for the person writing the plan
These guides cover the hard parts of buying UK media.
- guides to the parts of a UK plan that are hardest to find out about
- 20
- words across the guides
- 31.0k
- questions the guides answer
- 45
- jobs: reaching B2B buyers early, buying the awkward channels, knowing what you bought, running it safely
- 4
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the library
The guides are grouped by the job you are doing
Every figure names the part of AdBuyMCP it came from, or links the page that published it, so you can check it before you act on it.
These guides explain how to reach B2B buyers before they start looking
They explain why most B2B buyers have vendors in mind before they search, who is in the group that decides, and how often a market can be planned to see you.
Most B2B buyers have vendors in mind before they search
Your next customer probably has a list of vendors before they start looking, so the media that matters reaches them before then.
B2B founders and first marketing hires at UK startups and SMEs who already run search, LinkedIn or outbound, and want to reach the buyers who are not looking yet.
- Had vendors in mind before research (Bain, US buyers)
- 80–90%
- Bought from that day-one list (Bain, US buyers)
- 9 in 10
Why cross-channel frequency capping rarely happens
A cap of four on each of four channels lets a household see the ad up to sixteen times.
Anyone running three or more channels who has been shown a combined reach number, and anyone who suspects their launch is hitting the same people repeatedly.
- The problem
- Caps are per-seller
- What it needs
- One exposure record
Source for 80–90% and 9 in 10: Harvard Business Review, What B2Bs Need to Know About Their Buyers (Bain & Company), 20 September 2022, checked 20 October 2026.
These guides cover the UK channels that are awkward to buy
Each one takes a UK channel that is booked, cleared or targeted in its own way, and explains what you are selecting, what it costs and what the paperwork does to your timeline.
Buying UK DOOH without a movement-data licence
A billboard reaches whoever passes it, so you plan on the place and the hours.
Anyone reading a DOOH proposal that claims to target a professional audience, and anyone planning out-of-home who wants to know which parts of the pitch survive scrutiny.
- Fidelity
- 50 / geo-cohort, fixed
- Screen ranking
- Empty without movement data
How to buy podcast ads in the UK
Choose between an inserted spot and a host read first, because the route, the price and the lead time all follow from it.
Founders testing podcast advertising for the first time, and anyone choosing between a cheap self-serve spot and a host read they have been quoted for.
- Spotify Ad Studio
- From £250
- Acast host read
- 4 to 6 weeks' lead
The minimum budget for a startup to test TV advertising in the UK
Seller minimums are lower than most founders expect, and the budget that teaches you something depends on what you want to learn.
Founders and growth leads at startups and SMEs wondering whether TV is a channel they can afford to test yet, and what the smallest useful test looks like.
- Sky AdSmart entry
- From £3,000, per Sky
- Clearcast standard fee
- Free, allow 2 to 3 weeks
How to read a media plan
Most media plans leave out the forecast source, the data cost and what the targeting is worth.
Anyone approving a media plan they did not build, and anyone comparing two proposals that look similar and are not.
- Fields to demand
- Six
- Most often missing
- Data cost per line
What a DSP does and when you need one
A DSP needs somebody to operate it, and at most volumes that person costs more than the fee.
Marketing leads being told they should have a DSP, and anyone comparing a platform fee without a clear view of what the platform is for.
- The Trade Desk, 2024
- About 20.3% of gross spend
- Reaching publishers
- About half (ISBA, 2020)
How UK addressable TV targeting actually works
You are buying households whose profile over-indexes on your audience, so write the brief for a household.
Anyone weighing addressable TV for a UK campaign for the first time, and anyone who has been shown an addressable proposal that implies job-title targeting and wants to know what the deck actually means.
- Fidelity
- 55 / household, fixed
- AdSmart minimum
- £3,000 per burst
How Sky AdSmart works
You select households by attribute and postcode district, and a sales house books the campaign.
Advertisers considering addressable television for the first time, and anyone reading an AdSmart proposal that implies more precision than the vocabulary supports.
