Industry guide
Sell agency data to AI: what marketing agencies and consulting firms can license
On this page
The short answer
Yes, you can sell a de-identified copy of your agency's data to AI companies, and several buyers name marketing agencies and consulting firms outright. One buyer program lists marketing agencies by name, another names consulting businesses on its intake form, and one program's track record shows a license with a global marketing agency (source: program terms, Regulr buyer directory). Each figure on this page is a program's own advertised term; our buyer directory lists the programs and links to their published terms.
Buyers want what your firm owns: proposals with outcomes, SOW and estimate history, timesheets, job costing, project plans, playbooks and internal threads. Final client deliverables and client research usually stay out. Most programs look for 20+ full-time staff and 3+ years of records.
Why AI companies want marketing agency and consulting firm data
AI labs are building agents that do professional office work: scoping a project, writing a proposal, estimating hours, running a plan, reviewing a draft and reporting to a client. To train them, labs need real examples of that work done by people who are good at it, with the result attached. An agency or a consultancy produces exactly that on every engagement, and most labs cannot make it on their own.
Three things make your firm's records stand out:
- The work is linked by job. A job or project number in Workamajig, Function Point, Productive or a similar system ties the proposal, the estimate, the SOW, every timesheet entry, the invoices and the final margin together. One data marketplace lists its value factors as uniqueness, years of history, how connected your systems are, whether the data shows outcomes, and clean rights (source: program terms, Regulr buyer directory).
- The judgment is written down. Revision rounds with reviewer comments, QA notes, creative feedback, post-mortems and partner review of a deck are explicit records of what an expert changed and why. In our view that kind of preference data is rare outside professional firms.
- The staff are almost all at desks. Agencies and consultancies do their work in email, documents, project tools and timesheets, so nearly every employee leaves a digital record. That also helps with headcount gates that count only office staff.
Buyers describe this in their own words. A marketplace that names agencies lists campaign briefs, copy, ad performance and client reporting for marketing firms and proposals, research, analyses and models for consulting. A broker that names consulting firms lists engagement scoping, project records, deliverable templates, status reporting and internal review notes, and says it excludes client-confidential findings and client names (source: program terms, Regulr buyer directory). The short version for your firm is on our agency and consulting records overview.
AI buyers that name agencies and consulting firms
These are the programs in our registry whose own pages name agencies, consulting or professional services, shown by type. Each cell is the program's own published term; our buyer directory lists the programs and links to where each says so.
| Program | What it names | Who qualifies | Advertised pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buyer program B | Professional services | No headcount, years or geography published. Companies check eligibility through a qualification form. | No range published. Price is based on data volume, the number of tools connected, and depth. No upfront costs, setup fees or deductions. |
| Broker A | Agencies and consulting | 20+ full-time staff now or at peak, 3+ years of records, US-based, working mainly in English. Operating, downsizing and closed firms qualify. | An estimator example of $385K to $895K for a 100-person, 10-year firm, labeled an illustration based on its partner's payout model. |
| Marketplace A | Creative and design; Marketing and agencies; Consulting | "Any business, in any industry, with a few years of records." No hard minimum on size or history; longer history is valued more. Sellers must show they own the data and can license it. | "$250K+ Typical company deal," with larger archives "reaching the millions." The release describes payouts of "many times" six figures for some companies. |
| Broker B | Insurance agencies; Consulting | About 30+ employees, several years of history, English. US, UK and Canada first. | "Get up to $4M." A fixed sum is agreed before any data is shared. |
| Buyer program H | Marketing agencies | "40+ employees" is its "preferred starting point," assessed case by case. It asks for years of records. No geography is stated. | "$10K to $1M+" as an "illustrative value per data partnership, scaling with cadence." It says its partnerships are designed so there is opportunity for recurring revenue. |
| Buyer program K | Professional services | "Any business with real operating history, in any sector." No headcount, years or geography minimum is published; it says the length and texture of the record matter more than headcount or revenue. | "$100K to $2M+." It says deals typically land between $100K and $2M and run higher for large or long records. Its site shows an example offer card for $640,000. |
A few programs take agencies and consultancies without listing them in the industries above. Buyer program E's own prioritization guide puts marketing agencies in a “talk to us first” tier, while consulting firms fall under its standard rule of 20+ full-time US office staff. Buyer program A names consulting businesses and professional services businesses on its operating-company form, which describes firms of 30 to 200 employees (source: program terms, Regulr buyer directory).
