Ad tech tax
In practice, for a UK buyer
The paragraph above is the neutral answer. This is the part a vendor glossary leaves out.
It is cumulative and mostly undisclosed, which is why it is the category's most persistent grievance. The defence is not a lower headline rate; it is supply-path transparency and a fee that appears on the line of media it was charged against rather than in a quarterly summary.
What this one connects to
Most confusion in media buying comes from two adjacent terms being used interchangeably, so these are the neighbours worth reading next.
Take rate
The share of an advertiser's media budget retained by the platform rather than spent on media, whether that share is disclosed or embedded in the price. The word is neutral about disclosure, which is why the useful question is the figure rather than the policy.
Working media
The portion of an advertising budget that actually buys advertising, as opposed to the portion consumed by platform fees, data costs, agency fees, ad serving and production. Usually expressed as a percentage of total spend.
Supply-side platform (SSP)
Software a publisher uses to sell its advertising inventory to many buyers at once, running the auction and setting price floors. It sits on the seller's side of the same market a DSP buys from.
Arbitrage
Buying media at one price and reselling it to the advertiser at a higher one, keeping the difference undisclosed. Distinct from a disclosed fee in that the advertiser cannot see what the media actually cost.
More on buying and commercials
How media is transacted and where the money goes. The terms in this group are the ones a fee conversation turns on.
45 minutes. Bring a real brief and we compile it live. You describe one audience and watch it compile into seven targeting specifications, each with the score for how much of the definition survived.
Talk it through