Ensuring sustainability: How agencies overcome cost pressure on content processes in difficult times

There is currently an unusual silence in many European agencies. What used to be a hustle and bustle of meetings, campaign launches and customer appointments now sounds like reluctance. Budgets are no longer approved, pitches are postponed, projects are frozen. And reports are appearing more and more frequently that seemed unthinkable just a few years ago: agencies that have to close, are taken over by competitors — or simply no longer receive orders.

There are many reasons for this, but the pattern is clear. Europe is in a tense economic environment: growth concerns, a slump in consumption, rising costs, geopolitical uncertainty. Companies are responding with austerity programs — and marketing is traditionally one of the first areas in which the knife is used. A recent survey shows: 60 percent of European marketers are planning further cuts in their advertising spending in 2025 (see Meedia.de, edition May 22, 2025). For agencies whose business models are often directly linked to these budgets, the situation is becoming increasingly critical.

While large international networks have already issued profit warnings, the pressure is hitting small and medium-sized agencies particularly hard.

Competition has intensified. Customers review every issue, in-house teams take on tasks that were previously outsourced, and new technologies — in particular AI-powered content production — are changing expectations for speed, quality, and price. At the center of this change is an area that has long been regarded as an engine of growth: Content Operations. And this is precisely where perhaps the greatest pressure to increase efficiency, standardization and automation is now arising.

Efficient content operations as the key to competitiveness

While agencies must realign themselves in this uncertain environment, one question is taking center stage more than ever: How can content processes be organized more efficiently, more predictably and more cost-effectively? Because even though demand for content remains unabated — from social media to performance marketing to SEO — its production is increasingly being scrutinized. Customers expect results faster, cheaper and with clearly measurable added value. At the same time, internal expenses in agencies are increasing: more channels, more formats, more tools, more revisions, more coordination.

This is shifting the pressure from a mere budget cut to a structural challenge. Many agencies find that it is not primarily creative work that is the problem — but the Content Operations Behind: planning, coordination, production, formatting, versioning, distribution, reporting. This is where most costs and frictional losses arise, especially in times of scarce resources.

The following shows why this operational foundation has become a decisive factor for competitiveness and how agencies can stabilize their margins through new processes, technologies and tooling and grow despite a difficult market environment.

Another aspect that is often overlooked in the current debate is the development of the past one and a half decades. Following the financial crisis of 2008, many central banks cut interest rates massively and kept them at historically low levels for years. The cheap money fuelled global economic growth that we had hardly seen before. Marketing and digital agencies also benefited above average during this period. New business models emerged, demand for digital campaigns and content rose rapidly, and many agencies grew faster than they were able to professionalize their internal structures.

In growth phases of this kind, the same often happens: As long as the order situation is right, you quickly lose sight of your own cost structure. Inefficient workflows, staff overhangs or an overloaded tool set are barely noticeable in the boom or are deliberately accepted in order to be able to scale faster. But what is easy to cover up in good times becomes all the more visible in economically difficult phases.

That is exactly where the industry is today. The economic downturn mercilessly reveals how many agencies have been organisationally inflated in recent years. Those whose core business lies in content production and distribution are particularly affected. This is where increased customer requirements meet internal processes, which are often fragmented, time-consuming and prone to errors. The result is an industry that is suddenly under enormous pressure to purify and radically streamline its processes.

Why content operations are particularly affected

Hardly any other area within agencies has grown as rapidly as content production in recent years. Social media, always-on campaigns, multi-channel distribution, SEO content, video shorts, paid assets, newsletters, podcasts — every new format, every new platform brought additional requirements. For agencies, this meant: more output, more variants, more speed.

But this growth was rarely linked to a modernization of the underlying processes. Many agencies have built up their content structures organically over the years. Shift by shift, team by team, tool by tool. This led to operational complexity, which is becoming a problem today.

1. Fragmented processes

In many agencies, content processes are spread across numerous systems: idea management in one tool, briefings in another, assets in the cloud, approvals via email, distribution across multiple platforms. Each transfer costs time, and every media interruption has the potential for errors. As long as budgets were generous, this fragmentation was accepted — today it is a clear competitive disadvantage.