Read the example lists with care. Buyer program B's example records for professional services are client decks, SOWs and project files (source: program terms, Regulr buyer directory), which is the material client contracts most often assign to the client or treat as confidential. A buyer asking for it does not make it yours to license. Our guide to who owns client work under agency and consulting contracts walks through each record type.
Marketing agency data licensing: the records buyers value
The pattern across buyers is simple. They want what your people estimated, wrote, planned, reviewed and decided. What the client owns, commissioned or supplied usually stays out. Here is how that maps to an independent agency or a boutique consultancy.
| Record type | Where it usually lives | Usual scope |
|---|---|---|
| Playbooks, frameworks, methodologies, SOPs and training | Notion, Confluence, Google Drive, Guru, Trainual | Usually in scope; this is the firm's own know-how |
| Blank SOW, estimate, brief and proposal templates | Workamajig, Function Point, Scoro, Accelo, Word | Usually in scope |
| Proposals, RFP responses and pitch decks, with won or lost | Google Slides, PowerPoint, PandaDoc, Proposify; outcomes in HubSpot or Salesforce | In scope with prospect names and pasted prospect data removed |
| Timesheets and resourcing history | Harvest, Float, Workamajig, Function Point, Productive | In scope with staff names and pay removed |
| Job costing, estimates against actuals, invoices | QuickBooks, Xero, Sage Intacct, Workamajig, Function Point | In scope with clients tokenized |
| Project plans, task histories and status reports | Asana, monday.com, Teamwork, Wrike, ClickUp, Jira, Basecamp | In scope after review where task text restates client strategy |
| QA, proofing notes and post-mortems | Ziflow, Adobe Workfront, Asana, Notion | In scope after review where client content is quoted |
| CRM pipeline and new-business history | HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive | In scope with prospect contacts removed; owner export only |
| Internal email and chat | Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Microsoft Teams | In scope with names removed; Slack by owner export only |
| Executed SOWs, change orders, creative briefs, media plans | Workamajig, DocuSign, Google Docs, Excel | Reviewed one client at a time; often confidential |
| Drafts, revision rounds and unused concepts | Figma, Adobe Creative Cloud, Frame.io, Box, Dropbox | Reviewed against each client contract |
| Final client deliverables and client-commissioned research | Drive, SharePoint, DAM | Usually out |
Two rows deserve a closer look. Proposals are your own persuasion and pricing logic, and because each one ends in a win or a loss they carry the outcome buyers prize. They often paste in the prospect's own numbers, though, so prospect data comes out. Creative drafts and unused concepts sit in a gray zone: many client contracts assign only the final, paid deliverable, but some assign everything created under the SOW. The answer is in each contract, and it is why drafts are reviewed client by client.
Consultancies and agencies hold different strengths
A strategy or operations consultancy usually has fewer creative files and more written analysis: engagement scoping, issue trees, interview guides, workplans, status reports, partner review comments and the frameworks it reuses across clients. Its outcome records are proposals won or lost, extensions and follow-on work, and hours against budget. A marketing or creative agency usually has more volume: thousands of jobs with estimates, timesheets, briefs, revision rounds and proofing notes, plus campaign plans set against results. Both have the same weak spot, which is that the most polished work is the client's. In our view consultancies tend to keep more of their value in firm-owned methods, and agencies more of theirs in linked operating history.
The test that sorts most agency and consulting records
Did your firm build it before the engagement, or build it to run the firm? Templates, playbooks, timesheets, estimates, job cost and internal threads usually pass. Was it made specifically for a client and paid for, or handed to you by the client? Then it usually stays out, even when it sits in your own Drive.
