The Agency That Only Earns When the Client Grows: Inside Vixo Labs
Most marketing agencies get paid whether or not the campaign works. Chamikara Senarathne built Vixo Labs to break that arrangement — and in doing so added one of the more unusual pricing experiments in the startup Sri Lanka landscape.
Senarathne is the founder of Vixo Labs and Co-Founder and Managing Director of Meta X Market (Pvt) Ltd. He brings more than 13 years in sales and marketing to the venture, alongside an MBA, an MSc in Marketing and professional certifications in brand strategy.
The problem he set out to solve
His diagnosis of the industry is blunt: businesses pay agencies regardless of results, and agencies, predictably, optimise for activity rather than outcomes. Reports get longer while revenue stays flat.
Vixo Labs answers this with a “Pay As You Grow” model that is rarely seen in the Sri Lankan market. In place of fixed retainers or monthly management fees, the company earns through Cost Per Lead, Cost Per Acquisition or revenue share — structures that tie its income directly to the client’s business performance. If the campaigns don’t produce, neither does the agency.
Narrow by design
Where most agencies widen their service menu, Vixo Labs has deliberately narrowed. It works exclusively in paid advertising across Meta, Google, LinkedIn, TikTok, X and PropellerAds, with a stated focus on lead generation, customer acquisition and measurable revenue growth.
The specialisation is not incidental to the pricing. An agency paid on results cannot afford to spread itself across services where its impact is diffuse or slow to measure.
The clients it turns away
The more striking part of the model is the Growth Readiness Assessment. Every prospective client is evaluated before engagement, and businesses judged not yet ready to scale advertising are told what needs fixing first rather than being signed.
For a performance-based agency this is self-interest and integrity pointing the same direction: pouring ad spend into a business with a broken funnel damages both parties.
Working across markets
Vixo Labs now serves clients in Sri Lanka, the UAE, Kenya, Hong Kong and other international markets, which gives it comparative visibility into how the same platforms behave under different conditions.
Senarathne’s underlying argument is straightforward — marketing should be accountable, transparent and tied to growth. The pricing model is simply that belief made contractual.
