Marketing is expensive because most agencies still do the mechanical half by hand. I never wanted to run an agency myself, because you are only ever marking up some person's hours, and a retainer that bills for hours a machine could do is the worst version of that. The New York firms worth paying have handed the repetitive work to software and kept people on judgment. That is what I rank for below.
1. Ai Media Group
1Ai Media Group
Sergio Alvarez, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Ai Media Group
- Best for
- Multi-network paid media that needs one attribution source
- Location
- 213 W 35th St, 10th Floor, New York
- Platforms
- Google Premier Partner, Microsoft Advertising Partner, Meta Business Partner
- AI stack
- Atrilyx AI Agent, Atrilyx AI Assistant
The best-evidenced performance shop in New York, and the only one here that sells its own attribution as the product. Its Atrilyx AI Agent watches pacing, conversion shifts and network-level anomalies across every active campaign, with a human approving every move, and the Atrilyx AI Assistant lets a client ask performance questions in plain English. Oscar de la Renta got a 93 percent ROAS improvement on 10 percent more media, measured through Atrilyx rather than the networks.
My view is that platform numbers cannot be taken at face value: at Bluethumb, the revenue Meta, Google and Klaviyo each claimed added up to far more than the company actually sold. The office is at 213 W 35th, 10th Floor, AI Specialist Benjamin Crane joined in 2025. No published result isolates what the agent itself changed.
Take it when you spend across several networks and want one number you can trust.
2. NoGood
2NoGood
Mostafa ElBermawy, Founder & CEO, NoGood
- Best for
- AI-search work next to paid and social
- Location
- New York City HQ in SoHo, per its team page; no street address published
- AI stack
- AI Marketing Lab
The strongest AI-search record in New York, from a growth team headquartered here. NoGood's SteelSeries program reports a 27x year-over-year increase in conversions from AI platforms and 23x AI search traffic, and its AI Marketing Lab sells generative AI consulting, development and custom analytics. A machine learning engineer, Ahmed Abohegazy, is on the team page, which puts the headquarters in SoHo. My view is that LLMs grew the search market rather than splitting it, which is why this work is worth buying on its own.
Founder Mostafa ElBermawy is in New York. He also runs Goodie AI, the AEO tool the homepage names as a partner, so his own software may sit inside the retainer. The site prints no street address, and ByteDance's 879 percent organic traffic gain is SEO work, not automation.
Take it when AI search is the channel you most need to win.
3. Darkroom
3Darkroom
Lucas DiPietrantonio, Co-Founder, CEO, Darkroom
- Best for
- DTC brands that want paid, Amazon and retention in one team
- Location
- New York hub; no street address published
- AI stack
- Shadow (sister company)
The consumer-brand growth team with the most senior applied-AI hire. Stephen Geick is SVP and Head of applied AI, and the same page names Shadow, an AI platform for marketers run as a sister company. The number to read is retention: Public Goods got 5 percent more membership retention and 7x winback conversion, with Monocle's AI choosing who to win back and Darkroom executing in Klaviyo. Product recommendation emails drive more revenue than any other type of automation, by a fair margin, and member-level personalization is the same lever.
Its AI Search program starts at $4,500 a month, the only rate a ranked firm publishes. Co-founder and CEO Lucas DiPietrantonio is in New York. The site gives a New York hub and no street address, and SAUZ's 126 percent paid revenue lift is media work, not AI.
Take it when you are a consumer brand and retention is where the money is.
4. Code and Theory
4Code and Theory
Helen Ohlsson, Senior Director, AI Transformation, Code and Theory
- Best for
- Enterprises that need an AI product built
- Location
- One World Trade Center, 69th Floor, New York; part of the Stagwell network
The builder here: it ships AI products for brands, not campaigns. For TIME it built an AI agent on an agentic, retrieval-augmented architecture that draws only from TIME's own journalism, plus an AI saliency map across 100-plus years of archives. For NBC it used AI to simulate millions of real-time election scenarios for the Big Board. My view is that agentic work goes better broken into smaller missions with a defined goal than handed full autonomy, and an agent fenced into one publisher's archive is that kind of mission.
