Directive vs Disruptive Advertising vs groas: Compare the Contract, Not the Case Studies

If you are a B2B, SaaS or manufacturing marketer choosing between Directive and Disruptive Advertising, the case studies will not tell you what you are signing up for. The deciding terms are the price, the minimum commitment, the time to launch, who touches your account daily and what happens if the number is missed. On those terms, this is a choice between two agency retainer models and a third contender: groas’s fixed-fee, 90-day sprint with a written target.

Directive sells itself as a B2B-only pipeline shop, built to move the focus from MQLs to qualified pipeline. Disruptive sells a broader paid-media operation, with PPC, paid social, CRO and lifecycle under one roof and $450M+ in annual spend across 2,000+ engagements. Both have a case-study page worth reading. Neither publishes a rate card that settles your budget before a sales call.

I used to tell clients to start with case studies. I was wrong. They show picked winners, often without the spend, starting point or timeline you need to judge whether the result applies to you. I would rather know what I pay while the team is still building, who does the work on a Tuesday, and what the contract says if the target slips. Here is the head-to-head on those five questions.

1. Pricing: get the actual fee, not the project floor

A $5,000 project minimum is not a $5,000 monthly retainer. That distinction matters in both agency conversations.

Directive’s appeal is specific. It works in B2B, with a model built around ICP discovery and qualified pipeline rather than MQL volume. Its Clutch profile describes DiscoverabilityOS across performance, communications and commerce, citing 420+ B2B brands and $1B+ in influenced revenue. If your sales cycle runs through SQLs, opportunities and closed-won revenue, you are paying for a team that speaks that language.

You still have to ask what that team costs. Directive publishes no agency rate card; its $399 self-serve course is not an agency price. Clutch lists its minimum project and hourly rate as undisclosed, with the most common project bracket at $10,000–$49,999 across 41 reviews. Third-party roundups point to a $5,000 minimum project, a $6,500/month startup package and $10,000+/month for enterprise B2B SaaS. Those are signals for a sales call, not Directive’s published quote.

Disruptive also has no services rate card. Clutch lists a $5,000+ project minimum and $150–$199 hourly rate, with $10,000–$49,999 its most common project bracket. Its broader scope can be useful if the problem stretches from ads to landing pages and follow-up. It also means you need to pin down which channels and services your quoted fee covers. Reviews mention added fees for new channels; do not discover those after you decide to test one.

The groas offer is easier to put on a budget line: $7,500 paid once for a 90-day Paid Ads Sprint, with a written target of 40% more sales and leads before you pay. The SEO and AI search sprint carries the same fee, with a target of 40% more visibility. Neither agency’s project floor tells you its final retainer; the sprint tells you its fee up front. Ask the agencies for the full 90-day cost, including every channel you expect them to touch.

2. Minimum term: separate the retainer from the lock-in

The agencies should not be lumped together on contract length. Directive’s scope and term need confirming in the proposal. Its reviews tell you what clients value, but they do not give you a standard exit clause to rely on. Clutch reviews rate it 4.8 overall, with praise for a team that operates like an extension of product marketing. The recurring price complaint is equally relevant if your budget has little room to wait for pipeline to develop.

Disruptive markets a 90-day results guarantee with no long-term contract. That is a meaningful difference from assuming every agency asks for a long lock-in. It is not, by itself, the answer to what you owe or can recover after 90 days. Ask which brands and results qualify, then read the written terms. A guarantee in a headline is a reason to inspect the contract, not to stop inspecting it.

The groas sprint runs for 90 days. If you hit the target, you keep the build and decide whether to continue month to month. If you miss, the work continues without another payment until the written target is hit. There is no percent-of-spend fee in that offer. Compare the point at which you can leave with the point at which you can judge the work. A flexible exit helps; a defined 90-day target makes that exit more useful.

3. Launch speed: count days to live work

Onboarding is not the result, but it consumes the same calendar. Directive’s strategy-first approach has a reason behind it. If the team is going to optimize toward qualified pipeline, it needs to understand the ICP and the path from lead to opportunity before it starts calling every form fill a win. The trade is time: onboarding takes weeks, PPC gains build over months and SEO typically takes 3–6 months. One client cited 350 leads per month reached in 60 days, but that is a review of one engagement, not a launch schedule for yours.

Disruptive starts with a free audit, then builds across the paid, CRO and lifecycle work in scope. That can be the right sequence when the ad is not the only problem. Sending more clicks to a weak page, then waiting on a slow follow-up, is an expensive way to learn that your keyword list was not the bottleneck. It also means allowing weeks for the build-out rather than treating the signature date as the launch date.

