That is not a question about rates but about how much work you get per euro. And it is a question almost every advertiser asks: "value for money" scores 6.85 out of 10 and is one of the four lowest-scoring questions in IKAg's COLLAB measurements.
Why the feeling is usually right and the conclusion is not
What you feel is that a lot of money goes there. It does not automatically follow that the rate is too high. Three other explanations exist, and all three are more common:
The scope grew. Something was added every quarter without the fee being revisited, or the reverse: the fee stayed the same while more was delivered. See how to keep costs from running away.
You are buying the wrong thing from this party. Execution work at an agency priced for thinking is expensive without anyone doing anything wrong. See when an agency is too expensive for what you need.
The work costs more than it should. Late briefings, shifting feedback and extra rounds do not appear as a separate line on your invoice, but they are in it.
The measurement that answers the question
Do not compare rates but the amount of work per assignment. IKAg measures that in PAR, its own unit where one PAR is roughly two agency days. Those measurements show up to eightfold differences between agencies on a single proposal line, and only 1.1 times across the full scope.
In other words: agencies charge roughly the same in total but distribute the work completely differently. "Too expensive" therefore almost always means "the distribution does not match what I need", and that can be fixed without switching agencies.
And the other side of the table
In financial year 2024 the median Belgian agency kept about 22 percent of its gross margin as EBITDA, the bottom quartile 7 percent. So there is less give than most advertisers assume. Do not ask for ten percent off, ask for ten percent less work: the first removes the people you want, the second removes work you may not have needed.
See also: what an agency earns on you and what a normal hourly rate is.