Everything buyers ask, answered in full.
- questions, each answered in full rather than summarised
- 148
- groups, each a page of its own
- 21
- pages the answers are written on, every one linked
- 58
- families, in the order buyers ask in
- 7
The families
7 families, 21 groups, 148 answers
Buyer questions first, reference material last. Each group is a page carrying its own answers, because one page holding every question is a page a retrieval engine reads half of and a person reads none of.
- 01What it is, and what it does4 groups · 24 questions
- 02The seven channels4 groups · 19 questions
- 03Whether it fits you3 groups · 12 questions
- 04Money, creative and proof3 groups · 19 questions
- 05Security and data1 groups · 9 questions
- 06The guides3 groups · 35 questions
- 07Definitions, costs and procedures3 groups · 30 questions
All but 10 of these answers are imported from the module that owns them, so correcting one corrects the page it lives on at the same time. The remaining 10 are written for this index and rendered nowhere else, and their group says so where they appear. Either way a question appears in exactly one group — the first that claims it, reading in buyer order — so where two pages answer the same question, the one a buyer reaches first keeps it.
Or skip the categories and put the question to a working session, which is forty-five minutes and takes a real brief.
Talk it throughWhat it is, and what it does
The entity questions, the stage question, what running a campaign actually involves, and what changes when an agent holds the keyboard.
What AdBuyMCP is
3 questionsWhat the product is, which company stands behind it, and why a product named after an integration surface says out loud that the surface is not the point. The questions asked before anything else matters.
written for this index · How it works, in seven steps
What you can buy today
10 questionsThe stage question, asked and answered in full: what runs in the sandbox, what is gated behind a design-partner engagement, how the twenty-five connectors are graded, and which rails have never made a single live call.
answered on Supply status
- Can I sign up and buy media today?
- Do you have customers I can talk to?
- What is the catch?
- Can I buy media through AdBuyMCP today?
- What does client-built actually mean?
- Which rails have had a real vendor accept a real call?
- Why are cinema and addressable TV described as workflows rather than APIs?
- Your README lists Vistar as having a live client. This page says it is a stub.
- Do you buy ITV, Sky or Channel 4?
- What happens if a supplier's authority expires mid-campaign?
Running a campaign
4 questionsHow long a plan takes, what you can override, what you can try without talking to anyone, and what happens when something fails halfway through a launch.
answered on How it works
The agent and the MCP server
7 questionsWhat the model decides and what deterministic code decides, whether there is a hosted connector to add today, what stops Claude spending money, and what happens when a supplier answers ambiguously mid-run.
answered on MCP server
- Is the AI making the buying decisions?
- Can I connect to a hosted AdBuyMCP server today?
- Is MCP the product, or a feature of it?
- Can Claude spend my money without asking?
- What happens when a supplier returns something ambiguous?
- Which MCP protocol versions do you support?
- Can I use this from something other than Claude?
The seven channels
What one audience definition becomes on each channel, what the score attached to it means, and the questions each channel raises on its own page.
Fidelity scores and lawful basis
6 questionsWhat the number on every compiled plan means, why the worst one is published in the same size type as the best, who decides which segments get used, and what the lawful-basis manifest records.
answered on The seven channels
Television and streaming
4 questionsThe two channels bought against a household or a person: what a job-title claim really rests on for connected TV, what happens when your audience matches nothing, and why addressable television is a different product from a TV spot.
answered on CTV & streaming TV and Addressable & linear TV
Search, social and audio
6 questionsThe two channels where the brief moves the score, and the one where it cannot: who writes the keywords, why a plan scores 45 rather than 82, why an audio plan buys the commute, and what vendor-neutral means when Meta and TikTok are still the ones executing.
answered on Paid search, Paid social and Podcast & digital audio
Cinema and out-of-home
3 questionsThe two channels bought as places rather than people: whether a cinema buy really sits outside GDPR, whether anybody is tracking phones, and whether you can pick the screens yourself.
answered on Cinema and Digital out-of-home
Whether it fits you
The four packages and their published gaps, the cohorts this product is deliberately wrong for, and the alternatives — each comparison naming the case where the alternative wins.