It works from One World Trade Center, and Senior Director of AI Transformation Helen Ohlsson is in New York. A T. Rowe Price rebuild saved 100,000 hours, or $15M, in a quarter, but it is a Stagwell network firm, and neither AI case publishes an outcome number.
Take it when what you need is an AI product, not a campaign.
5. Direct Agents
5Direct Agents
Dinesh Boaz, Managing Director and Co-Founder, Direct Agents
- Best for
- Paid media and Amazon with an agent layer
- Location
- 149 Fifth Ave, 16th Floor, New York, with offices in Austin and Culver City
- AI stack
- Kanopy AI, Blueprint
The paid-media and Amazon shop that put an agent layer on top of the account team. Kanopy AI connects the agency's institutional knowledge, the client's business intelligence and specialized AI agents with the people running the account, on a base it calls Blueprint. In 2026 the job changed: agents build the campaign, segment the audience, draft the copy and stage the send, and the marketer is the director, not the operator. This is that model sold as a retainer.
For Carhartt, its BI team built AI-driven Amazon share-of-voice tracking, and clicks rose 60 percent and sales 99 percent. A company post argues most analytics dashboards cannot see ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity crawling a site. Co-founder Dinesh Boaz has run it since 2003 from 149 Fifth Ave, 16th Floor. Its Data, AI and SEO/GEO lead is in Los Angeles, and Kanopy has no client result yet.
Take it when you buy paid media and Amazon and want agents on the account from day one.
6. Brainlabs
6Brainlabs
Andrew Littlewood, Chief Planning & Data Officer, Brainlabs
- Best for
- Large advertisers that want engineered AI tooling
- Founded
- 2012
- Location
- 2 Grand Central Tower, 140 E 45th St, Suite 32A, New York; one of several global offices
- AI stack
- Cortex AI, NeuroGen, AmplifAI, BrainBriefs
The most engineering behind any New York office on this list, inside a global media agency. Brainlabs says it built Cortex AI with 32 proprietary tools and 50-plus in-house engineers, and has deployed AI in advertising since 2012. Its AI search pipeline pairs its own Cortex Digital Signals Analyzer with Claude, scoring existing content against the patterns LLMs cite, and it credits that work with GitHub's 400 percent year-over-year growth in marketing-page traffic. I believe SEO and GEO are important channels with a longer payoff, and tooling like this is how an agency collects on it at scale.
New York is one of the offices on its contact page, at 2 Grand Central Tower, Suite 32A. Chief Planning and Data Officer Andrew Littlewood is here. GitHub is the only client it names with numbers.
Take it when your budget is large and you want tooling, not a pitch deck.
7. iCrossing
7iCrossing
Dmitry Klebanov, Global President, iCrossing
- Best for
- Regulated enterprises that need governed AI content
- Location
- New York regional hub, one of four in North America; no New York street address published
- AI stack
- iX Intelligent Content
The governed-AI content shop for enterprise and regulated brands, owned by Hearst. The case to read is a private research university whose non-branded AI Overview appearances rose 92.9 percent year over year to 12,089, and iCrossing states that it is not a claim about enrollment. A healthcare SEO workflow raised content output 50 percent and cut development time 70 percent, and a governed GenAI workflow optimized 130 Shell Eco-marathon pages and saved 50 hours.
New York is one of four North American regional hubs, and its New York page describes an office here without a street address. Global President Dmitry Klebanov is in New York. Most of its AI results name no client, so the healthcare and university cases are the ones to ask references for.
Take it when governance matters as much as speed.
8. Socially Powerful
8Socially Powerful
Majid Bahi, CEO, Socially Powerful
- Best for
- Creator programs at scale
- Location
- 30 Wall Street, 8th Floor, New York; founded in London
- AI stack
- Aria
The influencer specialist, and the only firm here whose AI is creator discovery. It runs campaigns on Aria, its own influencer technology and database, which uses AI prompt search and image recognition to find creators, and its seeding platform uses AI to analyze creator demographics, content style and past brand affinities before the team hand-selects. My view is that the creators worth paying for a launch are also worth feeding into an affiliate program afterward, and a searchable database makes that cheap.