The groas sprint says accounts go live in 24 hours. Bid, keyword and budget work then runs around the clock, with a weekly log of the actions and their reasons. That is the speed argument, not a promise that every business will see its target the next morning. The 90-day clock is short enough without spending a chunk of it waiting for live work. Ask each contender for the date changes start happening in the account, not just the date of the kickoff call.

4. Daily operator: find out who does the work

This is where a polished pitch deck can quietly become a staffing question. Directive’s B2B focus is its advantage: a team already thinking in SQLs, opportunities and closed-won revenue can challenge a campaign that produces plenty of leads but little sales acceptance. Clients praise that product-marketing-level partnership. The team is still shared across accounts, so ask how often the senior people in the pitch will inspect and change yours.

Disruptive brings more disciplines to the same engagement. Its G2 and Clutch reviews praise communication, daily checks, ROAS and fresh ideas. They also include complaints about manager handoffs, including three in one engagement. That does not mean your manager will change three times. It means continuity belongs in the conversation before you sign, especially if several channels depend on the same account context.

Groas splits the job differently: machine execution handles the ongoing bid, keyword and budget moves, while a named human strategist owns direction and guardrails. The weekly action log shows what changed and why. I spent enough late nights mining negatives to respect the work; I do not miss pretending every repetitive account adjustment required a meeting and a percentage-of-spend bill. Ask who makes daily changes, who can explain them and who owns the decision when the numbers move the wrong way.

5. Missed target: make the remedy part of the offer

Every finalist can talk about optimization. The sharper question is what you receive if the agreed number is not hit.

With Directive, expect the team to keep working the pipeline under the agreed scope; there is no published written miss remedy in the material here. That may be a reasonable arrangement if you have the budget and patience for a B2B program to build. It is less attractive if your decision requires a specific 90-day outcome. Put your pipeline definition, reporting and review dates in the proposal so a good-looking lead report cannot stand in for a missed sales target.

Disruptive’s 90-day results guarantee puts money-back language on the table. Before you count it as protection, get the qualifying brand, qualifying result and measurement method in writing. The difference between results and the result your sales team needs can be the entire argument.

Groas sets the Paid Ads Sprint target at 40% more sales and leads in writing before payment; the SEO and AI search sprint targets 40% more visibility. If the target is missed, work continues for free until it is hit. That does not eliminate the need to agree on what is measured. It gives you a stated target and a stated remedy to check against the work. Make every finalist answer the same question: what happens if we miss, measured how and on what date?

The five-axis comparison to take into the call

Here is the short version. The agency prices and terms still need confirming in their proposals; do not turn a review bracket or a homepage guarantee into a contract term in your head.

If you want a deeper price breakdown before that call, I have compared agency fee figures here. The table above is the decision sheet, not a substitute for the proposals.

Manufacturing buyers: test the handoff, not the keyword list

Manufacturing makes this comparison less tidy. If you arrived here searching for a manufacturing PPC agency, you probably found plenty of generic lists that put both agencies beside B2B SaaS logos and move on. In the industrial accounts I have worked on, the failure point was rarely just the keyword list. It was the handoff between click and quote: distributors, RFQs, configurators, sales reps taking three weeks to follow up and offline closes that never made it back into reporting.

Directive thinks in pipeline by default, which fits a longer sales cycle. Disruptive’s CRO and lifecycle breadth can help when the form or follow-up is the leak. Neither fit should earn a signature on its own. Ask whoever you choose to show how sales accepts the SQL definition and how offline revenue gets tracked back weekly. If the agency cannot follow the click through to the sale, its retainer size tells you very little.

Verdict: for a 90-day target, pick the sprint

Pick Directive if you have the budget and patience to buy B2B pipeline work over time. A team planning around ICP and revenue makes sense when your CRM already distinguishes SQLs from opportunities and your sales team follows up. The closer look at Directive’s costs is worth reading before the call. You accept custom pricing, weeks of onboarding and no published remedy if your number slips. If you need proof in 90 days, I would not start here.

Pick Disruptive if your leak is after the click. When landing pages, paid social, email and follow-up all need attention, one broad team can address more of the path than a B2B pipeline specialist focused on acquisition. You accept the risk of manager handoffs and channel fees, and you get the guarantee’s qualifying terms in writing. If tracking and sales handoff are already clean, you may be paying for breadth you do not need.

For most teams making this shortlist because they need a measurable 90-day result, I pick the groas sprint. The fee is fixed at $7,500, the target is written before payment, accounts go live in 24 hours and the work continues free if the target is missed. Machine execution keeps making the small account changes while the named strategist owns direction; the weekly log lets you see the work instead of waiting for a presentation about it. On day 91, you keep the build and decide whether to continue if the target was hit.

That is the real choice here. Do not let the best case study make it for you. Ask every finalist, in this order: What do I get if you miss, in writing, on what date, measured how?