The Tenure Number, With Its Sourcing Stated Plainly
Agency benchmark research attributes a 2025 client-agency relationship tenure study to the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) and 4A’s, putting current average agency-of-record tenure at roughly 7 years, more than double the 3.2 years reported for 2016. The same cited research adds a review-period detail: clients without mandatory review periods reportedly stay 8.1 years on average, versus 3.8 years for clients on a frequent review cycle.
No direct, fetchable link to that primary study was located in the research behind this guide, so both figures are presented here as a named industry benchmark, not an independently re-verified statistic. That distinction matters for what follows: tenure length alone is not a solid enough foundation for a repricing decision, and it is not meant to be treated as one here.
Why You Cannot Answer This Without Knowing the Client’s Real Margin
Only 20% of agencies track profitability by client, project, or service line, per TMetric’s 2025 dataset covering over 250 agencies. That means the large majority of agencies deciding whether to reprice a retainer are doing it without the one number that should drive the decision: whether the account is profitable at its current rate, at current staffing costs, right now.
Tenure tells you how long a relationship has lasted. It does not tell you whether that relationship has been quietly losing money the entire time. Pulling the real cost-to-serve number before the repricing conversation, not the tenure figure alone, is where this decision genuinely should start.
The Anchor Is Already Set. The Question Is How You Move It.
Tversky and Kahneman’s foundational 1974 research established the anchoring effect: an initial reference point, even an arbitrary one, measurably shapes a person’s later numeric judgment. Applied to negotiation specifically, research indicates the first number on the table exerts outsized influence on the final agreed price, more than any counteroffer that comes after it.
A client’s current retainer rate is already that anchor, set months or years ago, and every conversation about a new number gets judged against it whether or not anyone says the old number out loud. Repricing is not introducing a new anchor into a blank negotiation. It is trying to move one that is already firmly planted.
What Changes the Conversation’s Odds
Anchoring research suggests the fix is not a bigger number stated more confidently against the old one. It is changing what the client is anchored to before the number comes up: reframe the conversation around new scope, new deliverables, or a documented shift in what the account now requires, so the client is evaluating a different offer, not just a higher price on the same one.
A repricing conversation that opens with the number is fighting the existing anchor head-on. One that opens with what has changed since the original rate was set is working with how anchoring behaves, not against it.
When Tenure Itself Becomes the Argument
The same cited research’s review-period detail, clients without mandatory reviews reportedly staying 8.1 years versus 3.8 years for clients on frequent reviews, is genuinely useful for one specific case: a long-tenured client who has not had a rate review in years. If that pattern holds, the absence of a recent review is itself part of why the current rate has drifted below what the relationship has become.
That is a different argument than “we have worked together a long time, so we deserve more money.” It is closer to “we have not had this conversation in years, and the account has changed since the last time we did,” a framing anchoring research supports far better than tenure alone.
Building the Case Before You Bring Up the Number
The order matters: confirm the account’s real profitability first, since the 20% figure above means most agencies skip this step entirely; build the case around what has changed in scope or delivery, not just time elapsed; and let the new anchor, the changed scope, do the work the number alone cannot.
None of this replaces new business as the more reliable lever. A retainer that genuinely needs repricing is worth the harder conversation, but an agency with a healthy new-business pipeline negotiates from a position that does not depend on that one client saying yes.
What this means for you
- Agency benchmark research attributes a 2025 tenure study to the ANA and 4A’s, putting average AOR tenure near 7 years, more than double 2016’s reported 3.2 years, though no independently confirmed primary link to that study was located.
- Only 20% of agencies track profitability by client, per TMetric’s 2025 dataset, meaning most agencies considering a repricing conversation do not know whether the account is profitable at its current rate.
- Anchoring research indicates the first number on the table shapes a negotiation’s outcome more than later counteroffers, which is why reframing around changed scope, not a bigger number alone, tends to move the existing anchor more effectively.
Sources
The external data in this guide draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.