--- title: "UK media buying for B2B marketers | AdBuyMCP" description: "Most B2B buyers have vendors in mind before they search, and about 5% are in the market in a given quarter. How to buy UK media that reaches the rest first." url: "https://adbuymcp.com/guides/uk-media-buying-for-b2b-marketers" --- [Home](https://adbuymcp.com/) / [Guides](https://adbuymcp.com/guides) / UK media buying for B2B marketers Guide · reaching B2B buyers early # 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. In a Bain & Company survey of 1,208 buyers at US companies, 80 to 90% had a set of vendors in mind before they did any research. The same research found that 90% of those buyers went on to choose a vendor from that day-one list. At any one time, few business buyers are looking. Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute estimates that something like 5% of business buyers are in the market in a given quarter, a rule of thumb that varies by category. So UK media buying for a B2B company has two jobs: search ads, LinkedIn lead gen and outbound compete for the buyers who are looking now, and awareness advertising reaches the rest of the market before they start. Outside the professional platforms no channel knows a job title, so each is aimed by something else: out-of-home by place and time, streaming TV by household, podcasts by show and ChatGPT ads by the topic of a conversation. [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 - **Had vendors in mind before research (Bain, US buyers)**: 80–90% - **Bought from that day-one list (Bain, US buyers)**: 9 in 10 - **In the market in a given quarter**: About 5% - **Length**: 9 min read Sources 13 linked and dated On this page [What to remember](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/uk-media-buying-for-b2b-marketers#takeaways) [The day-one list decides most B2B purchases](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/uk-media-buying-for-b2b-marketers#the-day-one-list-decides-most-b2b-purchases) [Most of your market is not buying this quarter](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/uk-media-buying-for-b2b-marketers#most-of-your-market-is-not-buying-this-quarter) [The whole buying group has to know your name](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/uk-media-buying-for-b2b-marketers#the-whole-buying-group-has-to-know-your-name) [Four channels reach a B2B market when it is not searching](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/uk-media-buying-for-b2b-marketers#four-channels-reach-a-b2b-market-when-it-is-not) [Count your market in people](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/uk-media-buying-for-b2b-marketers#count-your-market-in-people) [Each channel reports what it delivered in its own unit](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/uk-media-buying-for-b2b-marketers#each-channel-reports-what-it-delivered-in-its-ow) [Search, LinkedIn and outbound still have a job](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/uk-media-buying-for-b2b-marketers#search-linkedin-and-outbound-still-have-a-job) [Limits that apply](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/uk-media-buying-for-b2b-marketers#limits) [Where this came from](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/uk-media-buying-for-b2b-marketers#sources) [Questions](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/uk-media-buying-for-b2b-marketers#questions) Who this is for 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. 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 Most B2B buyers start with a list. In Bain's survey, 80–90% had vendors in mind before any research, and 9 in 10 of them bought from it. 2. 02 About 5% of business buyers are in the market in a given quarter, by Professor John Dawes' rule of thumb, so most of your market is not looking at any one time. 3. 03 Search ads, LinkedIn lead gen and outbound reach the buyers who are looking now. Awareness advertising reaches the rest before they start, and the two work side by side. 4. 04 No channel outside the professional platforms knows a job title. Out-of-home is aimed by place and time, streaming TV by household, podcasts by show and ChatGPT ads by the topic of a conversation. 5. 05 Count your market in people: the companies that could buy from you, times the people in each buying group. 6. 06 Frequency is planned. Each channel reports what it delivered in its own unit, and no UK service de-duplicates frequency across channels. 01 ## The day-one list decides most B2B purchases In a Bain & Company survey of 1,208 buyers at US companies, 80 to 90% had a set of vendors in mind before they did any research. The same research found that 90% of those buyers went on to choose a vendor from that day-one list. In June 2026 Bain again put the share who buy from their day-one list at around 90%. 