- What it selects
- Household attributes
- Fidelity
- 55 / household, fixed
How UK cinema advertising is booked
Two sales houses sell UK cinema, and a person at one of them confirms every booking.
Anyone who has been quoted for cinema and cannot tell what they are being sold, and anyone building a multi-channel plan who wants to know what cinema adds to it and what it costs in process.
- Fidelity
- 40 / venue, fixed
- Lead time
- ~18 days incl. clearance
Choosing between cinema and CTV
Precision, speed and attention usually decide between cinema and CTV, more than price does.
Anyone with a video budget deciding where it goes, particularly on a launch where both are on the shortlist.
- CTV fidelity
- 85 / person, best case
- Cinema fidelity
- 40 / venue, fixed
These guides show what a campaign can prove
They work out how far the targeting sits from the audience you described, and whether a campaign can support a causal claim at all, before the money goes.
Designing a geo-lift test that can actually be powered
Run the power calculation before the flight, while you can still change the design.
Anyone who has been asked to prove that media worked, and anyone about to commission an incrementality test who wants to know before signing whether it can produce an answer.
- Power gate
- α 0.05 · 80% power
- Markets in the table
- 12 UK conurbations
Incrementality testing on a small budget: a worked power table
The power check never sees your budget. It sees your conversions and how much they swing.
Founders and growth leads spending a few thousand pounds a month who have been asked to prove incrementality, and anyone deciding whether a geo test is worth commissioning at all.
- Settings
- 5% significance, 80% power
- 10 a day, 15% target
- 70 days needed
Why most incrementality tests are invalid
An underpowered test returns a random number that looks like a result.
Anyone who has been handed an incrementality result and is not sure how much weight it carries, and anyone about to commission one.
- Standard significance
- 5%
- Standard power
- 80%
What a fidelity score measures
The score shows how much of the audience you described survives translation into each channel's targeting.
Anyone comparing multi-channel media proposals and trying to work out which of the targeting claims in them are real, and anyone who has to defend a channel mix to somebody more sceptical than they are.
- Range published
- 85 down to 38
- Grades
- 5 levels from person to venue
These guides set out the controls an agent needs before it touches a budget
They cover what changes when an agent holds the keyboard, and which controls have to exist before that is a good idea.
First-party data in UK media buying
Consent-based identifiers can carry a customer list onto television once a participation agreement is signed.
Marketers with a CRM they want to activate beyond the social platforms, and anyone evaluating a vendor's first-party data claims.
- Where it works easily
- Social platforms
- Where it is hard
- CTV, audio, OOH
What Clearcast and the CAA actually check
Clearance asks you to evidence the claims your ad makes.
Anyone writing television or cinema copy for the first time, and anyone whose flight date depends on a clearance turnaround they have not budgeted for.
- Clearcast standard fee
- Free, allow 2 to 3 weeks
- CAA cinema fee
- £180 + VAT
Running paid media from an AI agent without losing control
The agent proposes changes, and a named person approves anything that spends money.
Anyone considering letting an agent operate an advertising account, and anyone who has to sign off on that decision for somebody else's budget.
- Human-only operations
- 11, with no agent tool
- Authority
- Mandate: ceiling, expiry
MCP for marketers: what the protocol actually changes
MCP connects an agent to tools, and the tools behind it decide what the agent can do.
Marketers being pitched agentic tooling, and anyone deciding how much authority to give an assistant over a media budget.
- What it is
- An integration standard
- What it is not
- A capability or a moat
The ad platforms' own MCP servers, and planning one budget across them
Each platform's connector operates one platform's account, and your budget runs across several.
Founders and growth leads whose assistant can already talk to Meta or Google Ads, and who want to know what it would take to plan the rest of the budget the same way.
- Can change campaigns
- Meta, Amazon
- Read-only today
- Google, Microsoft, Snap
If the guide you want is the one about your own market, a 30-minute call with the founder will price it with you.
a worked example
A market of 12,000 people costs £6,000 a month at 5 times a week
Example: UK finance teams at 3,000 mid-sized companies, with 4 people in each buying team. This is what a plan for that market costs each month and what it buys.
