Disclosure and methodology
Kiin is a B2B paid media agency, we compete with Refine Labs, and we are first on this list. We put ourselves first because we are one of two entries here that publishes fees, and because pretending to be neutral about our own ranking would be worse than saying it plainly. Read the rest as the useful part: every fact about another agency was read from that agency’s own public material in September 2026, and where something is not stated the entry says so rather than guessing.
Scored on four things: whether the channels run as one programme with one budget owner, what gets measured, pricing transparency, and verifiable credentials. Not scored on size, awards or website design.
How to read any alternatives page, including this one. It was written by a competitor of the agency in the title. That is true of almost every page ranking for this search, and most of them do not say so. Check whether the incumbent is described accurately enough that you would recognise it, whether the page says where the incumbent is still the better choice, and whether the facts carry a date. If every line about the named agency is unflattering, you are reading an advert rather than a comparison.
Why people look for a Refine Labs alternative
Refine Labs is a good agency and the search volume behind this page is not a complaint about the work. Four things send people looking, and only one of them is about quality.
The floor. Paid media management starts at $14,000 a month on a six month minimum, before media. Full service starts at $26,000. Those numbers are published on their own pricing page, which is unusually honest, and they are a deliberate qualification filter. A company spending $15,000 a month on LinkedIn cannot sensibly pay $14,000 a month to have it managed. Most companies that find this page are qualifying themselves out on arithmetic, not on fit.
The founder transition. A lot of people bought the brand because of its founder’s content. Chris Walker sold his remaining shares in July 2025 and the agency is now independently owned and led by CEO Megan Bowen. The agency did not stop working. But if the reason Refine Labs was on your shortlist was a body of thinking published by someone who has since moved on, that is a legitimate thing to re examine, and it is the honest explanation for why this particular search has volume.
Buying a layer you already have. The $26,000 full service tier embeds a Director of Demand Generation and a Performance Marketing Manager. If you already employ a demand gen lead, you are paying for a seat that is filled. Several of the agencies below sell execution without the strategic layer on top.
Channel spread against channel depth. The paid media tier covers LinkedIn, Google, Meta, YouTube, CTV and OOH. If 80% of your spend is one channel, breadth is not what you need and you may be better served by someone who runs that channel deeply.
Refine Labs at a glance
Refine Labs is one of a small number of agencies in this category that publishes its prices, so you can qualify yourself in or out before a call. These figures were read from their pricing page on 29 September 2026 and exclude media spend.
| Engagement | From | Minimum term | What it includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paid media management | $14,000 a month | 6 months | Dedicated manager, multi channel buying across LinkedIn, Google, Meta, YouTube, CTV and OOH, optimisation and reporting |
| Full service | $26,000 a month | 6 months | Director of Demand Generation, Performance Marketing Manager, strategy, foundation sprint, pipeline measurement |
| Creative only | $5,000 a month | 3 months | Ad creative production, copywriting, video and motion, strategy integration |
| Revenue Performance Assessment | $35,000 | 6 week project | Funnel analysis, paid audit, creative audit, inbound review, recommendations and a 12 month plan |
Stated ideal client: B2B SaaS at Series B and beyond, with real budget already in motion. Scoping is by budget size in every tier.
Nine alternatives
1. Kiin — best if LinkedIn is most of the budget and the floor is the problem
London, serving US, UK and EU. Eight people, three of them from LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. $2,500 to $9,500 a month, published, with no markup on media. We are a narrower proposition than Refine Labs and that is the point of putting us first here: LinkedIn is the channel we run deepest, Google captures the demand it creates, and engagement signals feed outbound off one dataset. The reason to consider us over a demand programme agency is the floor and the evidence. We start at a fifth of the Refine Labs paid media entry point, and every benchmark we quote comes from a measured panel of 1,000+ advertiser accounts rather than from a portfolio of our own clients. Tradeoff: we are eight people. If you need a Director of Demand Generation embedded in your team, CTV and OOH buying, or a creative studio producing at volume, we do not have those and Refine Labs does.
2. Directive — best for the same programme at enterprise scale
Irvine, California, since 2013. States 100+ marketing strategists, 420+ brands served and $1B+ revenue generated, with Amazon, Adobe, Cisco, Calendly and Uber Freight shown as clients. Divisions for content, paid media, performance creative, programmatic, RevOps and communications, organised around technology, industrial and services verticals. This is the closest like for like if what you liked about Refine Labs was the breadth and you want more of it. Pricing is not published, which is the main step backwards from Refine Labs on this list. Tradeoff: scale cuts both ways. A $10,000 a month account inside a 100 strategist agency will not get the people whose work you saw in the pitch, and you will not know what you are paying until you are in a sales process.
