Working media is the part of an advertising budget that pays for the advertising itself: the airtime, the page space or the impression a consumer can actually see. Everything else, from agency fees and creative production to research, data licences and ad technology charges, is classed as non-working media. The distinction exists because marketing departments needed a way to show finance directors how much of a budget reached an audience and how much was consumed getting it there. In programmatic trading, where one impression can pass through an agency, a demand-side platform (DSP), a data vendor, an exchange and a supply-side platform (SSP) before reaching a publisher, the ratio has become one of the most contested numbers in the market.

Where the money splits

In a brand budget the split is an accounting convention. Producing a commercial, paying the agency retainer and pre-testing the idea are non-working; the media plan that runs the commercial is working. Each advertiser draws its own boundary, so ratios rarely compare cleanly between companies.

Programmatic buying forces a finer cut, because fees are deducted impression by impression. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) formalised one version in its May 2017 study, Programmatic: Seeing Through the Financial Fog, defining demand-side working media as the winning bid clearing price a DSP pays an exchange. Everything above that line - agency fees, DSP platform fees, verification, ad serving and third-party data - counted as non-working.

The study's numbers show how the layers stack. For display, inventory cost $3.30 per thousand impressions (CPM); demand-side fees added $1.49, making $4.80 all-in, a 45 per cent premium. Video carried a 35 per cent premium. Of each dollar, 72 cents bought inventory, 6 cents went to agency fees, 12 cents to execution, 9 cents to data and 1 cent to other fees, according to the ANA.

The clearing price is not what the publisher keeps, because exchange and SSP fees sit inside it. Estimating those at 15 to 25 per cent of demand-side working media, the ANA put publishers' share at 54 to 61 cents, with a midpoint of 58. The remaining 42 per cent became the study's headline nonworking figure, recalled when Microsoft announced the closure of its Xandr DSP in May 2025.

A hypothetical from Marcus Pratt of the agency Mediasmith, cited in the same coverage, shows what fees do to an auction. Two advertisers bid $5. One pays a 20 per cent DSP fee, a $1 CPM data charge and a 20 per cent SSP fee, so the publisher sees $2.40. The other pays 10 per cent to its DSP, buys no data and routes through an SSP charging 15 per cent, delivering $3.83 and winning.

Platforms record the line in their reporting. In Display & Video 360 (DV360), media cost covers only the price of impressions, while total media cost adds data fees and partner costs such as third-party ad serving and verification, according to Google's help documentation; a setting can also place the platform fee there, in the Media Fee 1 field. Google's own revenue model example marks up $20,000 of total media cost by 20 per cent to bill $24,000. Media cost is the nearest platform proxy for working media, yet it still contains the sell-side fees inside the clearing price.

Advertiser procurement teams set target ratios, agencies report against them and auditors test the reports.

From brand budgets to log files

The phrase predates programmatic by decades. The 2017 ANA report noted that costs not directly purchasing media had historically been called non-working, and conceded the label was harder to apply once data and technology vendors took on value-adding roles.

Digital intermediation turned the ratio into a dispute. The World Federation of Advertisers estimated in 2014 that 60 per cent of programmatic budgets went on fees, leaving publishers 40 per cent, according to the ANA. In June 2016, a K2 Intelligence investigation for the ANA reported agency rebates of 1.67 to 20 per cent of aggregate media spending, money that never appeared on an advertiser's invoice.

The ANA study, released on May 18, 2017, was the first to measure the split from DSP transaction logs: 16.4 billion impressions bought for seven advertisers through five DSPs between July 2015 and December 2016. Only seven of 58 interested advertisers could take part fully, many lacking the contractual right to their own data.

Large advertisers began cutting non-working spend. Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer of Procter & Gamble, had used a 2017 address to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) to demand contract transparency. In January 2018 the company said shrinking its agency roster from 6,000 to 2,500 had saved $750 million in agency and production costs, according to AdExchanger.

Britain added an end-to-end measure. A study by ISBA, the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers, and PwC, published on May 6, 2020, found publishers receiving 51 per cent of advertiser spend, with 15 per cent attributable to no participant, according to ISBA. The January 2023 follow-up restated those figures to 57 and 17 per cent on a narrower basis, then found the unattributed share down to 3 per cent.

Quality then entered the arithmetic. The ANA's December 2023 study found that 36 per cent of budget entering a DSP reached impressions that were valid, viewable, measurable and outside made-for-advertising (MFA) sites. In June 2024 the ANA, Fiducia and TAG TrustNet, a service of the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), made the method a quarterly benchmark whose headline measure, TrueAdSpend, deducts both transaction costs and quality losses. "Programmatic has entered an accountability era," Bob Liodice, the ANA's chief executive, said on February 25, 2026.

Why buyers and sellers track it

Working media is where procurement arguments become numbers. IAB Spain's supply-side platform guide of April 15, 2026 defined working media as the share of budget reaching publishers after technology costs, intermediary margins and operational overheads. A direct SSP connection without resellers delivers 70 to 80 per cent of an advertiser's euro to the publisher, it estimated, against 40 to 50 per cent on indirect paths, and supply path optimisation (SPO) can lift delivery from 55 per cent to 70 to 75 per cent.

Vendors now sell against the ratio. On September 9, 2026, Chicago agency Scale Marketing widened its use of Nexxen's DSP to move more client budget into working media, though the announcement carried no independent measurement of the share before or after.

Agencies complicate the picture by acting as sellers. The ANA reported in March 2026 that 58 per cent of surveyed marketers had used principal media in the previous year, up from 47 per cent in 2024, and only 61 per cent said their contracts specifically addressed it in a June 2026 survey.

