--- title: "How to read a media plan properly | AdBuyMCP" description: "A plan line should disclose the executing supplier, the forecast, the data cost and the reasoning, and most show only the budget split. Here is what to check." url: "https://adbuymcp.com/guides/how-to-read-a-media-plan" --- [Home](https://adbuymcp.com/) / [Guides](https://adbuymcp.com/guides) / How to read a media plan properly Guide · buying the awkward channels # How to read a media plan Most media plans leave out the forecast source, the data cost and what the targeting is worth. A media plan is a budget split with forecasts attached, and the quality of one is decided by how much it discloses rather than how it looks. The fields worth checking are: which supplier actually executes each line, what the forecast reach, frequency and CPM are and what they were derived from, what the data segments cost on top of the media, what the targeting approximation is worth, and why each line is there at all. Most plans disclose the first and the last poorly and the middle three not at all. The absence is rarely deliberate concealment. More often the planner does not have the numbers either, but the effect on you is identical. [Get my plan and price](https://adbuymcp.com/start) [Book a 30-minute call with the founder](https://adbuymcp.com/contact#book) Free, with no card. We read your homepage, draft who buys from you and show your monthly price before you join the waitlist. Nothing is bought until you've approved the plan and the ads. By [James Rooney](https://adbuymcp.com/about) Updated 29 October 2026 - **Fields to demand**: Six - **Most often missing**: Data cost per line - **Second most**: Executing supplier - **Length**: 5 min read Sources AdBuyMCP's own product facts On this page [What to remember](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/how-to-read-a-media-plan#takeaways) [Which supplier runs each line](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/how-to-read-a-media-plan#which-supplier-runs-each-line) [Where the forecast came from](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/how-to-read-a-media-plan#where-the-forecast-came-from) [What the data costs](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/how-to-read-a-media-plan#what-the-data-costs) [How to value the targeting](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/how-to-read-a-media-plan#how-to-value-the-targeting) [Why each line is there](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/how-to-read-a-media-plan#why-each-line-is-there) [Limits that apply](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/how-to-read-a-media-plan#limits) [Where this came from](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/how-to-read-a-media-plan#sources) [Questions](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/how-to-read-a-media-plan#questions) Who this is for Anyone approving a media plan they did not build, and anyone comparing two proposals that look similar and are not. Key points ## Remember these points if you read nothing else These are the points most likely to change your decision, and the full guide follows below. 1. 01 Ask which supplier executes each line. 'Programmatic' is not an answer, and the supplier determines what evidence you can get afterwards. 2. 02 A forecast CPM is an estimate, and the price you pay may differ. Ask what it was derived from: an adapter forecast, a rate card, or somebody's experience. 3. 03 Audience data can cost extra on top of the media and is frequently invisible on the plan, so ask for it line by line. 4. 04 A per-line reason is the field that separates a plan from a spreadsheet. If a line has no stated reason, ask why it is funded. 01 ## Which supplier runs each line Every line should name the supplier that will execute it, because that determines almost everything downstream: what reporting you get, what evidence exists that the media ran, how a pause works and how a failure is reconciled. A line that says only 'programmatic' or 'digital' is hiding the answer to all of those. It also determines whether the line can happen at all on the timeline you have. A line executing through a booking workflow (cinema, addressable television, premium audio deals) carries a lead time that a programmatic line does not. A plan that cannot name the supplier on a line cannot be reconciled afterwards, which is reason enough to ask for it before you approve anything. 02 ## Where the forecast came from Forecast reach, frequency and CPM are the numbers most likely to be treated as facts and least likely to be interrogated. The question to ask is what produced them: a live forecast from the supplier's own API, a rate card, a modelled estimate, or a planner's judgement. All four are legitimate inputs and they are not equally strong. A modelled reach figure across channels is a formula rather than a count, because no single seller can observe the others, and it should carry the word modelled wherever it appears rather than in a footnote. The specific number to distrust is a blended CPM computed by averaging averages across days. It is arithmetically meaningless and it appears constantly. Frequency belongs in the same category. A plan's frequency is planned, and AdBuyMCP states its own that way: “Frequency is planned: each week we buy enough ads aimed at your market for it to see you that many times on average. Some of every channel's audience sits outside your market, and the weekly report shows what each channel delivered against the plan.” 03 ## What the data costs Third-party audience segments can carry their own price on top of the media, and the UK streaming TV sellers on AdBuyMCP's cost page publish no price for business targeting at all. So the cost is routinely absent from the plan and present on the invoice. The reason it matters beyond the money is that it changes the comparison between lines. A cheap-looking CTV line with heavy segment targeting may cost more per thousand than an expensive-looking one with none. If the plan does not break it out, ask for it explicitly per line rather than as a total, because the totals hide which line the cost sits on. - [What streaming TV costs in the UK](https://adbuymcp.com/cost/ctv-advertising-cost) 04 ## How to value the targeting Every plan implies a targeting claim and almost none quantifies it. The same brief compiles very differently by channel: a business audience can carry a person-level claim on connected TV where consent-chained segments match, becomes a household proxy on addressable television, and is only a property of a place on out-of-home. AdBuyMCP's channel catalogue expresses that as a