Why Brands Are Firing Their Amazon Agencies: And What They Actually Need Instead
There is a quiet but significant restructuring happening across e-commerce right now. Brands that spent years handing their Amazon business to full-service agencies and SaaS platforms are pulling it back in-house, and the numbers back it up.
The 2024 ANA report found that 82% of major brands now operate some form of in-house marketing function, up from 58% a decade ago. 65% have moved work that was previously agency-managed to internal teams. And agencies are seeing annual talent churn of 31-40%, meaning the account manager who knew your business six months ago has likely already moved on.
Brands are not leaving agencies because of budget cuts. They are leaving because the model is broken.
The Three Reasons the Agency Model Fails
Incentive misalignment. Most agencies charge a percentage of ad spend. That model rewards more spending, not more profit. Brands focused on contribution margin and unit economics have fundamentally different goals than an agency optimizing for spend volume.
The black box problem. Agencies own the data, the campaign architecture, and the institutional knowledge. When a brand parts ways with their agency, they inherit an account they cannot operate. The source code of their Amazon business was never really theirs.
Operational complexity agencies cannot handle. Standard agencies are competent at PPC. They are frequently not equipped for what sophisticated Amazon accounts actually demand. Hazmat reviews, GPSR compliance, EU VAT registration, 3PL transitions, inventory forecasting tied to container timelines, chargeback recovery, and catalog-wide compliance audits. These problems require someone who has spent years operating inside these systems, not managing them from a dashboard.
Where Brands Get Stuck After Going In-House
The decision to bring Amazon in-house is the right one for most brands at a certain stage. The execution is where things fall apart.
Internal teams understand the basics but lack the depth that Amazon demands at scale. They can manage campaigns. They cannot read a restock report against a container timeline and translate that into an advertising decision. They cannot identify when a ROAS target is masking a profitability problem. They do not know what to do when account health flags surface that require deep working knowledge of Amazon's compliance frameworks.
The result is a brand that correctly identified agencies were not the answer, but has not yet found what is.
The Fractional Model: Senior Expertise Without the Agency Layer
This is the gap fractional Amazon leadership fills.
At Ajarro, I work directly with brands, founders, and operators who need senior-level guidance and execution without the layers, handoffs, or noise. I have spent 20 years operating inside Amazon, launching a brand on the platform in 2008, scaling and leading my own agency, and managing over $500M in revenue across more than 300 brands. I intentionally keep my client load small so every account receives focused, experienced attention from someone who stays close to the work.
Every engagement is anchored in the same principles: contribution margin over top-line revenue, fixing the foundation before scaling spend, and building systems that hold up long after the engagement ends.
What the Work Actually Looks Like
The engagement adapts to where a brand is. The standard does not.
Full-Account Bridge. Full account management during a 3 to 6 month agency transition while an internal team is hired, trained, and handed a system they can actually operate.
Fractional Advisory. Senior strategy and troubleshooting on a monthly basis. Anticipating the compliance issue, the inventory risk, or the advertising inefficiency before it becomes a crisis. Five to ten hours per month of an experienced operator in your corner for the decisions that matter.
Operational Special Projects. High-stakes, one-off engagements: 3PL transitions, international expansion, profitability analysis, chargeback recovery, supply chain support, cross-channel setup, and catalog-wide compliance audits.
Across all of it: advertising strategy and restructuring, content and A+ development, product video, forecasting, and full end-to-end account management when the situation calls for it.
The 2026 Reality
Amazon is not getting simpler. The brands that grow steadily and profitably are not the ones with the biggest agency budgets or the most sophisticated SaaS stack. They are the ones with experienced operators who stay close to the work, understand how each decision affects the whole system, and make deliberate, margin-informed choices.
If your brand is navigating a transition away from an agency, building an internal team, or looking for senior Amazon leadership without the overhead, that is what Ajarro was built for.
I started my career in Boulder in 2008, launching one of the first organic beverage brands on Amazon before most agencies knew the platform existed. Since then I have worked with more than 300 brands, managed over $500M in Amazon revenue, and built and led my own agency before stepping away to do this work the right way, with a small number of clients who deserve focused, senior-level attention. If that sounds like what you have been looking for, I would love to talk. Learn more at ajarro.com.