Where the measure breaks down

The first problem is the denominator. At least four definitions circulate: the brand-budget split, the ANA's 2017 demand-side clearing price, the publisher's net receipt used by ISBA and IAB Spain, and a quality-adjusted share. None substitutes for another.

The most quoted recent figure shows the confusion. Coverage of IAB Spain's guide, headlines included, presented 41 per cent as the working media share of programmatic investment. The number is the ANA's TrueAdSpend for the first quarter of 2025, after 26.1 per cent went on transaction costs and 32.9 per cent was lost to invalid traffic, non-viewable and non-measurable impressions and MFA inventory. Strip out only the transaction costs and the remainder is 73.9 per cent. By the fourth quarter of 2025, advertisers enforcing quality rules converted 56.7 per cent of spend and lower performers 37.5 per cent, according to the ANA.

The label draws its own criticism. Creative production is classed as non-working even though it decides whether a placement persuades anyone, and Agency Mania Solutions, a consultancy, argued in 2017 that no real industry benchmark for the ratio exists.

Principal trading distorts the ratio from inside. When an agency buys inventory for its own account and resells it at an undisclosed markup, the margin is invoiced as media. K2 described principal markups of 30 to 90 per cent.

Quality filters can be gamed too. TAG, the ANA and Fiducia found on July 28, 2026 that AI-generated inventory graded premium more than 70 per cent of the time, clearing at a quality-adjusted TrueCPM of $7.08 against $6.15 for clean supply.

Not the same as

Media cost. A platform field rather than a ratio. In DV360 it is the clearing price, which still includes exchange and SSP fees the publisher never receives.

Publisher net revenue. What the seller banks after every intermediary. ISBA's 51 per cent measured this, though some trade press called it working media; the take rate is the intermediaries' share of the gap.

TrueAdSpend. The ANA's quality-adjusted measure, which also removes invalid, unmeasurable, non-viewable and MFA impressions. It cannot exceed working media on any fee-only definition.

Paid media. A channel category set against owned and earned media, containing both working and non-working costs.

Recent developments

Pressure on the fee layer continues. On September 24, 2026, Viant extended its Direct Access route to private marketplace and programmatic guaranteed deals, saying neither party pays to run a deal, so more budget reaches working media; it published no cost comparison, and its own platform charges fall outside the claim. On September 16, IAB Tech Lab's Programmatic Governance Council released draft rules to curb duplicate bid requests, with comments open until October 16. And MFA exposure in the ANA benchmark rose to 1.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2026, the first meaningful increase in the series: quality can slip while fees stand still.

Timeline

  • 2014: The World Federation of Advertisers estimates that 60 per cent of programmatic spend goes on fees, leaving publishers 40 per cent
  • May 2015: The ANA, the Association of Canadian Advertisers, Ebiquity and AD/FIN begin recruiting advertisers for a transaction-level programmatic study
  • June 7, 2016: The ANA publishes the K2 Intelligence report on agency rebates and principal trading
  • 2017: Marc Pritchard of Procter & Gamble demands supply chain transparency in an address to the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting
  • May 18, 2017: The ANA defines demand-side working media and finds a 72/28 demand-side split and a 58/42 full-chain split
  • January 23, 2018: Procter & Gamble reports $750 million saved in agency and production costs
  • May 6, 2020: ISBA and PwC find publishers receiving 51 per cent of spend, with a 15 per cent unknown delta
  • January 18, 2023: The second ISBA and PwC study cuts the unknown delta to 3 per cent
  • December 2023: The ANA finds 36 per cent of programmatic budgets reaching quality impressions
  • June 17, 2024: The ANA and TAG TrustNet launch the quarterly Programmatic Transparency Benchmark
  • May 14, 2025: Microsoft announces the closure of its Xandr DSP
  • May 21, 2025: The first-quarter 2025 benchmark puts TrueAdSpend at 41 per cent
  • February 25, 2026: The fourth-quarter 2025 benchmark splits advertisers at 56.7 and 37.5 per cent
  • March 19, 2026: The ANA reports 58 per cent of marketers using principal media
  • April 15, 2026: IAB Spain defines working media in its first supply-side platform guide
  • June 2026: The ANA finds 61 per cent of marketers' contracts address principal media
  • July 28, 2026: TAG, the ANA and Fiducia find AI-generated inventory graded premium more than 70 per cent of the time
  • September 9, 2026: Scale Marketing shifts more client budget to Nexxen's DSP
  • September 16, 2026: IAB Tech Lab's Programmatic Governance Council releases draft rules on duplicate bid requests
  • September 24, 2026: Viant extends Direct Access to private marketplace and programmatic guaranteed deals

Summary

Who. Advertisers and their procurement and finance teams set working media targets; agencies, trading desks, DSPs, data vendors, exchanges and SSPs take the non-working share; the ANA, ISBA, IAB Spain, TAG TrustNet and Fiducia measure it; independent auditors test agency reporting.

What. The portion of an advertising budget that buys placements and audience exposure, as opposed to fees, data, technology and production. Definitions range from a demand-side clearing price to the publisher's net receipt and quality-adjusted measures such as TrueAdSpend.

When. The term comes from pre-digital brand budgeting. The ANA first measured it from programmatic transaction logs in May 2017, ISBA followed in May 2020, and the ANA's quarterly benchmark has tracked a quality-adjusted version since June 2024.

Where. Across all paid channels, with the sharpest disputes in open web programmatic and connected TV buying in the United States, Britain and Spain, where the main studies were conducted.

Why. Every intermediary takes a share before an advertisement reaches a screen. The ratio tells an advertiser how much of a budget bought exposure, and it has become the basis for procurement demands, supply path decisions and vendor sales claims.