices are handed on to shoppers on a metered, case-by-case foundation, stated Kyle Smith, its chief know-how officer. Production store Big Spaceship follows an analogous framework, treating compute as one other price range merchandise akin to a catering or gear rent. “We’re treating it similar to a production cost,” stated CEO Taryn Crouthers.
Silverside, which produced vodka model Svedka’s Super Bowl advert utilizing gen AI, makes use of a subscription mannequin with “seat” pricing much like that operated by firms like Salesforce, per Rohrbach.
Full-service company RPA, nonetheless, takes the alternative method — it absorbs its shoppers’ token prices. Lisa Herdman, svp and government director of video investments, recommended the advantages of the know-how for shoppers had been nonetheless too unsure to construct a pricing framework round. “We’re still in the testing phases … We can’t expect to charge our client for something we don’t know is actually going to work for them,” she stated.
Chris Neff, world chief AI officer at Anomaly, was equally cautious of passing on AI overheads. “It feels like a money grab,” stated Neff.
‘The more they commit … the cheaper we can make that’
Pencil, the AI advertising platform of promoting companies group Brandtech, has been in a position to entry economies of scale in agreements with LLM builders like Anthropic and OpenAI. Clients are charged for “generation credits” equal to a single chat response, a picture era or a second of video, every taking on tokens. They’re not charged for tokens used on set-up and shopper onboarding, stated CEO and co-founder Will Hanschell.
“The client commits to a certain number of generations in Pencil; they can spend across any of the models or use cases and [it] is priced on volume. The more they commit, the more we can go and negotiate with the model providers, and the cheaper we can make that,” stated Hanschell. Clients are assigned a set variety of tokens based mostly on an preliminary value estimate; if their wants exceed that quantity, they “top up” with one other tranche.
Hanschell stated this pricing methodology stored issues easy for Pencil shoppers because it competes with inventive and manufacturing companies. “If we charge by usage, our incentives are aligned to the client,” he stated. Tiered pricing goes a way to make sure that Pencil’s largest clients aren’t subsidizing the token costs loved by its smaller ones, and the corporate affords totally different pricing plans for smaller shoppers, reserving authorized indemnification for bigger companions.
‘We don’t wish to create obstacles for shoppers’
Media companies are taking a distinct method. Horizon Media, for instance, debuted its gen AI media planning and technique platform Blu in December 2025. According to evp and head of tech Krish Kuruppath, shopper onboarding and the corporate’s ongoing improvement of Blu account for almost all of its token prices; he declined to share how a lot Horizon spent on tokens in a given 12 months.
Since its launch final 12 months, Horizon has introduced 40 shoppers on to the Blu platform, every with round a dozen customers logging in. Kuruppath stated token utilization would solely grow to be a major value challenge for the corporate as soon as its person base reaches the “tens of thousands.”
For now it levies a “nominal” charge to shoppers as they start utilizing Blu. “It’s cost recovery, not revenue,” stated chief product and knowledge officer Domenic Venuto. “We don’t want to create barriers for our clients. But at the same time, we don’t erode our margins as well.”
Media company Kepler, for instance, affords its personal AI-enabled planning device known as KipAIR. Peter Rice, vp of information technique and analytics, stated it hadn’t pursued bulk offers on token prices with AI suppliers. Rice recommended that passing on the price of AI overheads didn’t make sense for the company, which generally works with shoppers on a retainer foundation.
“We want it to be embedded into the way we deliver for our clients,” he stated. “Impact is the metric that we care about. Token usage is the fuel to deliver that impact.”
Full-service company Lerma/ takes a distinct route. According to Josh Archer, chief knowledge and intelligence officer, the corporate has one bulk-buying settlement in place with an LLM supplier (Archer didn’t say which supplier). As such, AI tokens prices are included in its preliminary pricing estimates for shoppers — at value.
“We’re not marking it up, we just show it as a line item similar to other costs,” stated Archer. Should the company underestimate and discover itself with a surplus of tokens, he stated it might present extra belongings to the shopper. “We try to deliver more. It’s a great opportunity for us to push ourselves,” he stated.
‘You want to compete on merit’
Brandtech’s bulk offers for tokens invite comparison with one of advertising’s most contentious practices: principal media buying. If an company can purchase giant quantities of tokens at a reduction, what’s to cease them passing that value on to shoppers at a markup?
James Londal, founder and CTO of consultancy Avelin, recommended pursuing a principal media mannequin would seemingly show a lifeless finish for companies. “The bigger economic shift isn’t token arbitrage. It’s labor compression. If AI runtime meaningfully replaces reporting teams, duplicated dashboards and middleware connectors, the financial upside dwarfs any marginal bulk discount dynamic,” he stated in an e-mail.
Hanschell agreed. “You want to compete on merit, not on lowest price,” he stated.
Even in the event that they’re not trying so as to add a worth premium, companies that move by way of token prices threat changing into “solely focused on cost and margin, rather than focused on value and architecture that is appropriate for our agency and client,” stated Jess Lewis, world chief know-how and knowledge officer at Crossmedia.
It’s possible that token pricing may grow to be a part of company pitches in months and years to return. Ebiquity CEO Ruben Schreurs advised Digiday that he anticipated the consultancy to be, in time, requested to audit an company’s token utilization simply because it audits media spending now. “If it’s part of the contract … then yes, we’d audit that,” he stated.
Knowing shopper CFOs will preserve an in depth rein on any pass-through prices, company leaders aren’t eager to cut back their use of AI to {dollars} and cents saved.
It’s more practical, Schreurs stated, for companies to concentrate on how AI is perhaps used to profit a shopper’s enterprise. “It’s less about the input and more about how incremental business returns are being delivered,” he stated.