Who qualifies to license agency or consulting firm data
Headcount gates decide most of it, and agencies have an advantage here: nearly everyone works at a desk. Freelancers and contractors usually do not count.
| Program | Size gate | History and other rules |
|---|---|---|
| Buyer program E | 20+ full-time US office employees; marketing agencies case by case | 3+ years of records, 5+ systems, more than 50% of staff in the US |
| Broker A | 20+ full-time staff now or at peak | 3+ years of records; operating, downsizing and closed firms |
| Buyer program D | 20+ full-time US W-2 employees | 3+ years in business |
| Broker B | About 30+ employees | Several years of history; US, UK and Canada first |
| Buyer program A | 30 to 200 employees on its operating-company form | 50+ at peak for its closed-company form |
| Buyer program H | 40+ employees as a preferred starting point | Asks for years of records; case by case |
| Marketplace A, Buyer program K, Buyer program L | No minimum published; Buyer program L buys from US companies only | Longer history valued more |
The firms that fit best
In our view the strongest candidates are independent marketing, digital, creative and PR agencies and boutique strategy or operations consultancies with 20 to 200 full-time staff, 8+ years in business and 5+ years of time entries in one agency management system. Long retainer clients help, because each renewal repeats the brief, plan, hours, invoice cycle. Mid-market clients on your own contract paper usually leave more in scope than Fortune 500 clients on their procurement templates.
What usually rules a firm out
- Fewer than 20 full-time staff, or fewer than 3 years of records still in the systems.
- Revenue concentrated in a few large clients whose contracts bar AI use of their materials.
- A large share of pharma, healthcare, financial services or government clients, where campaign data can include health information or contract data-rights rules apply.
- White-label or subcontract shops whose work product belongs to a prime agency.
- Freelancer-heavy models where the work sits in contractors' own tools without IP assignment.
- Holding-company subsidiaries and PE platforms, which have group data policies.
- HR consultancies whose records are mostly client employee or benefit plan data.
How many firms fit, for context
Census business counts for 2022 show about 7,700 US firms with 20 to 499 employees across five core codes: advertising agencies (1,175), marketing consulting (1,936), administrative and general management consulting (3,853), public relations (421) and graphic design (348) (source: Census, Statistics of US Businesses 2022, 6-digit NAICS by enterprise size). Management consulting includes many government and IT-adjacent firms, so treat the total as an upper bound. The market is fragmented: one industry report says 87% of the 71,000 digital agencies it evaluated had fewer than 50 full-time employees (source: Promethean Research, Digital Agency Industry Report 2026).
Other professional firms face tighter client rules than agencies do. If you also run a legal or accounting practice, see our guides for law firms and accounting firms, where only firm-owned, non-client material is in play.
What buyers advertise paying for agency and consulting data
No buyer publishes a price for agency data specifically. What exists are each program's general ranges, shown in the tables above. A few that matter for an agency or consultancy:
- Buyer program E: $100K to $5M advertised, with indicative offers in its FAQ of $200K to $500K for 20 to 49 US staff, $400K to $900K for 50 to 149, and $800K+ for 150+ (source: program terms, Regulr buyer directory).
- Buyer program K: $100K to $2M+, with a $110K professional services deal for a global marketing agency on its track-record page, listed as a perpetual exclusive license (source: program terms, Regulr buyer directory).
- Marketplace A, which names marketing, creative and consulting firms: “$250K+ Typical company deal” (source: program terms, Regulr buyer directory).
- Buyer program H, which names marketing agencies: $10K to $1M+ as an illustrative value per data partnership (source: program terms, Regulr buyer directory).
- Broker B, which names consulting: up to $4M, with a fixed sum agreed before any data is shared (source: program terms, Regulr buyer directory).
Two cautions. Estimators are illustrations: Broker A's example for a 100-person, 10-year firm ($385K to $895K) is labeled as one and nearly matches another program's formula (source: program terms, Regulr buyer directory), so the two are not independent valuations. And a firm-owned scope, which is the only clean scope for most agencies, leaves out the deliverable content that some buyers' examples lean on. In our view that puts many agency offers toward the low end of the ranges. What moves the number is years in one system, records linked by job from proposal to margin, written review and feedback, and how much has to come out. Our data value checker walks through those factors.
What usually stays out: client deliverables, client research and client data
Client contracts decide most of this, and they differ client by client. The common pattern in agency and consulting paper is that the client owns what was made specifically for it once paid, and the firm keeps what it brought to the engagement. Sample “Agency Materials” clauses keep the agency's proprietary rights in its own materials (source: Law Insider, sample "Agency Materials" clauses), and sample consultant clauses say the consultant “retains ownership of any background technology not developed specifically for Client” (source: Law Insider, sample "Consultant Tools" clauses).
