Hiring a Shopify Marketing Agency In 2026? Notes From Shopify Plus Website Agency

I sat on a call last week that I’ve had more times than I care to remember.

A founder comes to me, totally burned out. They just fired their paid media agency after 90 days. They’re blaming the ROAS. The agency is blaming the creative. The creative team is blaming the landing page.

Everyone is pointing fingers, but nobody is looking at the actual problem: The ecosystem is broken.

We see this constantly at Conspire. Brands hit that $1M–$5M-$25M mark and think the solution to growth is just "hiring a better ad guy."

But the game has changed. If you’re still hiring agencies based on how they operated in 2019, you’re going to keep firing them in 2026.

The AI Is Better Than You (And That’s a Good Thing)

I was at a seminar recently with Jay Wright (CEO of Ecommerce Equation, highly recommend looking them up), and he said something that might panic a traditional media buyer, but he’s right:

"Media buying," in the traditional sense, is dying.

Five years ago, you paid an agency to be a sniper. You needed them to manually find "Men, 25-34, loves hiking and craft beer." You paid for their ability to hack the audience settings.

That era is over.

Meta and Google have leveraged AI to the point where they find the customers. The platforms are taking in millions of signals and automating the targeting. Finding the person is actually the easy part now.

Because the algorithm does the hunting, the leverage has shifted entirely to two things:

1. The Creative (The hook).

2. The Website (The trust).

The "Le Labo" Effect

If AI is handling the traffic, your job is to handle the impression.

Think about walking into a Le Labo store. It doesn't feel like a standard retailer; it feels like an apothecary. The lighting is warm and directional. There are no glossy hype posters.

But the real magic happens at the counter. They don't just hand you a box; they mix the fragrance right in front of you. They hand-type the label with the date and your name. It feels raw, imperfect, and personal.

That experience signals, without anyone saying a word: "This product is made, not marketed." That is pure trust.

Your Shopify site is that store.

You can't convey that depth of context in a 15-second Instagram ad. The ad is just the handshake; the website is the conversation.

If the AI finds the perfect customer, but they land on a site that feels generic, cluttered, or "dropshipped," you’ve lost them. You need to engineer that "Le Labo" feeling digitally, to where the customer feels the craft and quality instantly.

The New "Dream Team"

Since the robot is doing the targeting, you don't need a generalist agency that claims to do it all. You need specialists who understand their specific lane in this new hierarchy.

Here is who actually needs to be in the room:

1. The Creative Agency (The New Targeting) In the age of AI, creative is the new targeting. Since the algorithm finds people based on what they engage with, your video is the filter. You need a team pumping out high-volume, high-quality assets, UGC, polished video, static hooks—that can live on paid and organic.

2. The Paid Media Agency (The AI Trainers) You still need these guys, but their job has changed. They aren't turning 100 little knobs on audience settings anymore. They are feeding the machine. They manage the budget, structure the campaigns so the AI learns faster, and ensure the budget isn't being set on fire.

3. The Website Agency (The Closer) This is where we sit. As ad costs rise, your Conversion Rate (CVR) has to rise to match it. We build the infrastructure that captures the demand the other two create. We ensure that "made, not marketed" feeling is alive and well when the customer clicks through.

The Dirty Secret: Data

There is one more piece that usually gets ignored until it’s too late.

Since Meta and Google rely on AI to find your customers, they are only as smart as the data you feed them. If your website isn't telling Facebook exactly who is buying (and who isn't), the AI gets dumber, and your ads get more expensive.

We see this all the time with brands spending six figures a day. Their data pipeline is broken. Meta says one thing, Shopify says another.

Part of our job on the website side is to come in and install the analytics—tools like Elevar or Triple Whale—to make sure that the data teams are using to make decisions is actually accurate.

Clean data = Smarter AI = Cheaper customers.

Where We Fit

I’m not writing this to pitch you on running your ads. We don't do that.

At Conspire, we position ourselves as the partner that makes your marketing effective. When brands work with us on Shopify Growth & Support Teams, we act as the bridge.

We aren't the creative agency, though clients like Zia Tile trust us for branding & design. We aren't the media buyers, but your marketing agency probably needs us. We’re the ones ensuring that when those agencies send a thousand people to your site, the site is actually ready to receive them.

So, before you fire your next marketing agency, look at the ecosystem. The brands that scale aren't looking for a wizard to fix their ads. They're building a system where the site, the creative, and the data all talk to each other.

Conspire is a Shopify Plus partner agency known for Shopify website design and development, recognized by Shopify for working with the biggest brands in the ecosystem.