The campaign missed its numbers, and the client’s lawyer calls that negligence.Founded by a television editor who also writes software.
We insure digital, social media, SEO and performance marketing agencies with professional and media liability for the work, cyber for client ad accounts, and crime coverage for wire fraud.
Tell us the situation.
One licensed human replies the same business day — not five agents, not an auto-responder. If the policy you have is already the right one, we will tell you.
We use this to quote and service your insurance, and we do not sell it or pass it to lead networks. Privacy policy.
Your creative and your client logins get read by someone who has handled both.
Kevin Kelsey
Founder | Principal Agent
Boring’s founder, Kevin Kelsey, edited network TV for fifteen years before he sold a policy. He also ran compliance and risk for some of Hollywood’s biggest production companies. A music license or a talent release is familiar ground. He writes software too, and owns two post-production software products, Manifest Post and B/side. So when a client asks your agency for media liability, E&O and cyber, the clause is read by someone who has done both jobs.
Send us what you have. We’ll tell you if it’s right.
Your current policy paperwork, a renewal notice, or nothing at all. A licensed agent reads it and replies the same business day.
What marketing agency businesses actually need.
Professional liability (E&O)
Claims that your strategy, execution or advice cost a client money: a campaign that burned the budget, a missed launch date, a tracking error that hid a month of spend.
Without it — General liability answers injury and property damage. A client’s lost revenue is neither, so the claim agencies actually get lands on nothing.
Media liability
Copyright and trademark infringement, defamation, invasion of privacy and misuse of a likeness in the content you make and publish for clients.
Without it — The general liability form excludes personal and advertising injury for businesses whose work is advertising or website content, and it excludes infringement in work made for others.
Cyber liability
A breach of your systems or of the client ad, social and analytics accounts you log into, including the response, the notification and the client’s claim against you.
Without it — One phished login can reach every client account the agency manages, and the client’s loss becomes your liability.
Crime and social engineering
Money sent on fraudulent instructions: a spoofed vendor invoice, a changed bank detail, an email that looked like the client.
Without it — Cyber forms commonly exclude a transfer a person authorized, even when the person was tricked, so it needs its own coverage.
General liability
Injury and property damage at your office, at a client’s office and at an event or shoot you run.
Without it — Leases, coworking spaces and client onboarding portals ask for the certificate before anything else.
Workers comp and employment practices
Injury to employees, required by state law once you hire, and claims of wrongful termination, discrimination or misclassification.
Without it — Remote hires add states to the policy, and a contractor the state calls an employee is a payroll audit waiting to happen.
What the regulators actually wrote down.
The standard ISO general liability form excludes personal and advertising injury for any insured whose business is advertising, broadcasting, publishing or telecasting, or designing or determining the content of websites for others, which describes most agencies.
ISO Commercial General Liability Coverage Form CG 00 01 04 13, Coverage B, exclusion j · checked 2026-10-04
The same form excludes copyright, patent, trademark and trade secret infringement except infringement of copyright, trade dress or slogan in your own advertisement, so creative made for a client falls outside it.
ISO Commercial General Liability Coverage Form CG 00 01 04 13, Coverage B, exclusion i · checked 2026-10-04
A copyright owner can elect statutory damages of $750 to $30,000 per work infringed, and up to $150,000 per work where the infringement was willful, without proving any actual loss.
17 U.S.C. § 504(c) · checked 2026-10-04
The FTC’s Endorsement Guides state that advertising agencies, public relations firms, review brokers and reputation management companies may be liable for their roles in creating or disseminating endorsements they know or should know are deceptive, and for hiring and directing endorsers who fail to disclose a material connection.
FTC Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, 16 CFR § 255.1(d) · checked 2026-10-04
The FTC’s rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, published in August 2024, prohibits fake and purchased reviews, review suppression, and selling or buying fake followers or views to misrepresent influence for a commercial purpose.
Trade Regulation Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465 (89 FR 68077) · checked 2026-10-04
The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded 21,442 business email compromise complaints in 2024, with reported losses of $2,770,151,146.
FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2024 Internet Crime Report · checked 2026-10-04
The claims we actually see.
Ordered by how often we see them, not by how dramatic they are. Each one names the coverage that answers it — and the policy people wrongly assume already does.