The Body Shop saw a 15 percent sales uplift from its paid social work. The New York office is at 30 Wall Street, 8th Floor, and CEO Majid Bahi is here, and the firm was founded in London. Most of its published results are reach and views, not sales.
Take it when creators are your main channel.
9. Avenue Z
9Avenue Z
David Corchado, Chief Technology & Product Officer (Founder), Avenue Z
- Best for
- Brands getting ready for AI agents that buy
- Location
- 156 5th Avenue, New York (no suite given), with offices in Miami and Orlando
The one agency here building for AI agents that buy. Avenue Z activates the Shopify Agentic Storefront channel so AI agents can read a catalog and check out natively, and builds a brand's AI memory of returns, shipping and sizing answers. For an unnamed benefits carrier, AI visibility rose 270 percent after an analysis of 43,087 citations across 100 prompts.
Whitney Hart is Chief Strategy Officer and Director of the AI Lab, and founder and CTO David Corchado is in the New York metro. The rest of the leadership, the CEO included, is in Miami, the New York address at 156 5th Avenue gives no suite.
Take it when you want your store ready for agent checkout.
10. Taktical Digital
10Taktical Digital
Derek Rubinstein, Founder, Managing Director, Taktical Digital
- Best for
- Consumer brands that want GEO next to paid and email
- Location
- 241 West 37th Street, Suite 802, New York, with a Miami office; now a MediaMint company
Taktical Digital is now a MediaMint Company, its own homepage says, and both New York founders list the firm as acquired and now hold EVP roles at MediaMint. Buy it knowing that. Its AI results are AI search: Chomps' ChatGPT sessions rose 1,648 percent, from 164 to 2,867, Benjamin Moore's LLM sessions rose 762 percent, and Vita Coco's rose 491 percent.
Its AI-search results are outcomes, not automation, and it names no AI tooling in delivery and no AI role. Founder and Managing Director Derek Rubinstein is in New York, the office is at 241 West 37th Street, Suite 802, with a second in Miami. It fits a consumer brand that wants GEO next to paid social and email.
Take it when AI-search traffic is the goal and the MediaMint ownership suits you.
Also worth knowing
These firms were considered and are not ranked.
Huge names New York as its headquarters, but no New York team could be verified, and its approach page spreads AI across a full-service menu. Gregory FCA is PR-rooted and headquartered in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, and its crisis and media-monitoring AI tools are described only on the homepage.
Software, IT, consulting, staffing and other firms that surface in New York marketing searches are not marketing agencies and are not assessed here.
Several have real AI and no verified New York team. Delante is run from Cracow. Siege Media has a strong GEO practice, but its New York address, 276 5th Ave Suite 704, is shared with other firms, and no New York team could be verified. Capacity Interactive has a real GPT toolkit and donor model, but 82 Nassau St #60283 is a mailbox number. LinkGraph has a founder in San Francisco. yellowHEAD has its CEO in Israel. Ignite Visibility is headquartered in San Diego, with 14 Wall St as one of four offices. Sequence Commerce has its team in Toronto and Montreal. Winston Digital Marketing says it is based in Brooklyn, with no street address on its about page. PBJ Marketing is headquartered in Washington, DC.
Others had AI claims that did not hold up. Barrel does GEO and a third-party quiz, with its Director of AI in Palm City, Florida, and no AI-tied number in its case work. SEO Image has AI service pages and an audit tool, and its one AI result names no client. Busylike lists a "Head of AI & Motion Design" who is Head of Motion Design in London on his own profile, per its about page, and its team is in Istanbul. RMG Media describes engineering-team tooling as AI. Spray Marketing has one AI-agent workflow on its insights page and results labeled by industry, not client. Good2bSocial has an AI search service line and no AI case, and says it is fully remote.
Mind & Metrics makes its AI-agent claims on its homepage only, and its case studies are paid search and branding. Tinuiti lists AI SEO as one item in a 20-line menu. Croud makes its AI workflow claims on its homepage only, and CroudOS is a talent-matching platform. Moburst has an AEO page and one ChatGPT-presence result. Amsive uses AI as a process adjective.