Whether this is for you
3 questionsWho the four packages are for, why every one of them publishes what does not work yet, why there is no agency edition, and what happens when none of the four describes you.
answered on All four packages
The four packages, in detail
5 questionsB2B account surround, multi-location growth, new brand launch and moving beyond Meta and Google: the specific questions each one raises, including the gaps a design partner would otherwise find in week two.
answered on B2B account surround, Multi-location growth, New brand launch and Beyond Meta and Google
The alternatives
4 questionsWho the closest competitor is and where they are ahead, why an MCP server is not the differentiator, what is genuinely unusual here, and why the claims that were considered and retired are published rather than quietly dropped.
answered on Comparisons
Money, creative and proof
What it costs and where the fee sits, what the creative studio will and will not do, and what a finished campaign is allowed to claim.
Fees, wallet and minimums
7 questionsThe fee, the tier above £25,000 of trailing spend, the two minimums nobody mentions until the plan is built, and the smallest budget at which any of this makes sense — which is higher than the published floor, and the pricing page says so.
answered on Fees and wallet
Creative and clearance
6 questionsWhat the AI writes and what it will not, why asset production is charged as its own line rather than bundled, who owns the output, what happens when a render fails halfway, and where disclosure is enforced rather than advised.
answered on Creative studio
- Will the AI write ads that get rejected?
- Do I have to use the AI creative?
- Why is ten seconds of premium video £15.60 when competitors include AI creative free?
- What happens if the provider fails halfway through?
- Who owns the AI-generated assets, and are they indemnified?
- Does AI-generated video need to be disclosed?
Proving it worked
6 questionsThe four verbs and why one of them is published as a placeholder, what it means that the geo-lift engine refuses tests, whether a billboard can be credited with a conversion, and whether any causal result has ever been produced here.
answered on Measurement
Security and data
What a CISO, a DPO and a procurement team ask, including the certifications this product does not hold and the exposures it publishes rather than leaves you to discover.
Security and data protection
9 questionsWhat procurement, legal and a data protection officer ask before anyone signs, including the certifications that are not held, the retention rules that are enforced in code, and the straight answer about what happens to a prepaid wallet balance if this company fails.
answered on Security
- Are you ISO 27001 certified?
- How long do you keep personal data?
- Who can see my campaign data?
- Can an AI agent authorise spend on my account?
- What is your lawful basis for the targeting data?
- Is my data used to train AI models?
- Where does the data live, and can we keep it in the UK?
- Who are your subprocessors?
- What happens to my money if you fail as a company?
The guides
Reference material rather than product questions: how the awkward UK channels are actually bought, and how to tell whether a campaign can be proved.
Using the guides
4 questionsWhat the guides are for, where their numbers come from, whether they describe campaigns that have run, and whether they are any use to somebody who never buys anything here.
answered on All 16 guides
Buying the awkward channels
16 questionsQuestions from the 8 buying guides. They centre on the channels that do not transact as APIs — addressable television, cinema and digital out-of-home — and take in what a DSP is for, how to read a plan and how a B2B audience survives each channel. Lead times, minimums, clearance, and what each channel's targeting can honestly claim.
answered on How UK addressable TV targeting actually works, How UK cinema advertising is really booked, Buying UK DOOH without a movement-data licence, What a DSP is, and whether you need one, UK media buying for B2B marketers, How to read a media plan, Choosing between cinema and CTV and Sky AdSmart explained
- Can addressable TV target my customer list?
- Why is addressable TV cheaper per thousand than a spot but harder to buy?
- Does a household attribute mean everyone in the house is my audience?
- Can I buy cinema advertising for one town?
- How far in advance do I have to book cinema?
- Does cinema advertising involve personal data?
- Can DOOH really target business decision makers?
- Do I need a movement-data licence to buy out-of-home?
- Why can't a compiled persona activate a DOOH campaign end to end?
- Is a DSP cheaper than an agency?
- Do I need a DSP to buy CTV?
- Can I target job titles on CTV?
- Is a household-level proxy good enough for B2B?
- What is the single most useful question to ask about a media plan?
- Is cinema worth buying at a small budget?
- Can I target a job title on Sky AdSmart?
Measuring it and operating it
15 questionsQuestions from the guides about method rather than about a channel: what a fidelity score does and does not measure, how many markets a geo-lift test needs, and what has to be true before an agent should be allowed near a media budget.
answered on What a fidelity score is, and why anyone should publish one, Designing a geo-lift test that can actually be powered, Running paid media from an AI agent without losing control, Why most incrementality tests are invalid, Frequency capping across channels, and why it usually is not happening, What Clearcast and the CAA actually check, MCP for marketers: what the protocol actually changes and First-party data in UK media buying
- Is a fidelity score an industry standard?