2. High coordination costs

Content productions are team-intensive: editing, graphics, video, social, paid, customer side. In good times, the increased need for coordination was simply absorbed by more personnel. Now that every hour counts, the downsides are becoming visible: unclear responsibilities, redundant loops, too many feedback loops.

3. Overworked teams

In parallel with cost pressure, speed and volume requirements are increasing. Channels such as TikTok or Instagram Reels require significantly more output with shorter production cycles. At the same time, teams are being thinned out. The result: stress, risk of burnout and loss of quality.

4. Lack of standardization

Many agencies work in a project-oriented rather than process-oriented manner. This means that every customer has different rules, different processes, different special requests. In times of high margins, this could be cushioned. But now the lack of standardization is taking revenge. Efficiency is barely achievable without clearly defined workflows.

5. An overloaded tool ecosystem

The industry has spent years using tools: project management here, asset management there, separate tools for analytics, publishing, creative production and coordination. The result is high costs, double data maintenance and disconnected information silos. Many agencies today have more tools than employees — but little real automation.

Why AI alone won't solve the problem

Anyone who believes that artificial intelligence can solve all these problems in the short term is mistaken. While the industry has seen an impressive wave of AI tools over the past two years, large language models (LLMs) can undoubtedly speed up or simplify certain tasks. But they only affect the surface. The fundamental challenges — fragmented processes, lack of standards, too many coordination loops, a bloated tool ecosystem — don't disappear through a generative model.

On the contrary: Without clear structures and clean processes, AI cannot have any effect at all. Many agencies underestimate how much organizational and procedural preparation is necessary before AI even becomes a real efficiency factor. Adding just one more tool to an already chaotic system does not create productivity, but additional loss of friction.

That's why we need more than an LLM now. It requires a fundamental rethink of content operations. How teams work together, how work steps are orchestrated, which tools are actually necessary and which are not. AI can then be a powerful lever. But it does not replace structural modernization. And without this modernization, it will be difficult for many agencies to assert themselves in the new market conditions.

Which cost types are particularly important in content operations

When agencies talk about “efficiency problems,” it often sounds abstract. In reality, however, the biggest cost drivers can be identified surprisingly clearly. They result from the operational details of daily content business and this is exactly where the silent money burners arise, which remain invisible for a long time in boom phases but massively squeeze margins in weaker economic times.

1. Personnel costs due to unnecessary loops

Content teams often consist of many roles: editing, graphics, motion, social, project management, paid media, customer side. When each piece of content goes through multiple rounds of feedback and tasks are moved back and forth between tools, channels, and people, labor costs rise exponentially. The most expensive resource in agencies is time, and most content processes burn up a lot of it.

2. Costs due to tool sprawl

Many agencies pay for five to eight tools in the content process alone: project management, asset management, editorial plans, publishing tools, analytics, cloud storage, approval systems. 30-50% of these are often redundant. The hidden costs: training, onboarding, switching time, lack of integration, errors due to media breaks.

3. External production costs

Freelancers for video, photo, animation, copy and design are essential — but due to ever smaller batches of content, production is often too small and too short. This increases:

• Minimum expenses
• Express surcharges
• Production ambiguities
• Revision costs

4. Overhead costs due to project management

The more fragmented the work, the more internal coordination is created. Typical cost drivers:

• Meetings that don't make a difference
• Briefings that are rewritten multiple times
• Status rounds that only manage symptoms
• “Shadow documents” that are kept in parallel
• Excel plans that no one keeps up to date

Project managers don't work too much — the processes are too poor.

5. “Hidden costs” due to lack of reuse

Many agencies produce every piece of content from scratch. A lack of templates, a lack of modular structure and no clear reuse logic mean that content is not scaled but is constantly being reinvented. One of the most costly mistakes in content business.

6. Quality costs

Erroneous handovers, late submissions, lack of consistency between platforms and unclear responsibilities lead to a loss of quality. Quality loss results in:

• additional rounds of amendments
• dissatisfied customers
• discount negotiations
• lost contracts

Quality is expensive — poor quality is more expensive.

How agencies set up modern content operations — a framework

The challenges are clear, but the solution does not lie in individual measures, but in a systematic approach. Successful agencies no longer set up their content operations organically or ad hoc, but according to a clear framework. It combines organization, processes and technology into a seamless system that enables speed and quality at the same time.