- Companies that could buy
- 3,000
- People in each buying team
- 4
- Your market
- 12,000 people
- How often it should see you
- 5 times a week
- Monthly price, all-in
- £6,000
what the price buys: all four channels
- Out-of-home Billboard and screen artwork
- Streaming TV A streaming TV spot
- Podcasts A podcast ad
- ChatGPT ads A ChatGPT ad
what they answer
These guides answer 45 questions
Each question links to the guide that answers it, so you can start from the question you would type into a search.
The question index at /faq groups these with every other AdBuyMCP question by subject.
ask it directly
Describe the problem and the assistant will point you at the guide
It is grounded on these 20 guides and the pages behind them. It answers from what they publish and links you to the guide that covers your question.
Prefer to talk it through? Book a 30-minute call with the founder
how these are written
Every number in these guides comes from three places
Every figure in these guides comes from AdBuyMCP's own product or from the page that published it, such as a sales house, trade body, regulator, research firm or filing, linked beside the claim with the date it was checked. The methods work whichever platform, agency or sales house you buy through.
- AdBuyMCP's published figures
- The plan's rate and entry prices, the fidelity bands, the supply grades and the measurement labels are published elsewhere on this site and quoted from there, so a guide cannot drift from the page it describes.
- AdBuyMCP's software
- Mechanisms such as the power calculation, the market matching, the empty screen ranking and the workflow steps are described from the software that runs them.
- The page that published it
- Market facts such as rate cards, minimums, clearance fees, market sizes and survey figures link to the sales house, trade body, regulator, research firm or filing that published them, beside the claim, with the day each link was opened. A claim we could not find on its source came out, and a figure that is a vendor describing its own product is labelled as one.
- Nothing else
- A figure that cannot be traced to one of the three places above is left out, and so is any statistic we could not link to its source. The evidence grade of each AdBuyMCP connector is published at /supply.
Our trust page sets out how each channel is bought, what your weekly report shows and how we handle your data.
Trust and limitsBring your market to a 30-minute call and the founder will price an awareness plan for it with you.
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Skip the reading and bring your market to a call.
In a 30-minute call with the founder, we work out how big your market is, price 3, 5 and 12 times a week and talk through how we'd balance the four channels for your market.
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Talk your market and your plan through with James Rooney, who built AdBuyMCP and wrote its code.
Questions about the guides
These answers cover where the numbers come from, whether the guides describe a campaign that has run, and whether they help somebody who never buys anything here.
Are these guides about AdBuyMCP or about the channels?
About the channels and the methods, with AdBuyMCP as the worked example. Each guide is written so that a buyer using a different platform, an agency or a sales house directly still gets the useful part: what an audience pack is, why a power calculation has to happen before the flight, what a venue type claims and what it does not. Where the product's own behaviour is the point (an empty screen ranking, a refusal to report an underpowered lift), the guide says which behaviour belongs to this platform rather than to the channel.
Where do the numbers in these guides come from?
Three places, and every guide names its own. Figures this site already publishes elsewhere (the plan's rate and entry prices, the fidelity bands, the supply grades) are quoted from the page that owns them. Mechanisms are described from what AdBuyMCP's software does. And market facts such as rate cards, minimums, clearance fees, market sizes and survey figures link to the page that published them, beside the claim, with the date each link was opened. A claim we could not find on its source was taken out.
Do these guides describe campaigns you have run?
They describe how each channel works and what AdBuyMCP does with it, so no figure in them is a campaign result. No media has been bought through AdBuyMCP yet. The supply page shows how far buying through each seller has been tested. The day counts in the lift-test guides are design inputs worked out from a formula, and the prices are worked examples from AdBuyMCP's plan pricing.
Can I use these without buying anything?
Yes. Nothing in them requires us: the geo-lift arithmetic works in a spreadsheet, the cinema calendar applies whoever books it, and the questions to ask an agent-operated media platform are worth asking of any vendor including this one.