How to choose between them
If you spend across several ad networks and nobody agrees on what drove a sale, start with Ai Media Group, because it sells the attribution before the media. If AI search is the channel you most need to win, NoGood has the strongest published results and Taktical Digital the most specific consumer-brand ones. Consumer brands that want paid, Amazon and retention in one team should talk to Darkroom, and brands buying paid media and Amazon who want agents on the account should talk to Direct Agents.
If what you need is an AI product built into your platform, not a campaign, that is Code and Theory. Large advertisers that want engineered tooling should look at Brainlabs, and regulated enterprises that need AI content under governance at iCrossing. Socially Powerful is for creator programs, and Avenue Z for a Shopify brand getting ready for agent checkout. My advice, based on what worked for us, is to focus on time and focus rather than just dollar budgets: find the two or three channels that bring in most of your customers and revenue, and hire for those.
How this list is ranked
How this list is ranked
I score every marketing agency here on four criteria, for a total out of 50: AI automation out of 20, and specialization, published evidence and a real New York team, each out of 10. Each card links the sources behind its score.
Nitrosend, which I co-founded, publishes this page. It is an email platform for agencies, not a marketing agency, and is not ranked.
FAQ
Ai Media Group, if you are picking one name with no other constraint, because it pairs the strongest evidence on this list with its own attribution software and a staffed office on West 35th Street. From there the shortlist splits by need: NoGood for AI search, Darkroom for consumer brands, Code and Theory for an AI product, and Direct Agents for paid media and Amazon with agents on the account.
The difference shows in what each one publishes. Ai Media Group says a human approves every move its agent proposes. NoGood puts a conversion number on its AI-search work. Darkroom prints its AI search price. Read those three pages and you will know which of them describes your problem.
Between $550 and $25,000 a month on retainer, with most published New York-area figures between $1,500 and $12,500. Only one of the ten ranked firms publishes a rate, so the rest of the range comes from other New York-area firms that do.
Darkroom's AI Search program starts at $4,500 a month, scoped by catalog size and answer surfaces. AdVenture Media prices an ongoing AI advisory retainer at $4,500 to $12,500 a month, and Lead Marketing Strategies' services typically run $1,500 to $10,000 or more a month, both Long Island firms with no New York City office. DiscoverMyBusiness starts AI SEO at $5,000 a month, and DAS starts retainers at $25,000 a month, with a $5,000 two-week diagnostic credited toward it, both New York firms. At the small end, Main Street ROI's SEO plans run $550 to $2,000 a month, and its Google Ads management starts at $750, excluding spend.
AI work is priced as a build plus a retainer. The NYC AI Marketing Company, a one-person Manhattan shop, charges $25,000 to set up a custom AI agent and $1,000 a month after. Netrocket's entry AI SEO program starts at $3,550 a month, and INSIDEA, whose site does not mention New York, prices managed AI operations at $5,000 to $25,000 a month and custom agent builds from $30,000. Designity sells a flat creative-and-marketing subscription at $5,995 a month.
The number to check a quote against is the in-house cost. VaynerMedia's New York posting for a Director, Paid Media pays $135,000 to $160,000, an Associate Director, SEO $105,000 to $125,000, and an Account Director $110,000 to $150,000. One senior channel lead costs more than most of the monthly retainers above, before benefits.
The ad spend, and often the software. A retainer buys people and their hours, and the media budget sits on top: Main Street ROI's ads fee is quoted excluding spend, and Actuate Media, which does not mention New York, charges ad management at 20 percent of spend. AI work adds its own lines, because a custom agent is a setup fee plus a monthly fee, and model usage is billed to someone.
Ask who owns the accounts. The ad accounts, the analytics property and the email platform should be in your company's name, so the history stays with you if the agency changes. Ai Media Group measures every result against what drove the conversion rather than what the networks claimed, which only works if you can see the same data.
Look for one of four things: a named tool with a described function, a named workflow, a person with an AI or automation role on the team, or a case study that ties automation to a number. A banner is not evidence.
Every AI point on this page links to one of those. Brainlabs names the tools in its AI search pipeline. iCrossing ties its healthcare content workflow to output and speed numbers.
On four criteria: AI automation out of 20, and specialization, published evidence and a real New York team, each out of 10, for a total out of 50. Each card links the sources behind its score.