Choosing a media buying agency on evidence

Agencies with a verified published price

How to buy media buying

1. Settle the fee model before the plan. A percentage of spend, a flat retainer, a per-channel fee and a performance component create different incentives. A percentage rewards spending more; a flat fee rewards spending less time. Name the model, the rate and what triggers a change to it in writing.
2. Ask who owns the ad accounts. Accounts, pixels, audience lists, conversion tracking and creative files should sit in your organisation with the agency granted access. Anything held in the agency's own account is leverage at renewal and a rebuild if you leave.
3. Demand full-cost transparency. Ask for platform invoices or raw platform reporting alongside the agency report, and ask directly whether any inventory is resold to you at a markup rather than passed through at cost. The answer should be in the contract, not the conversation.
4. Agree the measurement before launch. Which conversions count, how they are deduplicated across channels, what the attribution window is, and what the pre-campaign baseline was. Settle it first, because after launch every measurement change reads as a result.

What you are actually paying the agency for

Three things, and it is worth pricing them separately in your head. Planning: which channels and audiences get the budget and why, based on where your buyers are rather than where the agency has a relationship. Buying and management: setting up campaigns, negotiating or bidding for inventory, and the daily work of pacing and optimisation. Reporting: making the result legible and honest, including the parts that did not work. An agency that is strong on buying and weak on planning will run efficient campaigns aimed at the wrong people, which is the most expensive failure in the category.

In auction-based channels the buying craft is narrower than it sounds, because the platform decides the price. Google publishes how its auction works: ad rank is a combination of bid, the quality of the ads and landing page, thresholds, the competitiveness of the auction and the context of the search, and a higher bid on its own does not win the position. The agency's leverage is therefore in relevance, structure and creative, which are checkable, rather than in a claimed ability to buy cheaper.

Fee models, markups and the conflict to name out loud

The conflict is structural rather than sinister: an agency paid a share of spend earns more when you spend more, whatever the return. That model can still be the right one for a large, stable programme, but it needs a guard rail, such as a fee that steps down as budget rises, or a review clause when spend crosses a threshold. A flat retainer inverts the incentive and needs its own guard rail, usually a stated minimum service level so the account is not quietly parked.

Ask plainly whether any media is bought as principal, meaning the agency purchases inventory and resells it to you, because that changes what the reported cost per result means. Ask whether rebates or platform incentives exist and where they go. Agencies are listed on this site only on what can be verified from their own published pages, and firms that publish their fee model make this conversation short.

Comparing quotes across channels

Quotes rarely compare, because one agency counts creative production inside the fee and another bills it separately, and because channel mixes differ. Write your own scope: channels, monthly spend range, creative volume, landing pages, tracking implementation, reporting cadence and who is on the account. Then ask each provider to price your list.

Published prices remain the most useful reference the market offers, so where an agency prints its fees or minimum spend, this index records it. Ask every finalist to position its quote against those published figures and to explain what changes between its tiers. A ladder that varies only by budget band is a rate card, not a service definition.

Questions people actually ask

What does a media buying agency charge?

Common models are a percentage of media spend, a flat monthly retainer, per-channel fees, or a hybrid with a performance element. Published rates in this index are the honest reference points; ask every finalist to position its quote against them and to state what the fee excludes.

Should the agency use my ad accounts or its own?

Yours, with the agency added as a user. Your accounts keep the conversion history, audience lists and billing relationship with the platform, which means a change of agency costs a handover rather than a restart.

Can a media buying agency guarantee a cost per lead?

Treat a guarantee as a warning. Auction prices move with competition, seasonality and your own creative and landing page quality, and Google's published description of its auction makes clear that price and position depend on factors outside any agency's control. Forecast ranges are reasonable; promises are not.

How much spend do I need before an agency is worth it?

Enough that the fee is a small share of the budget and the account genuinely needs daily attention. Below that, a fixed-scope setup project plus quarterly reviews usually returns more than a retainer, and several agencies in this index publish minimum spend levels that make the threshold explicit.

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