Most common
A client says the campaign failed and wants the fees back plus the revenue it expected
Covered by Professional liability, for the negligence claim and its defense
Most forms will not refund your own fees or pay on a guarantee of results you wrote into the proposal. What they defend is the allegation that the work was done negligently.
Most common
A demand letter over a stock photo, a font or a music bed in a client ad
Covered by Media liability, copyright and trademark
Statutory damages run up to $30,000 per work without proof of loss. A license that covered the image for a blog post may not cover it in paid social.
Common
A team member is phished and a client’s ad account is taken over and spent
Covered by Cyber, first-party response and third-party liability
The ad spend itself can fall between cyber and crime. Ask how each form treats funds spent through a compromised platform account before you need the answer.
Less common, severe
An influencer campaign runs without proper disclosure and the FTC or a competitor objects
Covered by Media liability defense, where the form includes regulatory proceedings
Fines and penalties are usually excluded, and some forms exclude regulatory actions entirely. The FTC names agencies, not only brands.
Designers, with their own page.
Every one of these is written for that specific operation — the coverages it needs, the questions underwriters ask it, and what it usually gets wrong.
- Graphic Designers
A graphic designer needs professional liability for a client who says the work cost them money, and media liability for the font, photo or logo claim, because general liability excludes infringement in work made for clients. Add cyber if you hold client files and logins, and general liability for a lease or a client’s vendor portal.
- Web Designers & Developers
A web designer or developer needs technology errors and omissions for a site or a store that fails and costs the client money, cyber for the client data and hosting you touch, and media liability for the images and copy you publish, because general liability excludes businesses that design website content for others.
What the insurance company will ask about your marketing agency business
We read the applications the markets use for businesses in this field and pulled out what they actually ask. Have these answers ready and a quote takes a day instead of a week, because nobody has to come back to you for the missing piece.
About the business
- What is your firm's name and any other names it goes by?
- When was your firm established?
- What type of business structure do you have (individual, corporation, partnership, LLC, or other)?
- What is your annual revenue?
- How many employees do you have?
How you operate
- What percentage of your income comes from different types of work (audit, bookkeeping, tax, valuation, consulting, etc.)?
- Do you use engagement letters with all clients?
- Do you update your engagement letters every year?
- Do you use letters to decline or disengage from clients you don't take on or decide to drop?
- Do you have written procedures for screening clients and avoiding conflicts of interest?
Safety and controls
- Do you have written risk management procedures in place?
- Do you have a written safety and loss control manual?
- Do your client contracts include conflict resolution language?
- Do you require outside legal counsel to review your contracts before you sign them?
- Do you carry employee dishonesty or crime coverage?
Your history
- Have you had any incidents, claims, or losses that might have been covered by professional liability insurance before you apply?
- Have you had any professional licenses suspended or revoked in the past five years?
- Have you filed for bankruptcy in the last three years?
- Have you gone through a peer or quality review, and if so, when and with what results?
Money and people
- Do you handle or have discretionary control over client funds?
- Do you bring in subcontractors to do work?
- Has your firm merged, been acquired, or entered into any joint ventures in the past five years?
Have these ready
- Your current insurance policy expiration date
- Your last five years of claims history from your current insurer, called loss runs
- A copy of your engagement letter template
- Documentation of any client screening or conflict-of-interest procedures you have in place
You answer what you can; a licensed agent fills the rest with you.
What our marketing agency clients ask us.
What insurance does a marketing agency need?
Professional liability and media liability first, because those answer the claims an agency actually gets: the client who says the work cost them money, and the rights holder who says the work used their image, music or words. Then cyber if you hold client logins or data, crime coverage if money moves through your accounts, general liability for the lease and the client portals, and workers comp once you have employees. A small agency can often buy the first three on one combined form.
A client contract requires $2M of professional liability. What is that?
It means an errors and omissions policy that will pay up to $2M for a claim that your work caused the client a financial loss, usually written on a claims-made basis. The contract may call it E&O, professional liability or professional indemnity; they are the same purchase. Check whether the clause also asks for media liability or cyber, because those are often required in the same sentence, and whether it wants the limit per claim or in the aggregate.
What client contracts require from an agency, clause by clause
What is the difference between media liability and professional liability?
Professional liability answers a claim from your client that the work was done badly. Media liability answers a claim from someone else that the content wronged them: a photographer whose image you used, a competitor named in a comparison ad, a person whose face appeared without a release. An agency faces both, and many agency forms combine them. If yours covers only one, the certificate will show it and a client’s procurement team will notice.
