10 modern alternatives to traditional ad agencies

The start of the year is a busy time for budget discussions, and with it comes a familiar pressure to make every pound, euro, or dollar work harder than it did last year.

Marketing is one of the biggest areas of spend we see Moss customers managing, and it’s often where small changes in strategy or execution can have an outsized impact on overall budgets.

That naturally raises some tough questions: where to invest, which channels will actually drive growth, and which line items still earn their place under closer scrutiny.

Traditionally, advertising agencies have played a central role in answering those questions. But as teams rethink how budgets are allocated, and how outcomes are measured, many are starting to look beyond the classic agency model.

Instead, a new set of alternatives is gaining ground: specialist partners, product-led platforms that help in-house teams punch above their weight, and subscription-style services built around specific outcomes.

In this article, we’ve pulled together 10 of the best modern, UK-based alternatives to traditional ad agencies that reflect how marketing investment is evolving today.

1. Adzooma

Adzooma replaces much of what PPC agencies do with software. Its all-in-one platform allows marketing teams to automate optimisation, surface opportunities, and simplify reporting across major ad platforms.

Why it’s a modern alternative

Instead of paying for ongoing manual optimisation, teams use Adzooma to own performance marketing in-house. Much like Moss automated finance work, Adzooma helps marketing teams reduce their manual workload via automation, handling much of the performance marketing work that teams would typically outsource.

Would Adzooma be useful for me?

If you’re doing performance marketing with a small in-house team, Adzooma could be the perfect tool to help your marketing operation punch above its weight.

2. Clickio

Clickio is a publisher and digital growth platform focused on helping sites improve monetisation and performance through a mix of technology, optimisation, and operational support.

Rather than acting like a traditional agency selling campaigns, Clickio works closer to the infrastructure layer, automatically placing display ads on your site and allowing you to track performance directly.

Why it’s a modern alternative

Instead of outsourcing ongoing optimisation to an agency, Clickio allows handles this in its own platform. This is perfect for teams that care about predictable results, granular control, and technology-driven performance improvements.

Would Clickio be useful for me?

If you run a content-led site or publisher business (or you monetise traffic with ads), Clickio could be useful if you want to improve ad revenue and performance without hiring a large in-house ops team.

3. Buyapowa

Buyapowa helps consumer brands build and scale their referral and advocacy programmes, turning existing customers into a repeatable acquisition channel. Instead of treating referrals as a one-off ‘invite a friend’ widget, Buyapowa supports more structured programmes that can be tested, optimised, and measured over time.

Why it’s a modern alternative

Traditional agencies can help design referral creatives and messaging, but the ongoing success of referral initiatives depends on tracking, incentives, attribution, and continuous optimisation. That's where Buyapowa comes in, systemising additional workflows related to launching and managing referral programmes.

Would Buyapowa be useful for me?

If you’re selling a consumer product and you already have happy customers, Buyapowa could be useful for turning that goodwill into a measurable referral channel. Crucially, it could also help reduce reliance on paid media.

4. Bidnamic

Bidnamic is a performance optimisation platform that’s built for ecommerce advertising. It focuses on algorithmic bidding and budget decisions designed to improve efficiency and profitability, not just drive volume.

What makes Bidnamic stand out is the direction of travel. Just like Moss, it’s moving away from manual rules and spreadsheet-heavy management, towards smarter automation. This means it can automatically respond to changes in demand, pricing, margins, and competition faster than a human team can.

Why it’s a modern alternative

A lot of ‘traditional’ PPC management is labour-based, meaning hours spent tweaking bids, shifting budgets, and reporting on results. Bidnamic replaces a sizeable portion of that manual work with automation, allowing teams to bring control in-house while still improving outcomes.

Would Bidnamic be useful for me?

If you’re an ecommerce brand spending seriously on Google Shopping or Amazon Ads, Bidnamic could be useful if you want bidding and budget decisions to be automated and optimised for profitability, not just traffic.

5. The Good Marketer

The Good Marketer is a performance marketing partner focused on helping brands grow through paid media, analytics, and measurable experimentation. Rather than positioning itself as ‘full service’, The Good Marketer leans into performance fundamentals: clear objectives, tight measurement, and continuous iteration.

Why it’s a modern alternative

Traditional agencies can be brilliant creatively, but they don’t always fit cleanly with the way modern businesses evaluate spend, i.e. against targets, with tracking, and with fast feedback loops. The Good Marketer fits the newer model, where marketing is treated like an accountable growth lever, not a brand exercise that lives outside the metrics.

Would The Good Marketer be useful for me?