3. Powered by Search — best if the gap is organic and AI search, not paid
Toronto. Positions as “The B2B Marketing Agency” and states 200+ B2B companies helped, with a “30% more sales-ready opportunities in 90 days” promise. Runs paid, SEO, digital PR, ABM, HubSpot RevOps and, since this year, AI and LLM search visibility as one stack. Published results include $11.1M in SEO pipeline for a data privacy SaaS and 135% of a paid pipeline target for a cybersecurity SaaS. If your Refine Labs programme worked on paid but you have nothing compounding underneath it, this is the substitution that adds the missing half. Tradeoff: you are buying a full stack engagement. If paid media is genuinely the only gap, you will be paying for SEO and content capability you already have in house.
4. Impactable — best for a lower floor on LinkedIn specifically
US, LinkedIn Ads focused, with a large published library of LinkedIn Ads teardowns and benchmarks. Runs LinkedIn as the primary channel with retargeting sequencing rather than as one line in a multi channel plan, and takes accounts well below the budget level a demand programme agency will accept. For a company that qualified out of Refine Labs on the $14,000 a month floor and does not want to drop to a freelancer, this is the most direct swap on the list. Tradeoff: a channel specialist is not a demand strategy partner. If the problem is that nobody has decided what the company is saying to the market, a LinkedIn Ads agency will execute the confusion faster.
5. Ironpaper — best for long cycle enterprise and industrial buyers
New York. B2B growth agency running demand generation, ABM, content and web for enterprise and industrial companies with long, committee driven sales cycles. Reports on qualified pipeline rather than MQLs, and the industrial and manufacturing work is genuinely specialised rather than a vertical page bolted onto a SaaS agency. Where Refine Labs is built around the Series B+ SaaS motion, Ironpaper is built around the twelve month procurement cycle. Tradeoff: the SaaS growth playbook is not the centre of gravity here. If you are a product led company wanting velocity on paid social, the fit is loose.
6. Walker Sands — best if earned media is part of the answer
Chicago, founded 2001, one of the larger independent B2B technology agencies in the US. Public relations, brand, demand generation, web and research run together, and the research practice produces original studies that the PR practice then places. That combination is the thing Refine Labs does not offer: if your category has no awareness problem you do not need it, and if nobody has heard of you, paid media alone will keep getting more expensive. Tradeoff: a full service agency of this size has a cost structure to match, and paid social is one practice among many rather than the main event.
7. Elevation Marketing — best for a brand and demand programme under one roof
Arizona, B2B full service. Brand strategy, creative, demand generation and paid media, with a strong manufacturing, healthcare and technology client base and campaign work that leans more on positioning than on channel mechanics. Reads as a sensible alternative for a company whose Refine Labs engagement kept surfacing the same conclusion, that the offer and the message were the constraint rather than the media buying. Tradeoff: less of a performance marketing specialist than most of this list. If you want weekly optimisation against a pipeline target, check how the reporting cadence actually works before signing.
8. Gripped — best for UK and European B2B tech at a lower entry point
London. B2B SaaS and technology growth agency running paid, SEO, content and web together, aimed at the mid market rather than at enterprise. Publishes a good deal of practical material and works at budgets below the US demand programme floor. For a European company that was looking at Refine Labs mainly for the methodology, this covers similar ground in the same timezone as your team. Tradeoff: does not carry the US enterprise reference list, and you are buying a broad growth service rather than a deep LinkedIn Ads practice.
9. YOYABA — best for DACH and European B2B SaaS demand generation
Hamburg. Demand generation for B2B SaaS across the German speaking market and wider Europe, built explicitly on the demand generation rather than lead generation thesis, with paid social as the primary channel and a strong creative practice attached. The closest philosophical match to Refine Labs on this list, in a different market. Tradeoff: the centre of gravity is DACH. If your pipeline target is North American, the buyer research and creative instincts are pointed at a different market.