- Final client deliverables. Campaign assets, decks, reports, models and strategy documents delivered to a client are usually assigned to the client. Under federal copyright law, a commissioned work is a work made for hire only in nine listed categories and only with a signed written agreement (source: 17 U.S.C. § 101, definition of work made for hire (Cornell LII)); otherwise ownership moves by a signed written assignment (source: 17 U.S.C. § 204(a), transfers in writing (Cornell LII)), which is what most client MSAs contain.
- Client-commissioned research and working papers. Interview notes, survey data, findings and engagement working papers made for a client are usually the client's confidential information. One broker that names consulting firms excludes client-confidential findings and client names outright (source: program terms, Regulr buyer directory).
- Client confidential information. Briefs, launch plans, budgets, sales figures and anything a client marked confidential stay out unless the contract lets you use them.
- Client ad-account data. Performance data in a client's own Google Ads, Meta or analytics accounts is the client's. Only accounts your firm owns for its own marketing are yours.
- Third-party licensed assets. Stock images, fonts, music, footage and talent likeness are licensed to you or the client for a use, not owned.
- Freelancer work without assignment. If a contractor made it and no signed agreement assigns it, the contractor may still own the copyright, since the author owns a work at the start unless it is a work made for hire (source: 17 U.S.C. § 201(b), works made for hire (Cornell LII)).
- Clients that limit AI use. The ANA's 2023 media agency contract template requires an agency to get an advertiser's prior consent before using AI applications (source: MediaPost, ANA revises media agency contracts, requires prior client consent for AI (Jun 6, 2023)). Records for clients on terms like that come out of scope.
- HR files and client employee data. Your own HR, hiring and review records, and any client employee or plan data an HR consultancy holds, are personal data and stay out.
None of this empties the dataset. Take out the deliverables, the client research and the client data, and what remains (your playbooks, templates, proposals, estimates, timesheets, job cost, project histories, review notes and internal threads) is the part buyers say they want. You approve the scope, and each exclusion is named in the contract. For drawings and design under standard architecture contracts, the parallel case is covered in our engineering and architecture firms guide.
Agency software and consulting firm data for AI training
Your systems decide how the records come out, so their terms matter. The terms we read on October 18, 2026 mostly say the agency owns its data, with three caveats that recur: limits on connector apps and automated access, a vendor's own AI training rights, and short or missing export windows after you cancel.
- HubSpot. “You own and retain all rights to the Customer Materials and Customer Data” (5.1), and HubSpot may use customer data to train its own AI models unless you opt out in settings (5.3.1) (source: HubSpot Customer Terms of Service (Sept 16, 2026)). Its developer terms bar apps from using customer data to train or develop AI models, with a narrow exception for a model built for one customer's own benefit (4.B.8) (source: HubSpot Developer Terms (May 4, 2026)). So a buyer's connector app is the wrong route; your own export is the right one.
- Harvest and Float. Harvest says “you own and retain all rights to the Customer Data” (7.1) and may delete it after termination at its sole discretion (6.5) (source: Harvest Terms of Service (Apr 15, 2026)). Float says you keep all rights to your content and that it “will be scheduled for deletion from the Service upon cancellation” (source: Float Terms of Service v2.5 (Oct 7, 2026)). Time and resourcing history is the record most easily lost.
- Function Point. Customer content “is the exclusive property of Customer” (6), Function Point “may permit” 30 days of access after termination (1.6), and access by methods it has not provided or approved is barred (1.7(d)) (source: Function Point Terms of Service (Oct 27, 2020)).
- Asana and Slack. Asana's API terms bar sharing data obtained through its APIs with any third party (4.10) (source: Asana API Terms (Mar 14, 2022)). Slack's API terms bar third-party apps from using API data to train a large language model and from bulk export except where another agreement allows it (source: Slack API Terms of Service (Oct 10, 2025)). Both point to the same rule: records come from the workspace owner's own export.
