Who manages your advertising budget? Ten questions to understand how it is spent

You have a hundred thousand euros for your next advertising campaign. 

What do you do? You probably turn to a partner, discuss objectives and receive a proposal. You are told where your brand will appear, how many people will be reached and what results you can expect.

At that point, here comes the quote.

Of that hundred thousand euros, how much will go on buying advertising? How much will pay for the people who manage it? And why those particular sites, those platforms, those publications?

These are normal questions for anyone deciding how to spend their own money. Yet finding the answers may mean working through documents in which services, technology and media buying all end up under the same line item.

This is where media transparency comes in: being able to understand what we are paying for, which interests shape the choices and how to verify what has been bought.
Let’s explore it together today, in ten questions.

First of all: what does a media agency do?

A media agency helps a company decide where to invest in advertising and buy the space it needs. It can plan a presence across television, radio, print, outdoor and digital channels, depending on its capabilities and the scope of the brief.

Its job is to link an objective to an investment decision. If we want to introduce a brand to a new audience, our needs will differ from those of a company that wants to reach people who already intend to buy.

This is why a partner’s value also shows in its ability to explain its recommendations. Whoever approves the budget must be able to understand why one route deserves more resources than another.

With this in mind, we have selected ten questions to put to your media agency, to be adapted to the size of the investment and the services required. 

1. How much do we spend on advertising and how much do we pay to manage it?

Back to the hundred thousand euros. One proposal might allocate eighty thousand to advertising space and twenty thousand to the work needed to plan, manage and measure the campaign. Another might split it differently. It is a hypothetical example, but it makes the problem clear: the total, on its own, says little.

To compare offers, we need to know which activities they include. Do they also cover production of materials, data purchasing and measurement tools? What costs might be added?

The first request, therefore, is a breakdown of the quote. Only then can we jointly assess the work being bought and the resources that will reach the media.

2. How does your fee change if we increase the budget?

A fixed fee, a percentage of spend and a performance-related bonus create different incentives.

If the partner earns more when we invest more, it is reasonable to ask which conditions would justify a larger budget. But what result do we expect to achieve? And which signals would instead suggest we stop?

If a performance bonus is planned, we need to agree on what counts as success. Sales, leads and visits mean different things, as do a generic lead and a genuine sales opportunity.

The choice of business KPIs is already part of building the relationship: it sets the evidence on which the work will be assessed.

3. Do you also receive benefits from those selling the advertising space?

A media agency may have agreements with publishers, sales houses and other suppliers. These agreements may include discounts, volume-related bonuses or other commercial benefits.

It is a question to ask openly, because it helps reveal the financial interests at play in the relationship. The World Federation of Advertisers, the global association of advertisers, stresses the need to disclose revenue linked to clients’ investments and to manage potential conflicts of interest.

The contract should make clear how these benefits are handled and whether any share is passed on to the company. Knowing they exist also makes it possible to ask how the quality of the recommendation is safeguarded.

4. Do you buy the media on our behalf or resell it to us?

An agency may buy or negotiate advertising space and then resell it to clients at its own margin. This is the model known as principal media: the partner recommending the investment also becomes the seller of what it recommends.

The arrangement may offer attractive terms. The company should, however, know when it is used, what alternatives are available and what pricing information will remain accessible.

In June 2026 the WFA drew attention to the rules for assessing and approving these offers. For the buyer, the essential step is being able to accept the model and its transparency limits knowingly.

5. Why are you recommending these particular channels?

An answer such as “Your audience is there” is valid only if it marks the start of the explanation. A decision also requires the channel’s role, the expected result and the reason it deserves that share of the investment.

A newspaper can lend authority to a message. A search engine campaign can capture existing demand. Other activities can reach people who still know little about the company. Every choice should serve a recognisable purpose.

Asking which alternatives were considered makes the comparison more useful. It shows which assumptions underpin the plan and which changes might call for a revision.

6. Where will our brand appear?

Knowing that we will invest “in digital” leaves a fundamental question open: alongside which content will the ads appear?

Before launch, it is worth agreeing which contexts suit the brand, which should be excluded and what can be verified during the campaign. The level of detail available varies by media and platform: these limitations must also be explained.

The choice concerns reputation as well as ad delivery. The same principle applies when part of the investment goes through creators: in influencer selection, audience, credibility and consistency with the company’s identity all count.

7. What does “we reached a million people” actually mean?

People reached and ad views describe different things. The same individual may see an ad several times; an ad may be served without meeting the conditions needed to be considered viewable.

Here we meet the term impression, meaning an exposure counted according to the rules of the system used. Viewability, by contrast, measures specific technical conditions of potential visibility, also governed by the Media Rating Council guidelines.

When a big number arrives, we therefore need to know what it counts, how it was measured and what its limits are. A technically viewable impression is not the same as the actual attention of the person who encounters it.

8. How do we link campaign results to business results?

A report may show plenty of clicks while sales enquiries stay flat. Or it may attribute to campaigns sales that other tools count differently.

Reading these results requires knowing the rules: what counts as a conversion, within what time of the advertising interaction, and which system the data comes from.

Attributed revenue also needs context. Margins, returns and customer quality can change the financial assessment of the investment.

In our piece on CTR and value for the business we addressed precisely this step: using campaign metrics to understand the path that leads to the commercial result, including where it breaks down.

9. Can we check the data behind the report?

Receiving a document and being able to verify the information it contains are two different levels of access.

The company should know which accounts it will be able to access, which data it will be able to export and for how long they will remain available. Where the investment and complexity justify it, an independent audit may also be advisable, with its terms and scope agreed in advance.

How much this access matters is shown by the British work of ISBA and PwC on programmatic advertising. In the study of 2022 data, published in January 2023, the share of unattributable spend along the supply chain fell from 15% to 3% compared with the previous research. The improvement required in-depth work on the data. The sample was selected and did not represent the whole market: the result shows the value of verification in that context.

10. If we change partner, what stays in our hands?

It may sound awkward, but this question should be asked when the relationship begins, while both parties are building the conditions to work well together.

Who controls the advertising accounts? Which reports and materials will be handed over? Will we be able to keep the history and continue using the measurement set-ups? Will the handover involve time and costs?

Some elements can be transferred; others depend on specific tools, licences and agreements. Knowing these conditions lets us see which dependencies we are creating and how easy it will be to change course in future.

The investment should also leave the business with usable knowledge of what it has done and learnt.

Advisory: who in the company can answer?

Every question put to the supplier inevitably leads to an internal one: who is responsible for reading the answers and deciding whether they are adequate?

Marketing can assess the plan. Finance can help reconstruct costs and financial results. Procurement and legal can review the terms of the relationship. Someone, however, then has to bring all these readings together.

Senior leadership needs a summary that enables decisions: how much we are investing, towards which objective, with which observable results and which questions still open. That is the task of a KPI management system built around the responsibilities of those in charge.

We believe the quality of a delegation is also measured by the company’s ability to keep understanding and choosing. A good partner strengthens that ability: it explains its decisions, makes the commercial terms understandable and allows the agreements to be verified.

When those who approve the budget can follow the reasoning behind it, the relationship rests on firmer ground. And the investment can be discussed, adjusted or confirmed on an informed basis.