In essence, setting up modern content operations can be divided into five central steps:

1. Standardize processes — before you digitize them

Many agencies are taking the opposite path: They buy tools in the hope of creating structures. But without previously defined processes, only technological complexity results.

Modern agencies start with questions like:

• How does a piece of content actually work from briefing to distribution?
• Where are the bottlenecks?
• Which steps are repeated in each project?
• Which roles are really necessary?

Digitalization is only worthwhile when a standardized core process is in place.

2. Organize teams by workflow instead of by channel

Traditionally, teams are organized by platforms: social, SEO, design, video. But modern content operations think in terms of workflows.

That means:

• Cross-functional teams for specific types of content
• clear responsibilities (content owner, editor, publisher)
• reduced handovers and fewer silos
• Focus on output rather than on limits of responsibility

Such structures reduce meeting load, increase response speed and increase quality.

3. Think content modularly instead of producing every piece from scratch

The most successful agencies work with modular content systems:

• reusable templates
• Snippets and text modules
• modular video assets
• Layouts that can be used multiple times
• uniform format logic that works for all platforms

The advantage: Ten, twenty or fifty variants can be derived from a core piece in a very short time — without loss of quality and without additional costs.

4. Detoxify the tool ecosystem

Efficiency does not come from as many tools as possible, but from a clear, streamlined architecture. For modern agencies, this means: Instead of running an entire hodgepodge of special solutions, the setup is essentially focused on two central systems:

1. A project and capacity planning tool This is where control is what When from whom Is done:
2. A content operations platform This is where the actual content processes converge — from idea to publication:

Interaction is decisive: The planning tool provides strategic and organizational management, and the content operations platform ensures operational implementation in day-to-day business. Anything that goes beyond that — individual solutions for subtasks, isolated solutions for individual teams — should be critically scrutinized.

The more clearly the roles of these two systems are defined, the less frictional losses occur — and the more likely technology becomes a real efficiency lever rather than a further driver of complexity.

5. Use AI and automation in a targeted manner — not blindly integrate

AI can be a massive lever when embedded in a meaningful way:

• Automate routine tasks
• Versioning for various platforms
• quick drafts for texts, captions, headlines
• First drafts for visual assets
• automated tagging and analysis processes

But the principle remains: AI does not create order — it only works within ordered structures.

Agencies that integrate AI as a “turbo” into cleanly polished processes achieve the greatest effects.

Why the future needs a content productivity OS

The transformation that agencies are currently experiencing is not a temporary storm, but a structural turning point. The period of rapid growth, in which operational weaknesses disappeared behind full order books, is over. The industry is entering a phase in which efficiency, transparency and process quality are decisive for competitiveness. And right now it is becoming apparent which agencies are prepared to question their structures and which are sticking to old patterns.

But there is also a positive perspective: The methods and technologies that make agencies more resilient and productive have been around for a long time. Standardised workflows, modular content systems, clear responsibilities and the targeted integration of AI enable operational excellence that goes far beyond simply reducing costs.

Central to this is a technological basis that does not consist of a patchwork rug, but of a sleek, integrated setup. The future belongs to solutions that not only map the entire content chain, but actually control it. This is exactly where a new type of software is being created: the “Content Productivity OS”, which reorganizes the operational DNA of agencies.

Platforms such as ContentPaul exemplify this approach. As a content productivity OS for European agencies and marketing teams, it combines content planning, production, collaboration and distribution in a single, consistent system. This does not turn content production into a messy hodgepodge, but into a clear, scalable process. Regardless of how many channels or formats need to be used.

In combination with a dedicated project and capacity planning tool, the result is a setup that allows agencies to work faster, more focused and more profitably. Not in spite of scarce resources, but precisely because of an intelligent reorganization of resources.

The industry is at a crossroads. Anyone who now consistently invests in structures — in fewer tools, clearer processes and genuine orchestration — will not only assert themselves in a demanding market, but also emerge stronger.

The change is challenging. But it is also an opportunity. For agencies that are ready to rethink their content operations, a phase is now beginning in which they can not only become more efficient, but truly sustainable.

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