- Workamajig. Its license agreement is not public. Its privacy policy refers to the Workamajig License Agreement and says each customer controls the information it processes (source: Workamajig Privacy Policy (Feb 5, 2026)), so ask Workamajig for your contract and an export before anything else.
Our guide to Workamajig, HubSpot, Harvest and Asana data export goes system by system, including Productive, Teamwork, monday.com, Salesforce and Figma, and covers what to export before a license or a cancellation.
If you are selling, merging or closing the agency
Many agencies and consultancies are founder-owned, and the exit options are a sale to a holding company or a larger independent, a merger, a management buyout, or a wind-down. One industry report notes that “M&A provides smaller agencies with a viable exit” and that much of the activity now happens between agencies (source: Promethean Research, Digital Agency Industry Report 2026). Margins are tight, too: the same research firm says the average digital agency earned a 13% after-tax net margin in 2025, and agencies with 50 or more FTEs averaged 8% (source: Promethean Research, How profitable are digital agencies? (Apr 19, 2026)).
A data license is one more contract an acquirer will read in diligence, and exclusivity is the term to watch. One buyer program requires 24 months of seller exclusivity, and another's published deals are perpetual exclusive licenses (source: program terms, Regulr buyer directory). Licensing before a sale can turn years of archived jobs into cash the acquirer does not pay you for. After a sale, the records usually belong to the new owner. And if you are closing, export first: Float deletes at cancellation and Harvest may delete after termination. Our guide to selling a marketing agency or consulting firm and licensing the records first covers timing, valuation drivers and the export order.
How a marketing agency data licensing deal runs, step by step
- Inventory. List your systems (agency management, time tracking, project tools, CRM, design and proofing tools, Drive or SharePoint, email and chat), how many years each holds, and roughly how many jobs or engagements a year you run. Nothing leaves your systems at this stage.
- Scope. Decide what is in and what is out. Final deliverables, client research, client confidential material, client ad-account data, licensed assets, freelancer work without assignment and HR files are the usual exclusions, plus every record for a client whose contract bars AI use. You approve the scope, and it is written into the contract.
- De-identification. Client, prospect and staff names are masked or replaced with consistent tokens, and client product names and launch dates are removed, so a job still links from proposal to margin without naming anyone. One buyer program says a specialist PII partner strips identifying fields before it or any lab sees the records (source: program terms, Regulr buyer directory).
- Offers. Buyers review a sample or a description and make an offer. One program says it makes an offer within one to two weeks of intake (source: program terms, Regulr buyer directory).
- Terms. Price, payment schedule, exact scope, exclusivity, permitted uses, deletion at the end of the term, and the warranties you give about your rights to the records.
- Delivery. The records go from your systems to the buyer you chose, through your own exports. With Regulr, they never pass through us.
- Payment. Timing varies widely. One program pays net 30 to 60 days after the data is approved, and another's materials give timelines of about two to three months from first conversation, with payment within 30 days of invoice (source: program terms, Regulr buyer directory).
The best position is more than one written offer, because buyers price the same records differently and their terms differ even more. That comparison is the work Regulr does for the seller. If you want to see how your firm would come out, see what your agency or consulting records could qualify for.
How Regulr is paid, and how we write these pages
Regulr is a sell-side advisor. When a business we introduce signs a license, we may be paid a fee by the buyer or through a program's referral terms. We list every program we can verify whether or not it pays us, order is never set by fees, and every figure is the company's own advertised term with a link to where it says so. Regulr has not closed a data deal yet, so nothing here describes our results.
Frequently asked questions
Can a marketing agency sell its data to AI companies?
Yes. Several AI training-data companies license de-identified copies of company records, and some name marketing agencies and consulting firms outright. What a deal usually covers is what your firm owns: proposals and pitch decks with prospect names removed, SOW and estimate history, timesheets, job costing, project plans, playbooks and internal communication. Final client deliverables and client research usually stay out. You license a copy and keep your originals.
What agency records do AI companies want to buy?
Buyers want records that show expert work and a result: proposals marked won or lost, estimates set against actual hours, revision rounds with reviewer comments, post-mortems and the playbooks your team follows. A job number that links the proposal, the estimate, the timesheets, the invoice and the final margin is the most valuable shape. Years matter, because retainer clients repeat that loop.
