Türkiye has the widest gap in Europe between what video costs and what a seller can pay for it. A studio day in Istanbul is priced for brand work and advertising agencies, not for a marketplace seller who needs twenty listing clips a month at a price that fits a lira budget.
That gap is why AI production has a market here at all. It is also why pricing has to be done in a way that is unusual for a services business: in lira, monthly, with the currency risk priced in once and disclosed.
What the market can actually pay
Start from what a Turkish e-commerce seller earns per order, not from what production costs elsewhere. A seller moving a mid-priced product needs a listing video that pays for itself in a handful of sales, not one that requires a campaign to justify.
| Buyer | What they need | What they can pay | What that implies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Micro seller, one SKU set | 3-5 listing videos | 1,900-2,500 TL each | Price per asset, no retainer |
| Growing seller, 20-50 SKUs | Catalogue batch | 16,000-22,000 TL per ten | Batch pricing, monthly cycle |
| Established brand | 20-40 assets a month | 28,000-38,000 TL a month | Retainer with capped revisions |
| Istanbul agency | White-label volume | from $70 per video | One rate card for every buyer |
| Export seller | Turkish + English | +20% over base | Language variant pricing |
Everything above is quoted in lira because that is the currency the buyer thinks in. The euro equivalents on the invoice are a courtesy for the agency buyer, not the price.
Why the lira changes how you price
This is the part foreign suppliers get wrong, and it is not a creative question.
Your costs — generation credits, subscriptions, editors, reviewers — are largely in hard currency. Your revenue is in lira. Over a quarter, the exchange rate can move enough to wipe out a margin that looked healthy in the proposal, and because the price was fixed contractually, the loss is yours.
Three practical rules:
Reprice monthly, not annually. State the lira figure for the coming month and hold it. A price that moves fortnightly destroys trust; a price that moves monthly is normal in a market where everything imported moves monthly.
Build the buffer in once, and say so. Add a small percentage at the start of the engagement, describe it as currency protection rather than a margin increase, and the conversation is over. Clients in Türkiye understand this instinctively because they do it themselves.
Quote the retainer in lira, not in euro with a lira conversion. A euro-denominated retainer with a conversion note means the client's budget is uncertain every month, which is the fastest route to a cancelled renewal.
| Currency approach | Margin risk | Client experience | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lira, fixed annually | High — you absorb all movement | Predictable, happy | Only inside a large buffer |
| Lira, repriced monthly | Low | Normal, expected | Works |
| Euro with lira conversion | Low | Unpredictable budget | Fails at renewal |
| Lira with quarterly review | Medium | Some surprises | Acceptable for agencies |
KDV, invoicing and the paperwork
Standard KDV in Türkiye is 20%, and business buyers expect a compliant invoice rather than a payment link and goodwill.
Four things to have in place before the first client, not after:
- A correct invoice showing KDV separately. A single inclusive figure is not what an accountant wants, and it makes the supplier look informal.
- e-Fatura capability, or a partner who can issue it. Larger Turkish businesses are inside the electronic invoice system and cannot simply accept a PDF.
- A written scope with deliverables, revisions and dates. Turkish business culture documents things, and a WhatsApp thread will not survive the first disagreement.
- Payment terms set by client size. Agencies work to 30-45 days; a micro seller should pay upfront. Asking for that is normal rather than rude.
What a Turkish agency should charge
If you are the agency rather than the supplier, the pricing question is different: you are selling judgement and a client relationship, not assets. What we charge is public — from $70 a finished video, invoiced in USD — and what you invoice your own client is yours to set. We do not publish a client-facing rate, and we do not discuss one with your clients.
What does need deciding, because it is what keeps a batch price a batch price:
- Revisions. Two rounds included, further rounds quoted at a stated rate. This is the clause that decides whether the batch stays profitable.
- Language variants. Turkish plus English on the same footage is text and voice, not a new production. Price it as a variant, not a project.
- Review. Bundle the native Turkish review into the price. The moment it is an optional line item it gets removed, and the ad then sounds foreign.
