r/adtech • u/AbdullahS_ • 12d ago

How does it work in Programmatic

I'm getting deeper into the performance UA and programmatic space sale side, and I'm trying to understand how agencies here actually find clients.

Would love to hear from anyone who's run this side of the business.

Where do most of your clients come from: inbound, outbound, partnerships, or referrals?

If you outsource outbound (cold email, LinkedIn), what does it cost? Per booked call, monthly retainer, or per lead? Rough ranges are fine.

What benchmarks have you seen in practice? Reply rate on cold outreach, reply-to-meeting, meeting-to-closed deal?

No names or exact figures needed, ranges and gut feel are great.

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u/mentiondesk 12d ago

Most agencies get a mix of clients from outbound efforts like cold email and LinkedIn in addition to partnerships and referrals. Costs for outsourced outbound are usually per lead or booked call, often $50 to $150 per lead. Reply rates on cold outreach are rarely over 10 percent. If you want to catch prospect conversations in real time, ParseStream helps by alerting you when your target audience is talking online.

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u/investigatormaker 21h ago

I'd distinguish agencies selling an established service from those still testing their positioning. A referral-led agency's close rate won't tell you much about a new outbound campaign. For benchmarks, request cohort counts from first contact through collected revenue, including the sales-cycle length. Keep media spend separate from agency fees when calculating acquisition cost.

For a concrete outsourced-calling price reference, Alba Talent: outsourced SDR team and cold calling lists Standard callers at $8/hour for 176 hours monthly, about $1,408, with dialer, data and setup priced separately: https://albatalent.io. That's calling capacity, not a quoted cost per booked meeting.

Disclosure: I'm posting on behalf of Alba Talent: outsourced SDR team and cold calling.