Media buying companies, compared on published evidence

Agencies with a verified published price

How to shortlist media buying companies

1. Write down the budget and the channels before you take a call. A buyer who knows your monthly spend, your geography and your channel mix can tell you in one conversation whether they are the right size. Without those numbers, every pitch defaults to the channels that agency prefers to sell, and you end up comparing four proposals that are not proposals for the same thing.
2. Ask exactly how the firm is paid, in writing. The three common models are a flat monthly fee, a percentage of spend, and a markup on media the firm resells to you as principal. Each is defensible and each creates a different incentive. What is not acceptable is a firm that cannot state which one applies, or that declines to disclose rebates and volume credits it receives from vendors.
3. Require the media plan and the measurement definition up front. You want the target audiences, the placements, the flighting and the expected reach written down before money moves, plus a single agreed definition of the outcome you are buying. Platform reported conversions and your own finance numbers will disagree, so decide now which one settles arguments later.
4. Fix account ownership before the first invoice. Ad accounts, pixels, audience lists and reporting history should sit in entities you control, with the agency granted access. Agencies that insist on housing everything in their own accounts are, intentionally or not, making the switching cost the main reason you stay. Put the handover terms in the contract while everyone is still friendly.

What media buying companies publish, and what they hold back

Our index records what each firm states on its own website, with the date we recorded it: a published starting budget, a stated minimum engagement, named clients, and the channels it says it buys. Most firms publish some of that and very few publish all of it, which is itself informative. A buyer who will not name a minimum spend on their own site will usually name it in the first email if you ask directly, and the ones who still will not are telling you their pricing depends on how much they think you have.

Read published figures as floors rather than forecasts. A starting budget describes the narrowest version of the engagement, typically one channel, one market and a short flight. The number you actually pay depends on how many markets you want live at once, how much creative production the firm has to absorb, and whether you need daily optimisation or monthly reporting.

What actually moves the price

Three things dominate. The first is channel complexity: a single search and social buy is a fraction of the labour of a plan spanning connected television, audio, out of home and programmatic with a unified frequency cap. The second is creative dependency, because a buyer who must also source, resize and traffic assets is doing a production job that is priced separately at most firms. The third is measurement ambition: incrementality testing, geo holdouts and matched market tests cost analyst time that a straightforward platform report does not.

Scale cuts the other way. Percentage of spend arrangements usually step down as budgets rise, so the effective rate at a large monthly spend can be a fraction of the entry rate. If your spend is going to grow during the term, negotiate the steps at signing rather than at renewal, when you have less leverage than you think.

The contract terms that matter more than the rate

Ask for four things: a termination clause with a notice period you can live with, a written commitment that owned accounts and data transfer to you on exit, disclosure of any principal based buying where the firm resells inventory it bought itself, and clarity on who is liable for advertising claims. That last one is not academic. The Federal Trade Commission's advertising and marketing guidance applies to the advertiser whose product is promoted, so a claim your agency wrote is still your claim once it runs.

Questions people actually ask

What is the difference between a media buying company and a full service agency?

A media buyer plans and places advertising and generally does not make the creative. A full service agency does both, and prices accordingly. If you already have brand and creative resources, hiring a specialist buyer is usually cheaper and sharper. If you have neither, splitting the work across two firms adds coordination cost you should budget for honestly.

Is percentage of spend a bad model?

Not inherently, but it pays a firm more for spending more, which is only aligned with you if the firm is also accountable for an outcome. Many buyers use a hybrid: a base fee that covers the team, plus a smaller variable component. The model matters less than whether it is disclosed and whether rebates from vendors are disclosed alongside it.

How small can a budget be before this is not worth outsourcing?

Below a few thousand dollars a month across one or two self serve platforms, the management fee often eats the advantage a professional buyer creates. At that size a competent freelancer or an in house owner with training is usually the better answer. The threshold rises quickly once broadcast, connected television or out of home enter the plan.

Should the agency hold my ad accounts?

No. Create the accounts under your own business entity and grant the agency administrative access. It costs nothing at the start and preserves your spend history, audiences and learning if the relationship ends. Any firm that treats this as unusual has told you something useful about how their other engagements end.

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