6sense's 2025 survey of nearly 4,000 buyers, a fifth of them in the UK and Ireland, found the winning vendor was already on the day-one shortlist 95% of the time. For a founder the point is timing. By the time a buyer searches, compares suppliers or replies to a cold email, the list is usually written, and the vendors on it are mostly ones the buyer already knew. Sources: [Harvard Business Review, What B2Bs Need to Know About Their Buyers (Bain & Company)](https://hbr.org/2022/09/what-b2bs-need-to-know-about-their-buyers) (research); [Bain & Company, Raising the Odds on a Deal](https://www.bain.com/insights/raising-the-odds-on-a-deal-how-likelihood-to-buy-rewires-b2b-growth/) (research); [6sense, 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report](https://6sense.com/science-of-b2b/buyer-experience-report-2025/) (research). 02 ## Most of your market is not buying this quarter Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute estimates that something like 5% of business buyers are in the market in a given quarter, a rule of thumb that varies by category. Dawes reaches it from how rarely companies change suppliers such as their main bank or law firm, and calls it a heuristic rather than a precise rule: a category bought more often has more of its buyers in the market each quarter, so work out your own buying cycle before you lean on the figure. Dawes draws the conclusion himself: “To grow a brand, you need to advertise to people who aren't in the market now, so that when they do enter the market your brand is one they are familiar with.” Ehrenberg-Bass research with 609 UK business-banking buyers found fewer than one in ten rejected any given brand, and concluded that lack of awareness is the bigger barrier to growth. For a young B2B company, that makes being unknown the risk to fix first. Sources: [Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, Advertising effectiveness and the 95-5 rule (Professor John Dawes)](https://marketingscience.info/news-and-insights/advertising-effectiveness-and-the-95-5-rule-most-b2b-buyers-are-not-in-the-market-right-now) (research); [Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, Brand Rejection in B2B (Professor Jenni Romaniuk)](https://marketingscience.info/news-and-insights/brand-rejection-in-b2b-indidence-reasons-and-implications) (research). 03 ## The whole buying group has to know your name A B2B purchase is rarely one person's decision. The person who found you, the budget holder who signs, the people who will use the product and whoever can block it in finance, IT or legal all have a say, and most B2B media reaches only the first of them: the one searching, downloading and replying to email. In LinkedIn's 2024 study with Bain of 500+ senior buyers of enterprise technology in the US, UK and Western Europe, 81% said the product they bought was known by everyone in the buying group on day one. That is the case for media that reaches people outside work as well as at it. A finance director who never opens LinkedIn still commutes, watches streaming TV in the evening and listens to podcasts. Source: [LinkedIn Pressroom, LinkedIn is the place to B2B at Cannes Lions 2024](https://news.linkedin.com/2024/June/LinkedIn-is-the-place-to-B2B-at-Cannes-Lions-2024) (research). 04 ## Four channels reach a B2B market when it is not searching Outside LinkedIn and the other professional platforms, no channel knows a job title, so each one is aimed by something else. These are the four channels an AdBuyMCP awareness plan runs on, and how each is aimed, at the scope its sellers publish. Each has a limit, and its page states it: a billboard is seen by everyone who passes, streaming TV reaches households rather than named people, a podcast download is not a confirmed play, and ChatGPT ads are shown only to people on its Free and Go plans. - **Out-of-home**: Classic billboards and digital screens, booked by place and by time of day. By location and time, for example screens near business districts during the morning commute. Route, Great Britain's out-of-home audience measure, models adults aged 15 and over and has no B2B decision-maker audience, so places stand in for people. - **Streaming TV**: Ads in streaming TV services, sold through self-serve and programmatic platforms and by the streamers themselves. By household, using business data where a seller offers it. Outside the US, Dun & Bradstreet's audience segments are firmographic (company size, industry and location), and LinkedIn's job-title targeting for TV is available in the US and Canada only. - **Podcasts**: Pre-recorded ads and host-read sponsorships in UK podcasts, bought through podcast networks and audio platforms. By show, category and location: Acast sells a Business & Finance category and a Business Leaders audience attribute, and Spotify's self-serve podcast ads target by category, age, gender and location. - **ChatGPT ads**: A labelled ad shown below ChatGPT's answer and kept separate from it, to people on ChatGPT's Free and Go plans. Matched to what the conversation is about, using context hints you supply, plus location and platform. OpenAI offers no job-title, company or industry targeting, and customer-list audiences need at least 25,000 matched users. Sources: [Route, TGI data fusion](https://route.org.uk/route-tgi-data-fusion.php) (industry