fidelity score out of 100 with a grade and a written rationale, running from 85 on CTV down to 40 on cinema, the lowest fixed score. The number matters less than the habit: knowing which lines in a plan are precise and which are approximations changes how you read the report afterwards. Where a plan offers no such measure, the proxy question is: what exactly is being selected on this line? If the answer is a household attribute or a venue type, the claim in the covering email should not be about people. - [What a fidelity score is](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/what-a-fidelity-score-is) 05 ## Why each line is there A per-line reason is the field that distinguishes a plan from an allocation. It should say what job the line does (reach, frequency, demand capture, attention, incremental audience) and why that budget rather than more or less. The test is whether removing the line would change anything you could name. If nobody can articulate what a line contributes, it is usually there because the channel was on the list. This is also where under-funded lines get caught. A line too small to pace properly does not do the job it was added for, and it would be better folded into a line that can. Check each line against its seller's published minimum before you approve the plan, because a line below one cannot be bought at all. Type your company website or work email to see who we think buys from you, how big your market is and what it costs at 3, 5 or 12 times a week. [Get my plan and price](https://adbuymcp.com/start) Free, with no card. Limits ## These limits apply to everything above This guide describes what a good plan discloses. It does not claim every plan AdBuyMCP produces has been validated against live delivery. No rail here has reached spend-tested, so plan forecasts have not been checked against real outcomes through us. The disclosure fields are real and testable. A 30-minute call with the founder will tell you whether any of these limits matters for your market. [Book a 30-minute call with the founder](https://adbuymcp.com/contact#book) Where this came from ## Every figure above comes from one of these Every figure here is a product fact, and each one names the part of AdBuyMCP it comes from. ### AdBuyMCP’s own product facts - 01 The per-line disclosure fields come from AdBuyMCP's channel plans, which carry the executing connector, the forecast, a written reason and the fidelity grade. - 02 The planned-frequency sentence from AdBuyMCP's published plan pricing. Read next ## These pages pick up where this guide stops Each one goes further into a part of this guide. ### [How it works](https://adbuymcp.com/how-it-works) The steps that build a plan and what each one checks. ### [What a fidelity score measures](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/what-a-fidelity-score-is) How to read a score's grade before its number, and which scores can move. ### [What UK awareness advertising costs](https://adbuymcp.com/cost) Sellers' minimums and prices for billboards, streaming TV, podcasts and ChatGPT ads, sourced and dated. The other 19 guides - [Most B2B buyers have vendors in mind before they search](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/uk-media-buying-for-b2b-marketers) - [Why cross-channel frequency capping rarely happens](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/frequency-capping-across-channels) - [Buying UK DOOH without a movement-data licence](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/buying-uk-dooh-without-movement-data) - [How to buy podcast ads in the UK](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/how-to-buy-podcast-ads-in-the-uk) - [The minimum budget for a startup to test TV advertising in the UK](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/minimum-budget-to-test-tv-advertising) - [What a DSP does and when you need one](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/what-is-a-dsp-and-do-you-need-one) - [How UK addressable TV targeting actually works](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/how-uk-addressable-tv-targeting-works) - [How Sky AdSmart works](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/sky-adsmart-explained) - [How UK cinema advertising is booked](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/how-uk-cinema-advertising-is-booked) - [Choosing between cinema and CTV](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/choosing-between-cinema-and-ctv) - [Designing a geo-lift test that can actually be powered](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/designing-a-geo-lift-test) - [Incrementality testing on a small budget: a worked power table](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/incrementality-testing-on-a-small-budget) - [Why most incrementality tests are invalid](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/why-most-incrementality-tests-are-invalid) - [What a fidelity score measures](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/what-a-fidelity-score-is) - [First-party data in UK media buying](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/first-party-data-in-uk-media-buying) - [What Clearcast and the CAA actually check](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/what-clearcast-and-the-caa-actually-check) - [Running paid media from an AI agent without losing control](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/running-paid-media-from-an-ai-agent) - [MCP for marketers: what the protocol actually changes](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/mcp-for-marketers) - [The ad platforms' own MCP servers, and planning one budget across them](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/ad-platform-mcp-servers-and-cross-channel-planning) Bring your market ## We'll price an awareness plan for your own market. 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. [Get my plan and price](https://adbuymcp.com/start) [Book a 30-minute call with the founder](https://adbuymcp.com/contact#book) Free, with no card. Talk your market and your plan through with James Rooney, who built AdBuyMCP and wrote its code. ## Questions this guide gets asked ### What is the single most useful question to ask about a media plan? What does each line cost me in total, including data and fees, and who executes it? Those two together surface most of what is usually hidden: the segment uplift that sits on top of the media, the intermediary chain between you and the publisher, and whether a line is a programmatic buy or a piece of paperwork with a lead time. A plan that answers both readily is a plan whose author has done the work.