Advertisers pay for agency people, not for Scopes of Work. Contracts are mostly labor-based, cost-plus contracts. The number of agency people paid for is a negotiation based on advertiser fee constraints, not on the amount of work to be done.

Work 'happens' through random SOW processes between the two parties. These processes are very imperfect across the industry. They are a legacy of the media-commission days, when remuneration was so high that work did not have to be planned -- any and all work was affordable for the agency.  This is no longer the case.

Annual SOW workloads are growing. Traditional advertising grows and digital is growing even faster. However, under procurement-led fee reduction programs, agency fees are in decline and agencies are responding by freezing or decreasing their headcounts.

Increased work can not continue to be done by fewer agency people, year after year, without affecting creative quality.

The advertiser-agency relationship is underperforming, and this is not because procurement is tough or because agencies are difficult. Much of the underperformance is due to the fact that workloads are planned randomly and executed with stretched agency resources.