body); [Eyeota, Dun & Bradstreet global audiences](https://www.eyeota.com/dun-and-bradstreet-global-audiences) (vendor claim); [Amazon Ads, LinkedIn CTV ads on Amazon DSP](https://advertising.amazon.com/library/news/linkedin-ctv-ads-amazon-dsp) (vendor claim); [Acast, Campaign targeting](https://learn.acast.com/en/articles/6515240-campaign-targeting) (vendor claim); [OpenAI Help Center, Ads in ChatGPT](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001047-ads-in-chatgpt) (vendor docs); [OpenAI Ads developer documentation, Campaign targeting](https://developers.openai.com/ads/campaign-targeting) (vendor docs). - [Out-of-home in an awareness plan](https://adbuymcp.com/channels/dooh) - [Streaming TV in an awareness plan](https://adbuymcp.com/channels/ctv-streaming) - [Podcasts in an awareness plan](https://adbuymcp.com/channels/podcast-audio) - [ChatGPT ads in an awareness plan](https://adbuymcp.com/channels/chatgpt-ads) 05 ## Count your market in people Awareness is planned against a market, so start by counting it: the companies that could buy from you, times the people who take part in each purchase. If you have a TAM slide in your pitch deck, this is that slide counted in people. Take the worked example AdBuyMCP's calculator opens on, UK finance teams at 3,000 mid-sized companies: with 4 people in each buying group, that is a market of 12,000 people. Then decide how often that market should see you. In an AdBuyMCP plan you choose 3, 5 or 12 times a week, and the price follows from one published rate, £100 a month for every 1,000 people in your market, for each time a week. At 5 times a week the example market costs £6,000 a month. All-in: the media, the ads we make for each channel from your website, the planning, buying and balancing across the four channels, and your weekly report, with no fee on top. Prices are shown before VAT. 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. - [How the price follows your market](https://adbuymcp.com/pricing) 06 ## Each channel reports what it delivered in its own unit Out-of-home reports proof of play from each screen and Route's modelled audience, streaming TV reports impressions and completed views by household within each seller, podcasts report downloads and ad deliveries, and ChatGPT ads report impressions and clicks, with no reach or frequency. No UK service de-duplicates frequency across the four, so read each count on its own. Your own numbers are where to watch for a change: more people searching for your company by name, more direct visits to your site, and more prospects saying they have seen you. Treat them as signals. They move for other reasons too, and a geo-lift test is the only way to show that the ads caused them, when your conversions are high enough to power one. B2B buying cycles outlast a four-week flight, so agree before you start what the first months are meant to show. Judged on last-click after a month, awareness will look as though it did nothing, because last-click credits the search that harvested the demand. Sources: [Route, TGI data fusion](https://route.org.uk/route-tgi-data-fusion.php) (industry body); [OpenAI Ads developer documentation, Reporting](https://developers.openai.com/ads/reporting) (vendor docs). - [What the weekly report shows](https://adbuymcp.com/measurement) - [Incrementality on a small budget](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/incrementality-testing-on-a-small-budget) 07 ## Search, LinkedIn and outbound still have a job Keep paying for the buyers who are looking now. Search ads, LinkedIn lead gen and outbound reach the buyers in the market this quarter, and they are the right tools for them. Awareness is the work for everyone else in your market, and it is measured in months. If you need meetings this month, put the money into search and outbound first, and add awareness once they are running. One gap is worth knowing before you start. AdBuyMCP has no CRM connector and no account-list ingestion, so a plan is aimed at your market by place, household, show and conversation rather than at a list of named accounts. - [Search and social beside an awareness plan](https://adbuymcp.com/compare/google-and-meta) 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 explains why awareness matters to a B2B company and how the channels that build it are aimed. It promises no place on a buyer's list: Bain names previous experience, colleagues' recommendations and vendor websites as the routes onto it, and no study we could find tested whether out-of-home, streaming TV, podcast or ChatGPT ads change a shortlist. Bain's survey covered US buyers and 6sense's included the UK and Ireland. Most of this research, LinkedIn's study included, comes from large technology purchases, so read it as the direction of B2B buying and not as a forecast for one startup's deals. No media has been bought through AdBuyMCP yet. The supply page shows how far buying through each seller has been tested. 