Many such firms base their fees on the ad rates of the particular media they are placing. In other words, if they were to place you in a local paper, they would base your fee on what a same-size ad would run and charge you a percentage of the ad rate. I have seen the percentage vary from 20% to 50%. If you are dealing with small, local media, this could be affordable, but once you move up the media ladder, you'll find that the costs rapidly become prohibitive. Strange as this sounds, one of the reasons I refuse to work on a per-placement basis, is precisely because I feel we will be too successful. It sounds great to the client at first - he or she doesn’t have to pay unless there’s a placement. But score one good placement and suddenly their looking at the reality of paying a pretty hefty bill. Many never built the payment into their budget, because it didn’t seem real to them

One client in the fashion industry tried and tried to convince me to work with him on a pay-per-placement basis. I refused. Eventually he agreed to the retainer fee and signed with my company. The second story we placed for him was a three-page article in Vogue. If I would have agreed to the fee structure he had suggested, he would have, based on Vogue's ad rates, owed us over a years worth of retainer fees for that one story alone - and I would probably still be trying to collect my payment.  Anthony Mora