Does E&O cover copyright infringement in ads?
A generic professional liability form often does not, and general liability excludes it for work made for clients. Copyright and trademark claims sit in media liability, either as its own policy or as a part of an agency E&O form that says so in writing. Read the insuring agreement for the words infringement of copyright, trademark, trade dress or slogan. If they are missing, the stock photo letter is yours to pay.
We log into our clients’ Google, Meta and analytics accounts. Do we need cyber insurance?
Yes, and say so on the application. Access to client platforms is the exposure an underwriter asks about first for an agency, because a single compromised login can reach every account you manage. Cyber covers the response and the client’s claim against you. Multi-factor authentication on every client account, a password manager and removing access when a project ends are what the application asks about, and they move the price.
A client says our campaign did not deliver and wants their money back. Is that covered?
The negligence allegation and the defense usually are. A refund of your own fees usually is not, and neither is a promise of specific results you wrote into the proposal, because insurers exclude guarantees. That is the practical reason to keep performance language in a proposal as a target rather than a commitment, and to document what the client approved.
How much does E&O cost for a marketing agency?
We do not publish a figure for agencies yet, because we have not placed enough of them to quote our own median honestly. What moves the price is revenue, the mix of services, the industries your clients are in, the limit the contract names and your claims history. Regulated clients such as health, finance, cannabis and supplements rate higher, and so does running paid media with client money. A clean application with written client contracts gets the best quote.
I freelance and I am about to hire. What changes?
Three things change, in this order. Your first employee brings workers comp, which most states require from the first hire. Subcontractors you pay are working under your contract, so your E&O has to cover work they do on your behalf. And the client contracts get bigger, which raises the limits they ask for. A freelance policy in your own name usually has to be rewritten for the business entity, with the retroactive date carried over so earlier work stays covered.
We use AI to write copy and make images. Does that change our insurance?
It can. Some 2026 policies add generative AI exclusions to general liability and professional lines, and some carriers cover AI output in writing. Material generated wholly by AI may also not be protected by copyright, which matters when a client contract makes you assign copyright in the work. Tell the underwriter which tools you use and how a person edits the output, and ask for affirmative AI wording rather than silence.
We run influencer campaigns. What is our exposure?
The FTC’s Endorsement Guides say an agency that hires and directs endorsers can be liable when they fail to disclose the connection, and the 2024 review rule bans fake reviews and bought followers. A brief that requires clear disclosure, and a record that you checked the posts, is the defense. Media liability can defend a related claim where the form includes regulatory proceedings, but fines and penalties are generally not insurable.
Our certificate shows $1,000,000 for personal and advertising injury. Does that cover our client work?
Usually not. That line is Coverage B of your general liability policy, and the standard form removes Coverage B entirely for a business whose work is advertising, publishing or designing website content for others. Even where it applies, it covers infringement only in your own ads. The defamation, privacy and copyright claims that come from client work belong on media liability.
What personal and advertising injury covers, and what it excludes
Can I ask ChatGPT or another assistant to send you the request?
Yes. Paste the insurance section of your client contract into the assistant and ask it to prefill our quote form at boring.insure/quote with your agency name, contact details and the exact limits the contract names in the comments. Nothing is sent until you review it and press send, and a licensed agent reads every request. Assistants can find the full instructions at boring.insure/for-assistants.
What does a marketing agency insurance application ask for?
The applications for marketing agency businesses ask about 4 things above all: what is your firm's name and any other names it goes by; what percentage of your income comes from different types of work (audit, bookkeeping, tax, valuation, consulting, etc.); do you have written risk management procedures in place; have you had any incidents, claims, or losses that might have been covered by professional liability insurance before you apply. Have your current insurance policy expiration date and your last five years of claims history from your current insurer, called loss runs ready and a quote takes a day instead of a week.
Also in this family
Commercial insurance is 96% of what we do — it is not a department here, it is the whole business. Not ready to talk? The guides answer the questions this page raises in more depth. Already insured with us and need a certificate or a policy change? Ask the service team rather than starting a quote — it is faster and it goes to the people whose job it is. We also write home and auto, which is usually cheaper alongside the business policy than apart from it.
Handed a lease, a vendor packet or a client contract with insurance requirements? Paste it into the COI Requirements Decoder to see what each one means for your business, or read what the requirements mean.