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 Outside figures link to the page that published them, with the day each was opened. Product facts name the part of AdBuyMCP they come from. ### Published sources 1. 01 [Harvard Business Review, What B2Bs Need to Know About Their Buyers (Bain & Company)](https://hbr.org/2022/09/what-b2bs-need-to-know-about-their-buyers) Research · dated 20 September 2022 · opened 20 October 2026 2. 02 [Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, Advertising effectiveness and the 95-5 rule (Professor John Dawes)](https://marketingscience.info/news-and-insights/advertising-effectiveness-and-the-95-5-rule-most-b2b-buyers-are-not-in-the-market-right-now) Research · dated May 2021 · opened 20 October 2026 3. 03 [LinkedIn Pressroom, LinkedIn is the place to B2B at Cannes Lions 2024](https://news.linkedin.com/2024/June/LinkedIn-is-the-place-to-B2B-at-Cannes-Lions-2024) Research · dated 17 June 2024 · opened 20 October 2026 4. 04 [Bain & Company, Raising the Odds on a Deal](https://www.bain.com/insights/raising-the-odds-on-a-deal-how-likelihood-to-buy-rewires-b2b-growth/) Research · dated 19 June 2026 · opened 20 October 2026 5. 05 [6sense, 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report](https://6sense.com/science-of-b2b/buyer-experience-report-2025/) Research · dated 12 November 2025 · opened 20 October 2026 6. 06 [Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, Brand Rejection in B2B (Professor Jenni Romaniuk)](https://marketingscience.info/news-and-insights/brand-rejection-in-b2b-indidence-reasons-and-implications) Research · dated May 2021 · opened 20 October 2026 7. 07 [Route, TGI data fusion](https://route.org.uk/route-tgi-data-fusion.php) Industry body · taxonomy dated 23 January 2025 · opened 20 October 2026 8. 08 [Eyeota, Dun & Bradstreet global audiences](https://www.eyeota.com/dun-and-bradstreet-global-audiences) Vendor claim · opened 20 October 2026 9. 09 [Amazon Ads, LinkedIn CTV ads on Amazon DSP](https://advertising.amazon.com/library/news/linkedin-ctv-ads-amazon-dsp) Vendor claim · dated 7 May 2026 · opened 20 October 2026 10. 10 [Acast, Campaign targeting](https://learn.acast.com/en/articles/6515240-campaign-targeting) Vendor claim · dated 16 December 2024 · opened 20 October 2026 11. 11 [OpenAI Help Center, Ads in ChatGPT](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001047-ads-in-chatgpt) Vendor docs · opened 20 October 2026 12. 12 [OpenAI Ads developer documentation, Campaign targeting](https://developers.openai.com/ads/campaign-targeting) Vendor docs · opened 20 October 2026 13. 13 [OpenAI Ads developer documentation, Reporting](https://developers.openai.com/ads/reporting) Vendor docs · opened 20 October 2026 ### AdBuyMCP’s own product facts - 01 AdBuyMCP's published plan pricing: the worked example, the rate and the frequencies Read next ## These pages pick up where this guide stops Each one goes further into a part of this guide. ### [Why cross-channel frequency capping rarely happens](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/frequency-capping-across-channels) Why a plan's frequency is planned, and why nothing counts one person across sellers. ### [Streaming TV in an awareness plan](https://adbuymcp.com/channels/ctv-streaming) How a plan aims streaming TV at a B2B market with business data, and what it cannot do. ### [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 - [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) - [How to read a media plan](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/how-to-read-a-media-plan) - [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 ### Do most B2B buyers really choose vendors before they search? Most start with a list. In a Bain & Company survey of 1,208 buyers at US companies, 80 to 90% had a set of vendors in mind before they did any research. The same research found that 90% of those buyers went on to choose a vendor from that day-one list. 6sense's 2025 survey of nearly 4,000 buyers, a fifth of them in the UK and Ireland, found the winning vendor was already on the day-one shortlist 95% of the time. ### Where does the 95-5 rule come from? Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute estimates that something like 5% of business buyers are in the market in a given quarter, a rule of thumb that varies by category. He derives it from how rarely companies change suppliers such as their bank, and his paper calls it a heuristic: a category bought more often has more of its buyers in the market each quarter. ### Can streaming TV or ChatGPT ads target job titles in the UK? Not by job title, so each is aimed another way. Streaming TV is aimed by household, using business data where a seller offers it. Outside the US, Dun & Bradstreet's audience segments are firmographic (company size, industry and location), and LinkedIn's job-title targeting for TV is available in the US and Canada only. ChatGPT ads are matched to what the conversation is about, using context hints you supply, plus location and platform. OpenAI offers no job-title, company or industry targeting, and customer-list audiences need at least 25,000 matched users.