Can I license the work we made for clients?
Usually not. Most agency and consulting contracts assign final deliverables to the client once paid and treat client information as confidential, while the agency keeps its pre-existing tools, templates and methods. Buyers typically exclude final deliverables, client-commissioned research and anything the client contract assigns. What remains is the firm's own know-how and operating history, which is the part buyers say they want.
How much is a marketing agency's data worth to AI buyers?
No buyer publishes an agency-specific price. Programs that name agencies or consulting advertise broad ranges, such as $100K to $5M at one buyer program and $100K to $2M+ at another, and one program's track record lists a $110K license with a global marketing agency. A firm-owned scope keeps rights clean but leaves out client content, so in our view offers tend to sit toward the low end of those ranges. Advertised figures are not offers.
Do freelancers and contractors count toward the headcount minimum?
Usually not. Most programs count full-time employees, and one counts only full-time US W-2 staff. Freelancer-heavy agencies also have a rights problem: work a contractor made is not automatically yours unless a signed agreement assigns it or it falls into one of the narrow statutory work-for-hire categories. That work is usually scoped out.
Our client contracts have AI clauses. Does that rule us out?
Not by itself. A clause that limits AI use on a client's work usually applies to that client's materials, so those clients' records come out of scope while your own playbooks, templates and operating history can stay in. The ANA's 2023 media agency template requires an advertiser's prior consent before an agency uses AI applications, so firms with many large-brand clients should expect a larger exclusion. If a few such clients make up most of your revenue, the remaining dataset may be too thin to license.
Will our clients find out we licensed our records?
Buyers license records with client, prospect and staff names masked or replaced with consistent tokens, so the dataset is not meant to point back to any one client. That is not a guarantee: a famous campaign or a small niche can make a record easier to trace. Agree in writing on what is excluded, that the buyer will not try to re-identify anyone, and whether your firm's name stays confidential.
Can an HR consultancy license its data?
Only a narrow slice. Records about clients' employees, compensation and benefit plans are personal data held for the client and stay out. An HR consultancy whose own training material, frameworks and survey instruments are firm-authored may still have something to license, but most of its operating records are client employee data, so it is a weaker fit than a marketing agency or a strategy consultancy.
Sources
Program terms checked against their own pages on October 15, 2026; our buyer directory lists the programs and links to their published terms. HubSpot, Harvest, Float, Function Point, Asana and Slack terms, the Workamajig privacy policy, the Law Insider sample clauses, the MediaPost article, the Promethean Research pages and 17 U.S.C. read on October 18, 2026. Census counts computed from the public file on October 15, 2026.
- program terms, Regulr buyer directory
- HubSpot Customer Terms of Service (Sept 16, 2026)
- HubSpot Developer Terms (May 4, 2026)
- Harvest Terms of Service (Apr 15, 2026)
- Float Terms of Service v2.5 (Oct 7, 2026)
- Function Point Terms of Service (Oct 27, 2020)
- Asana API Terms (Mar 14, 2022)
- Slack API Terms of Service (Oct 10, 2025)
- Workamajig Privacy Policy (Feb 5, 2026)
- 17 U.S.C. § 101, definition of work made for hire (Cornell LII)
- 17 U.S.C. § 201(b), works made for hire (Cornell LII)
- 17 U.S.C. § 204(a), transfers in writing (Cornell LII)
- Law Insider, sample "Agency Materials" clauses
- Law Insider, sample "Consultant Tools" clauses
- MediaPost, ANA revises media agency contracts, requires prior client consent for AI (Jun 6, 2023)
- Promethean Research, Digital Agency Industry Report 2026
- Promethean Research, How profitable are digital agencies? (Apr 19, 2026)
- Census, Statistics of US Businesses 2022, 6-digit NAICS by enterprise size
Brian Boesen · Founder, Regulr AI
Brian runs Regulr AI, which works for established businesses that want to license de-identified records to AI companies. He checks each program's published terms against its own pages and updates these guides when they change. Last updated October 18, 2026.
This page is general information, not legal advice, and Regulr is not a law firm. Rules vary by state, by profession and by contract, and they apply to your facts, not to a category. You approve exactly what is in scope before anything is shared.
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