- Could you not just raise the scores?
- Does a higher fidelity score mean better performance?
- How many markets do I need for a geo-lift test?
- Can I run a geo-lift test on a national campaign?
- Why refuse to report a number when the test is underpowered?
- Can an AI agent spend money without a human approving it?
- What actually goes wrong when an agent runs advertising?
- Do I need to trust the model to use an agent safely?
- Can I run an incrementality test on a small budget?
- Is marketing mix modelling a substitute?
- Can I just set the same cap on every platform?
- How long does clearance take?
- Is an AI agent safe to point at a media budget?
- Can I upload a customer list to target on CTV?
Definitions, costs and procedures
The material a reader reaches before deciding anything: what the vocabulary means, what each channel costs, and how to do the things this product asks of you.
What the words mean
3 questionsThe questions the glossary exists to answer: what a fidelity score measures, how attribution differs from incrementality, what consent-chained actually asserts, and why a vendor's glossary is worth reading at all.
answered on All 76 terms
What each channel costs
14 questionsQuestions from the cost pages: what a realistic starting budget is per channel, why the enforced plan floor and the seller's minimum are different numbers, and what is not included in a quoted CPM.
answered on What UK media costs, per channel, CTV cost, Addressable TV cost, Audio cost, DOOH cost, Cinema cost, Paid search cost and Paid social cost
- Can I fund a campaign and start spending today?
- What is the difference between your floor and the market minimum?
- What is not included in these prices?
- How does 10% compare to what I pay now?
- What is a realistic CTV budget to start with in the UK?
- Why is the CPM higher for a business audience?
- Can I buy Sky AdSmart through AdBuyMCP today?
- Why is your floor £1,000 when the market minimum is £3,000?
- Is a host-read ad worth the premium over a programmatic one?
- Can AdBuyMCP buy DOOH end to end from a compiled audience?
- Why can I not just buy cinema online?
- Is cinema worth it at a small budget?
- Should I pay a platform fee on search at all?
- Why would I buy social through AdBuyMCP rather than Ads Manager?
Doing it, step by step
13 questionsQuestions from the how-to procedures: how much spend a lift test needs, what an agent cannot reach at all, whether a wallet balance is protected, and why several of these procedures describe the product refusing to proceed.
answered on All 10 procedures, Write a brief an agent can compile, Read a fidelity score, Run a geo-lift test, Check a lawful-basis manifest, Fund a campaign, Install the MCP server, Grant and revoke an agent mandate, Connect your analytics, Approve creative for UK clearance and Set a budget across seven channels
- Do I need an account to follow these?
- Why do several of these describe the product refusing to do something?
- Does a longer brief always score better?
- Is a low fidelity score a reason not to buy a channel?
- How much spend does a geo-lift test need?
- Has AdBuyMCP produced a causal result for a customer?
- Does a lawful-basis manifest make me compliant?
- Is my wallet balance protected if the company fails?
- Can I add AdBuyMCP as a connector on claude.ai?
- What can an agent do that a human cannot undo?
- Does connecting analytics prove the media worked?
- Can the pre-check guarantee clearance?
- Should I always buy all seven channels?
The questions above are the ones asked often enough to be worth writing down. Anything specific to your budget, your category or your regulator is a conversation rather than a paragraph, and a working session is what that is for. Before booking one it is worth reading the supply matrix, which grades every connector on the evidence that exists, and the fee waterfall, which publishes the whole thing including the tier most buyers never reach.
Bring the question this page did not answer.
Forty-five minutes, with a real brief. It compiles live across all seven channels, and the awkward questions get answered against your numbers rather than in general.
Book a working session45 minutes. Bring a real brief and we compile it live. · Design-partner phase · the sandbox needs no card and no credentials
Still have a question?
45 minutes. Bring a real brief and we compile it live. You describe one audience, it compiles into seven channel plans in front of you, and anything on this page that mattered to you gets answered against your own brief rather than in the abstract.
Design-partner phase· recruiting paid design partners rather than selling self-serve media · what is live, and what is not
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