DE{CODE} 2026 Agency Track

AI Is Doing Your Deliverables. What Are You Charging for Next?

Your clients are no longer asking where they rank on Google. They’re asking why competitors show up in AI answers, and what your agency is doing to help them do the same.

The deliverables that once filled your invoices, like first drafts, QA cycles, reporting, basic optimization, are increasingly handled by machines. The question isn’t whether to adapt. It’s what to charge for when you do.

These four sessions from DE{CODE} 2026 give agency leaders the frameworks to answer that question, from rebuilding pricing models and launching AI readiness audits to navigating bot management and benchmarking against the agencies the data says are winning.

Pick the session most relevant to where your agency is right now or watch all four.

Human Value in an Automated World: How Agencies Stay Relevant

Runtime: 33:35

AI is now capable of completing many of the billable tasks that used to fill agency invoices. So what do you charge for next?

In this candid panel, four agency leaders share how they’re navigating this shift right now, from restructuring pricing and reclaiming time from production work to deepening client relationships and defending margins. This is an honest look at what the agency model looks like when the production layer gets commoditized.

Who This Is For: 

• Agency owners and leaders rethinking their pricing model 
• Account teams repositioning value to clients 
• Anyone asking “what do we charge for when AI does the work?”

What You’ll Learn in this Session:

• Why the window to pivot profitably is open now and how to move before it closes.
• Why transparency about AI use is now a trust signal, not a liability.
• How leading agencies are redirecting reclaimed production time into strategy and outcomes (without cutting rates).
• How to build the kind of distinctive authority that neither a competitor agency nor an AI tool can replicate.

A New Agency Service Model: Is Your Client’s Brand AI-Ready?

Runtime: 38:23

Are you proactively telling clients how they show up in AI search or waiting for them to ask?

If your client’s site isn’t readable, digestible, and authoritative to AI agents, it’s effectively invisible. And right now, most clients don’t know it.

This panel of agency leaders who are already building AI-ready service models shares how they’re getting ahead of that conversation, from a five-pillar AI readiness framework to making visibility audits a genuine diagnostic rather than a dressed-up sales pitch.

Who This Is For: 

• Agency leaders building or pitching new AI services 
• Account teams navigating the shift from SEO reporting to AI visibility 
• Anyone who wants to turn AI readiness audits into a real revenue stream

What You’ll Learn in this Session:

• A five-pillar framework for auditing any client’s AI readiness: Get a full view of the infrastructure, security, content architecture, search and discovery, and strategic maturity that set recommended sites apart.
• The new KPIs replacing keyword rankings: AI Share of Voice, citation frequency, and brand presence monitoring are the new metrics for success.
• What separates a genuine AI audit from a dressed-up sales pitch: How to build the real thing to create real value for your clients.
• How to open the AI readiness conversation with a long-term client: Position the next phase of Intelligent Web-readiness without making their past work feel obsolete.

Good Bots, Bad Bots: How to Win with Bot Management

Runtime: 23:56

Do you know what percentage of your clients’ traffic right now is bots and how much of it they actually want?

Over 50% of internet traffic today is bots. The line between good, bad, and gray has never been harder to draw, and the answer is different for every client.

Experts from Cloudflare, Useful Group, and WP Engine break down how AI crawlers have fundamentally changed traffic management, what to do before you write a single firewall rule, and what WP Engine is shipping right now to give agencies more control.

Who This Is For: 

• Agency tech leads and CTOs 
• Account teams whose clients are seeing unexplained traffic spikes or site performance issues 
• Anyone who needs to make bot management a billable conversation

What You’ll Learn in this Session:

• How to categorize any client’s bot traffic across three tiers: Bots can be good, bad, or gray, and the gray zone is where you’ll have to work with clients to make some decisions together.
• How to gain visibility into traffic patterns before taking any action: Use a log-before-you-block approach that reduces the risk of accidentally blocking real users. 
• What WP Engine mitigated in 2025 and what’s shipping now: WP Engine blocked 75 billion malicious requests across our platform in 2025, and our teams have some exciting new features coming to Global Edge Security customers.
• How to structure an ongoing client conversation around bot strategy: Hint, it’s not just one-time bot blocking event. Ongoing conversations about a client’s bot strategy helps you showcase the value of your partnership.

The Next Wave: What the Data Reveals About Agencies Winning with AI

Runtime: 27:45

What does research across 214 agency professionals reveal about how the industry is navigating AI?

WP Engine commissioned Promethean Research to find out. The results are nuanced, but the gap between AI leaders and laggards is already showing up in client results, team composition, margins, and growth rates. Nicholas Petroski, who has studied over 200,000 digital agencies worldwide, walks through the findings and what they mean for how agencies should be operating right now.

Download the 2026 AI Agency Trends Report

Who This Is For: 

• Agency owners benchmarking their AI adoption 
• Leaders who want data to back internal strategy decisions 
• Anyone wondering whether their agency is ahead or behind, and by how much

What You’ll Learn in this Session:

• How fast AI adoption has moved and what changed late last year that accelerated it dramatically.
• The 4 specific ways AI leaders are outperforming laggards in client results and operational efficiency.
• What the margin, pricing, and hiring data shows and what it predicts about agency structure in the next 2–3 years.
• The one thing to do first if your agency is behind (and it’s not “learn more AI tools”).

The Agencies Leading in AI Aren’t Waiting to Figure It Out. Neither Should You.

The data is clear: the gap between AI leaders and laggards is already showing up in client results, margins, and growth rates, and it’s widening. WP Engine gives agencies the platform, tools, and partnership to get on the right side of that gap.