If you want hands-on support across paid media and measurement, but you’re wary of vague 'full service' retainers, The Good Marketer could be useful as a performance partner that keeps outcomes and transparency front and centre.

6. Passion Digital

Passion Digital is a specialist search and performance partner with deep expertise across SEO, content, and paid search. It’s best suited to teams that want to win demand at the point of intent, and want strategy and execution tied back to measurement.

Why it’s a modern alternative

Instead of paying for generalist coverage across every marketing channel, Passion Digital’s value is depth. For businesses where search is a critical acquisition channel, a specialist partner can be a better use of budget than a broad agency retainer, particularly when you need work that’s technical, measurable, and tied to compounding results.

Would Passion Digital be useful for me?

If organic search and experimentation are important to your growth plan, Passion Digital could be useful if you need specialist help improving performance through SEO, content, and analytics, without spreading budget across a generalist agency.

7. Outrank

Outrank focuses on SEO, particularly for SMEs and businesses that rely on visibility in Google to drive leads and sales. It’s another great example of a modern, narrower-scope alternative to a traditional agency, offering focused deliverables, clearer outcomes, and a model that’s easier to evaluate against performance.

Outrank’s sweet spot is businesses that want to improve rankings, increase traffic quality, and drive commercial enquiries, without building a large in-house SEO function.

Why it’s a modern alternative

Many businesses struggle with the idea of using agencies, mainly because they don't want to pay for unneeded breadth. A focused SEO partner like Outrank can be easier to budget for, easier to assess, and easier to keep aligned to the outcomes that actually matter.

Would Outrank Agency be useful for me?

If you’re an SME trying to win more customers through Google, Outrank could be useful if you want a focused SEO partner with clear deliverables and a strong emphasis on search visibility.

8. NOVOS

NOVOS positions itself around growth, not just marketing execution. It’s aimed at digital-first brands that want a partner to help build repeatable acquisition and conversion.

Rather than thinking in isolated campaigns, NOVOS operates with a more iterative model: testing, learning, and tightening the loop between creative, channel performance, and conversion. That makes it a good fit for teams who want marketing to behave more like a growth function, where learning speed becomes a competitive advantage.

Why it’s a modern alternative

Traditional agencies often sell outputs (campaigns, creative, media plans), while NOVOS is closer to a growth partner model, prioritising systems, experiments, and measurable improvements over time. This growth system is particularly powerful for companies under pressure to show ROI.

Would NOVOS be useful for me?

If you’re a digital-first brand looking to build repeatable growth systems, and not just run campaigns, NOVOS could be useful for you. You’ll get a partner that thinks in experiments, funnels, and long-term performance.

9. Dianomi

Dianomi is a native advertising and content-recommendation platform that helps brands place relevant content across premium publisher environments. Rather than relying on broad agency media buys, Dianomi lets teams target context-rich audiences and measure engagement through an in-product buying flow.

Why it’s a modern alternative

Dianomi productises content distribution and native ad placements, shifting media execution from bespoke agency buys to a platform with clearer targeting, pricing and measurable engagement metrics. It replaces much of the media planning and placement work agencies traditionally handle.

Would Dianomi be useful for me?

If you’re investing in content marketing or thought leadership, Dianomi could be useful if you want distribution across premium publisher environments and a more scalable way to drive qualified attention than manual media buying.

10. Stannp

The final company on our list is Stannp, a direct mail automation platform that allows businesses to send personalised, trackable mail at scale, without relying on traditional agencies or print houses. It integrates with CRM and marketing systems to turn what’s typically a slow, manual channel into something quick and measurable.

For brands looking to cut through digital noise, Stannp makes offline marketing far easier to test and control. Campaigns can be triggered by user behaviour, timed precisely, and measured alongside digital activity, rather than treated as a one-off brand exercise.

Why it’s a modern alternative
Direct mail has historically been agency-led, expensive, and hard to justify from a budget perspective. Stannp changes that by centralising execution and measurement. Instead of paying for bespoke campaigns and long lead times, teams can own the channel themselves.

Would Stannp be useful for me?

If you’re looking for ways to diversify your acquisition mix beyond digital, or want more control and measurability in direct mail, Stannp could be useful for testing and scaling offline campaigns in a much more predictable way.

Final thoughts

As this list shows, the range of high-quality options available to marketing teams has never been broader. From product-led platforms to specialist partners, there are now far more ways to deploy marketing budgets effectively than the traditional agency model alone.

If you’re looking to make your marketing spend work harder in 2026, now is a good time to explore these alternatives. The key is to rethink not just how much you spend, but how far that spend actually goes.