Pricing and margin
What does an AI marketing action actually cost?
Why AI marketing tools hide the price until the invoice, what a single action costs here, and what happens when your balance runs out mid-job.
How MarketWar handles it
Every action shows its price before it runs, in a unit you can read: 100 ACUs to the pound, so a 4-ACU action costs 4p. The floor is 2× provider cost and the standard charge is 4×, and the engine's own comment refuses the usual marketing error — a 4× charge is a 300% markup, not a 400% margin, because a gross margin cannot exceed 100%. An action you cannot pay for does not start: nothing is charged, no attempt is counted, and a top-up continues it.
Most AI marketing tools answer the pricing question with a seat. You pay per user per month, the limits are described as "fair use", and the first time you learn what a video or a long report costs is when the limit stops you in the middle of one.
That model exists because it is easy to sell, not because it is fair. A flat fee has to be priced for the heaviest account on it, which means the quiet accounts pay for the loud ones.
The unit, and why you can read it
Work here is priced in ACUs. 100 ACUs is one pound. A 4-ACU action costs four pence, and the price is on the button before you press it.
That is the whole design goal: the number you need in order to decide is in front of you at the moment you are deciding, not in a usage report at the end of the month.
The markup, stated rather than implied
Every AI action clears a floor of 2× what the provider charges us, and the standard is 4×.
We say that plainly because the alternative — "AI included", "unlimited*" — is a claim nobody can hold. There is a real cost per request behind every AI feature in every product you have ever used, and a vendor who will not name their multiple has one anyway.
One correction, because the industry gets it wrong constantly and the engine's own source comment says so: a 4× charge is a 300% markup, not a 400% margin. Gross margin cannot exceed 100%. Markup and margin are different measures, and a vendor quoting "400% margins" is either confused or counting on you being.
What happens when the balance is empty
This is the part worth reading, because it is where most credit systems behave badly.
A door that starts long work checks whether you can afford it; it does not charge first and work it out later. If you cannot pay for the next pass:
- the job waits — it is not failed and not discarded,
- nothing is charged for the pass that could not run,
- no attempt is counted against any retry limit,
- a top-up continues the same job, from where it stopped.
And if a pass reaches no provider at all — a refused request, a malformed one — the charge is refunded, because you are charged once per provider call that actually happens.
What this does not do
It does not tell you whether the work is worth buying. A £4 report that wins a £2,000 customer is cheap and a 4p post nobody reads is expensive, and no pricing engine can tell those apart in advance.
What it removes is the specific unfairness of not knowing. You can see what a campaign guardrail refuses before it spends, and what the arithmetic says you can afford to pay an affiliate, using the same contribution maths.
The question to ask any AI vendor
Not "is AI included". Ask: what does one action cost, where is that number shown, and what happens to my job when I run out?
A vendor who can answer all three has thought about your side of the transaction. The plans are on the pricing page, and every action's price is visible inside the product before you spend it.
What this does not do
It cannot tell you what a piece of work is worth to your business. It tells you what it costs before you authorise it, which is the half most AI tools leave until the bill arrives.
Common questions
Why credits instead of a flat monthly fee?
Because a flat fee has to be priced for the heaviest user, so everybody else subsidises them. A credit is the cost of the work you actually asked for, and the price of each action is shown before it runs.
What happens if I run out mid-job?
The job waits. Nothing is charged for the pass that could not be paid for, no attempt is counted against you, and topping up continues the same job rather than starting it again.
Do you mark up the AI provider's price?
Yes, and the multiple is stated: never below 2× provider cost, 4× as standard. A platform claiming to resell AI at cost is either losing money or not telling you where it makes it.
Can I see the provider's raw cost?
No. You see the ACU price of the action before you run it. The provider cost is the input to that number, and exposing it would turn every price into a negotiation about our supply contracts rather than a decision about your marketing.
Related
What happens when the AI provider fails mid-job?
AI providers have outages, rate limits and bad days. What that costs you, and why a gateway that reserves before charging bills nothing.
How do you know when to stop a campaign that is losing money?
The four numbers that decide it, why ROAS on its own is misleading, and what a holdout group tells you that attribution never will.
How much can you afford to pay an affiliate?
The arithmetic that sets an affiliate rate: contribution, the margin you protect, and the ceiling above which a sale costs you money.