The batch price survives one specific condition: revisions are capped in writing. In a market where a client can send categorical feedback for a week, an uncapped revision loop converts a healthy batch price into a loss without anybody noticing.
The commercial model in full — including the capacity argument that decides whether to hire or to buy — is in white-label AI video for Turkish agencies, and the buyer-side view of the same numbers is in the 2026 AI video production cost breakdown.
What studio production costs, for contrast
The comparison that wins the pitch in Türkiye is not AI versus a competitor's AI. It is one production day versus a month of assets.
| Route | Output in a month | Fixed cost | Scales? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio day, Istanbul | 3-5 finished videos | Producer, crew, location, talent | No |
| Freelance editor | 8-12 videos | Day rate plus briefing | Partly |
| AI production, per video | 20-40 videos | None | Yes |
| Agency retainer on AI production | 20-40 videos, managed | Reviewer plus PM time | Yes |
A studio day also requires the client to have the product ready, a location, and approval in the room. An AI batch requires a product and a brief. For a seller whose catalogue changes weekly, that difference decides which supplier exists at all.
What an agency should not buy
One pattern is worth naming because it looks like a saving and is not. A Turkish agency that buys production on a per-video basis and then absorbs every revision request internally is, in effect, selling uncapped work at a capped price. The supplier's invoice is fixed; the agency's cost is not.
The fix is not to negotiate harder with the supplier. It is to pass the revision boundary through to the client in the same language it was received — two rounds included, further rounds at a stated rate — and to make the boundary visible in the proposal rather than buried in the terms. Agencies that do this lose a small number of price-sensitive clients and keep the rest for years.
A second pattern: buying a large batch upfront to secure a lower per-video rate, without a confirmed client demand for the assets. Inventory in video does not appreciate. A batch produced in September for a campaign that moved to January will need re-cutting for a new offer, which erases the discount and adds a week.
Where to hold the line
Three pricing behaviours that protect the business, and one that does not.
Charge per finished video, never per generation credit. A per-credit price makes the client's bill a function of your retries, and one bad week makes the whole pricing model look arbitrary.
Bundle the native Turkish review into the price. The moment it is an optional line item, it is removed, and the ad then sounds foreign — which is a worse outcome for the client and a blame problem for you.
Price the second language as a variant, not a project. Turkish plus English on the same footage is text and voice, not a new production. Charging it as a new project is the fastest way to lose a client who compares quotes.
What does not protect the business: discounting to win a micro seller. A 1,900 TL listing video is already the low end; below that, the admin cost exceeds the margin, and micro sellers who buy on price are the first to leave.
What a batch actually costs you to produce
A rate card is only useful if it survives contact with the cost side. What decides that is not the model bill — three things do, and each one contradicts an assumption suppliers bring from other markets.
Generation is not the cost. Model usage is close to irrelevant next to editing and review. A supplier who competes by finding cheaper credits is optimising the smallest line in the business, which is why per-credit pricing is a losing position.
Review is the differentiator and the cost. Turkish review is the line that separates an ad that lands from one that reads foreign. It is also the first line a client asks to remove to save money, which is why it belongs inside the base price rather than on a separate line.
Revisions decide whether the batch price survives. Two rounds inside the batch price is healthy. A fourth round is a loss, and the drift from two to four is gradual and always framed as a small favour. The cap is not a negotiating position; it is the mechanism that keeps the business viable.
Applied to a ten-video batch, a disciplined pipeline with a capped revision policy keeps the batch profitable. An undisciplined one does not, and the supplier usually cannot say which happened.
The three-month view
Türkiye's AI adoption moved from 4.42% in 2024 to 7.41% in 2025 — slow, and slow is good for a supplier. It means demand is already there and the supply of anyone who can serve it in Turkish at a volume price is thin.
Set the pricing once, review it monthly against the exchange rate, cap the revisions, and put the review pass in the base price. That combination is what makes a lira-denominated book of business survive its second quarter — which is the point at which most foreign suppliers discover the currency problem too late.
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