What an AI Media Buyer Costs and What You Get Back

Start with Scaley's chat-only tier for judgment, then pay for execution when the account proves it needs more. Chat-only access is $99/mo, so you can test the quality of the thinking before handing over any account access.

What does an AI media buyer cost?

Scaley, built by the team behind ZenoX Media (a Google Ads agency), publishes chat-only access at $99/mo. Scaley Suite costs $199/mo plus 4% of ad spend. The Suite audits the account and prepares changes, but every change still needs your yes before it happens.

The low entry price matters. A store running its own ads doesn't need to jump from doing everything alone to buying full account execution. It can start with advice. Then it can add read-only account context. The Suite is there when daily account work becomes the real bottleneck.

What a senior in-house buyer costs

A senior buyer is expensive because you're buying judgment and continuity. Salary is only one part. Recruitment, payroll costs, tools, management time, holidays, and cover when that person leaves all sit outside the salary line.

There's no honest universal salary figure. Location, experience, and account type all move it. A salary survey pulled from a broad marketing role would give you a neat number and a bad comparison.

The closest honest benchmark is what it costs to buy experienced account ownership elsewhere. From our own agency work at ZenoX Media, the Google Ads agency behind Scaley, we see senior account retainers running €3-8K/mo. That's one agency's numbers, not an independent market survey.

An in-house hire can be the right call. A large brand may need one person inside every margin discussion, launch plan, stock meeting, and creative review. Software can't own those conversations, and a founder shouldn't act like it can.

Scaley is built for ecommerce accounts running Shopping, Performance Max, or product-fed Search, especially when the catalog changes quickly and margins are thin. In those accounts, the pain is usually repeat work. Search terms go unchecked, weak products keep taking spend, feed labels fall behind, and Merchant Center issues sit open.

Paying a senior person to catch every small leak works, but it's a costly way to run a checklist. Keep senior time on strategy and give the repeated report pulling to software.

What gets left on the table without one

The visible fee is rarely the whole cost. The quiet cost is work nobody gets around to doing.

ZenoX Media's own agency work turns up €2-4K leaking on a €20K/mo account, on average. That's one agency's pattern, not a market-wide claim. It can sit in weak search terms, poor placements, wrong product priorities, stale feed labels, and budgets that no longer match margin.

None of those problems looks dramatic by itself. That's why they survive. A bad search term takes a little every day, and a low-margin product can look fine on revenue alone. A placement can look harmless inside a blended campaign total. The money disappears in small pieces.

A senior buyer catches those pieces because somebody owns the account every day. A founder usually misses them because Google Ads is just one job among many. Compare the hire with the account as it actually runs on a busy week, when perfect self-management is not available.

This is also where cheap recommendation tools disappoint. A list of possible changes has no value until somebody checks the evidence and acts. Another dashboard can create more work. The useful product either gives you a clear answer or prepares the change for review.

That leak number isn't a promise every account wastes the same amount. Some accounts are clean. Others need offer or creative work, not campaign changes. The first job is always to measure your own gap before paying for heavier execution.

Start with the chat

Scaley's current product ladder prices chat-only access at $99/mo flat. You can bring a campaign question, a search terms problem, a feed decision, or a scaling call and see whether the answer holds up.

That tier doesn't need an account connection. You control the context you share. That makes it useful for a store that wants a second set of eyes but isn't ready to connect Google Ads.

The GPT for Google Ads page shows what that low-commitment workflow looks like. Use it for a real decision. Ask why a campaign is stuck, which products should move into a different label, or what evidence would justify a budget increase. A vague test gets you a vague verdict.

There's a middle step when pasted context stops being enough. Scaley prices the read-only account connection at $99/mo plus 1% of spend per account. It reads and suggests. It never writes.

Run the math and a $10,000 account makes that read-only fee $199/mo: the $99 base plus 1% of spend. The connection earns its keep by tying the advice to the account's real campaigns, products, search terms, and pacing.

Move up only when the missing part is execution. If you'd rather make every change yourself, read-only access may be enough. If the approved work keeps sitting in a queue, the Suite starts to make sense.

The Suite, worked at real spend levels

Scaley Suite runs on a published $199/mo base fee plus 4% of ad spend. Both parts apply at every spend level.

The base fee covers the account workflow. The percentage then grows with the ad spend Scaley manages.

The examples below use USD because Scaley publishes the Suite price in USD. They're worked examples, not EUR conversions. They show the base fee and percentage together at three spend levels.

• At $20K/mo spend, the Suite fee is $999/mo.

• At $50K/mo spend, the Suite fee is $2,199/mo.

• At $100K/mo spend, the Suite fee is $4,199/mo.

See the live Scaley pricing table before making a decision. The pricing page is the source for the current tier terms.

The fee needs a job to do. Want answers only? Skip the Suite, it's more than you need. Want account data read without any prepared writes? The read-only connection fits better. Want the audit, prioritization, and approved execution in one workflow? That's when you compare the Suite fee with the work you're currently missing.

That comparison should use gross profit, not platform revenue. Saving spend that never had a chance to convert is real. Moving budget away from a low-margin product may improve profit while reported revenue stays flat. A tool shouldn't get credit for revenue the offer or creative created.

For a dropshipping store, the fee can make sense earlier because product testing creates more churn. New products arrive fast. Cut the losers. Winners need budget. Feed labels change as evidence comes in. The account can get stale between manual reviews.

Don't buy execution because the word AI sounds efficient. Buy it when there's enough repeated account work to remove.

What you get back

The first stop is the audit. Scaley's published FAQ says the read-only first audit scans 90 days of account history. That window is long enough to catch patterns that a daily view can hide, while keeping the evidence tied to the account you actually run.

The audit isn't a score with no trail. It points to the places where spend and intent split. The audit reviews search terms for exclusions, checks Performance Max placements, and separates Merchant Center problems from campaign problems. Each finding needs a reason you can inspect.

Product labeling keeps revenue from making the whole decision. A product can sell and still be a poor use of cash when its margin is thin. Labels let the account group products by the economics and movement that matter. Budget can then follow the better group instead of the loudest sale.

Bad search terms and poor placements don't usually fix themselves. Scaley prepares an exclusion with the spend and conversion evidence beside it. You can agree or reject it without doing the whole investigation again.

Every approved change should have a plain reason. That matters when performance moves later. You need to know what changed, why it changed, and which assumption was wrong. A mystery edit saves time today and creates a worse job next week.

The Suite is the only tier that writes to an account, under the current Scaley product rules. Even so, it waits for an individual yes before each change. Chat-only access doesn't connect. The read-only tier connects, reads, and suggests. Those lines are part of the product, not small print.

Where does it pay for itself? Start with the leak found in the audit. Don't count every flagged item as savings. Count only spend you can remove without losing profitable sales. Then compare that confirmed amount with the fee at your spend level.

If the audit finds only a small part of the leak described earlier, the fee may already clear. If it finds nothing material, stay with the lighter tier. A clean account is a good result, even when it means buying less software.

The human work stays important. Offer, creative direction, stock calls, cash flow, and category judgment still sit with the operator. The AI media buyer guide explains where the role starts and stops. Scaley should remove repeated account work. It shouldn't pretend to run the company.

The current Scaley pricing FAQ gives the Suite a 7-day trial, while the chat tiers have no trial. Use that window on the real account. Check the audit. Review the labels. Inspect the proposed exclusions. Reject weak calls. Approve only the changes whose evidence holds up.

For a dropshipping-specific profit check, read whether AI dropshipping is worth it. Cost is only useful when it lands in the store's margin model.