Side by side
| Agency | Best for | Publishes pricing | Entry point | Primary channel focus |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kiin | LinkedIn led programmes at a lower floor | Yes | $2,500 a month | LinkedIn, then Google capture |
| Refine Labs | Series B+ demand programmes | Yes | $14,000 a month | Multi channel paid |
| Directive | Enterprise scale performance | No | Not stated | Multi channel paid and content |
| Powered by Search | Paid plus SEO, GEO and PR as one stack | No | Not stated | Organic and paid together |
| Impactable | LinkedIn Ads at low budgets | No | Not stated | |
| Ironpaper | Long cycle enterprise and industrial | No | Not stated | ABM and demand generation |
| Walker Sands | Earned media alongside demand | No | Not stated | PR, brand and demand |
| Elevation Marketing | Brand and demand together | No | Not stated | Brand led campaigns |
| Gripped | UK and EU mid market tech | No | Not stated | Paid, SEO and content |
| YOYABA | DACH and European SaaS | No | Not stated | Paid social |
What the media actually costs, so you can sanity check the fee
A retainer only makes sense next to the media it manages. Every cost figure on this page comes from our own panel: 1,000+ advertiser accounts, 22,942 campaigns and $79 million of measured LinkedIn spend across 1.34 billion impressions in the twelve months to 7 September 2026. Medians across advertiser accounts, never pooled totals. LinkedIn Audience Network delivery excluded.
| Measure | Median across advertiser accounts |
|---|---|
| Cost per landing page click | $14.83 |
| Cost per lead form open | $18.21 |
| Cost per completed lead form submission | $140.49 |
| Lead form completion rate | 11.6% |
| Median cost per demo request | $350 |
Two findings from that panel change how you should read any agency’s pitch. First, across 119 accounts where we could measure the whole path, the gap between the cheapest and most expensive cost per booked meeting was 121x, and traffic price explained only 1.5x of it. Conversion rate explained 72x. An agency that talks only about CPM and bid strategy is discussing the small half of the problem. Second, 88% of lead form opens are abandoned, and only 35.7% of advertisers run all three funnel layers at all. Ask any agency on this list what they do about those two numbers specifically.
When Refine Labs is still the right answer
If you are Series B or later, spending north of $100,000 a month across several channels, and the problem is that nobody owns demand generation strategy internally, the $26,000 full service tier is priced sensibly for what it contains and very few agencies on this list can staff it. The $35,000 Revenue Performance Assessment is also a genuinely useful product with no long term commitment attached, and if what you actually need is a diagnosis rather than a supplier, buying six weeks of analysis is cheaper and faster than hiring an agency to find out. We would say the same about it if it were ours.
How to choose
Work down in this order. Budget first. If your total monthly media is under about $40,000, a $14,000 management fee is the wrong shape regardless of quality, and the question becomes which of the lower floor options on this list fits. Then the actual gap. Write down whether the constraint is strategy, execution, creative volume, or measurement. Most companies name strategy and turn out to mean creative. Then channel concentration. If one channel is most of the spend, prefer depth. If you are genuinely running six, prefer breadth. Then measurement. Ask what the agency reports on in month three, and whether the answer is pipeline by account or a dashboard of platform metrics. Then pricing transparency, because an agency that will not give you a number before a discovery call is telling you something about how it prices.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Refine Labs cost?
Paid media management starts at $14,000 a month on a six month minimum. Full service starts at $26,000 a month, creative only at $5,000 a month on a three month minimum, and the Revenue Performance Assessment is a flat $35,000 for six weeks. All exclude media spend and all are scoped to budget size. Read from their published pricing page on 29 September 2026.
Is Refine Labs still operating?
Yes. Founder Chris Walker sold his remaining shares in July 2025 and the agency is independently owned and led by CEO Megan Bowen. It continues to take clients and publish its pricing.
What is the cheapest alternative to Refine Labs?
Of the agencies here that publish fees, Kiin starts at $2,500 a month. Impactable and Gripped both work below the US demand programme floor but do not publish rates. Cheaper is only better if the scope matches the gap you actually have.
Do I need a demand generation agency or a LinkedIn Ads agency?
If you can state clearly what your company says to the market and to whom, and the problem is that the campaigns are not performing, you need a channel specialist. If you cannot, a channel specialist will spend your budget faster without fixing anything. That is the honest dividing line between the two halves of this list.
Which alternatives publish their pricing?
Refine Labs and Kiin. Every other agency on this page requires a sales conversation to get a number, which is normal in this category but worth knowing before you book seven calls.
Is a six month minimum standard?
For demand programme agencies, yes, and there is a defensible reason: paid programmes aimed at demand creation rather than capture do not produce a readable signal in thirty days. Be more sceptical of a six month lock on a pure execution engagement, where the work is legible much sooner.
How should I compare agency fees against media spend?
As a percentage of total programme cost. A $14,000 fee on $100,000 of media is 12% of the programme. The same fee on $20,000 of media is 41%, and at that ratio you are buying a consultant with an ad account attached. Our panel medians above give you the media side of that sum.