What UK media actually costs, including the parts nobody prices.
- channels priced
- 7
- our fee on media
- 10%
- rails spend-verified
- 0 of 25
You cannot fund a campaign here today.
The whole loop — brief to persona to plan to creative to approval to launch to delivery to measurement — runs today in a deterministic sandbox that needs no credentials and no card. That is a real product you can drive, not a video of one. What is not ready is ordinary customer spend. The live buying clients are written but not proven: most pass tests against mocked responses only, one connector has had read-only calls accepted by a live vendor, and several are stubs that make no vendor call at all. None has cleared our launch standard of a controlled paid activation reconciled to a provider invoice, so live spend sits behind a design-partner engagement rather than a signup form. Everything priced below is what a plan would carry. The whole loop runs in a sandbox that needs no credentials and no card, and live spend runs inside a design-partner engagement rather than from a self-serve top-up.
All 25 rails, graded on evidenceTwo kinds of number, kept apart
The left column is a product fact: the floor this planner enforces when it builds a plan, below which a line is dropped and its budget redistributed. The right is dated desk research about what other sellers ask for. Blending them into one figure would turn somebody else's price into our promise.
Vendor-side minimums are separate and bite later. Sky AdSmart’s ~£3,000 entry campaign is the one most likely to surprise a first plan.
A CPM range is not an answer
Most cost pages in this category answer a different question from the one that was asked. If you search "what does CTV advertising cost", you want to know whether you can afford it and what you get. What you usually get is a CPM range with no minimum, no fee and no mention of data costs. This section gives the whole waterfall per channel: what the media costs, what the seller's minimum is, what floor we enforce, what the data adds, what the creative adds, and what we charge on top. Where a figure is desk research rather than a commitment, it says so and gives its date.
A reader asking what a channel costs wants to know whether they can afford it and what they get. A CPM range with no minimum, no fee and no data cost answers neither.
Ten per cent, against what everyone else charges
A percentage means nothing on its own. These are the observed rates across the category, so the number can be judged rather than taken.
- AdBuyMCP
- 10% of media
- The Trade Desk
- ~20% of spend
- DV360
- ~10–15%
- Generic DSP tier
- 5–15%
- UK agencies
- 10–30%
- MNTN
- Undisclosed
5% plus £749 a month above £25,000 trailing 30-day spend
20.3% in 2024; 1–2 points negotiated at $500k–750k thresholds
Platform fee
Technology fee on spend
Most commonly 15–20%, with £500–£1,000 minimum monthly fees
Its own documentation states it keeps a percentage and does not disclose the margin
Desk research dated 3 August 2026, with sources on each comparison page. Rates move, and a benchmark with no date on it is worse than no benchmark.
Below £10,000 a month, buy something else.
Below about £10,000 a month in total media, this is the wrong product. A 10% fee on £2,000 is £200 against the buyer who needs the most support from us, and a multi-channel plan at that budget is too thin to pace on any line and far too thin to power a causal test. Buy search and social directly, and come back when there is a second channel worth funding.
Bring a budget and we will tell you if it is too small.
45 minutes. Bring a real brief and we compile it live. You describe one audience and a real budget, and it compiles into seven costed lines against real floors — including the lines the budget cannot carry, which get dropped in front of you.
Book a working session45 minutes. Bring a real brief and we compile it live.
Questions about cost
Four that come up before anyone reads a channel page.
Can I fund a campaign and start spending today?
No, and it matters most on this page. AdBuyMCP is in its design-partner phase: no buying rail has reached spend-tested or report-verified on our own evidence ledger, so live spend runs inside a design-partner engagement rather than from a self-serve top-up. The whole loop — brief, seven compiled plans, creative, approval, launch, delivery, measurement — runs today in a sandbox that needs no credentials and no card, and the numbers on these pages are what a plan would carry.
What is the difference between your floor and the market minimum?
They measure different things and both apply. The plan floor is enforced when AdBuyMCP builds a plan: a line that cannot clear it is dropped and its budget redistributed, with a note saying so. The market minimum is what the seller will actually accept for a campaign, which on Sky AdSmart is around £3,000 against a £1,000 plan floor. The floor stops a pointless line surviving into a plan; the seller's minimum stops a pointless campaign reaching air.
What is not included in these prices?
Three things, all named per channel. Data segment uplifts, which on a targeted business audience add roughly £2.50 to £3.00 per thousand impressions — the sellers' cost, not ours, and shown on the plan before approval. Creative production, whether generated here at published rates or produced elsewhere. And clearance time on the channels that need it, which is a lead time rather than a fee but is the constraint more often than money is.
How does 10% compare to what I pay now?
Against a UK agency, favourably on fee and not on scope: agencies charge 10% to 30% of spend, most commonly 15% to 20%, with £500 to £1,000 minimum monthly fees — and they are also selling strategy, creative judgement and someone accountable, none of which this is. Against the platforms, it depends: The Trade Desk's observed take rate is about 20% and DV360's around 10% to 15%, while Meta and Google's own managers are free. The comparison that matters is the whole waterfall, not the headline percentage.