Advertising technology was sold for years as a plumbing upgrade: faster auctions, cheaper impressions, cleaner data. Your buyers now ask where each dollar went, which intermediary touched it and what a regulator might say about the answer. This guide scores agency candidates against revenue, transparency and competition research published between 2020 and 2025. The IAB, 2025, reported US internet advertising revenue of 258.6 billion dollars for 2024, a market large enough that its leakages are measured in billions too.
I Discrimen
Revenue growth is not the same as buyer confidence
A market can expand every quarter while the people funding it trust it a little less.
TV Technology, 2025, reported IAB figures showing digital video revenue up 19.2 percent and social revenue up 36.7 percent in 2024. Growth at that pace masks an awkward fact your customers repeat in procurement meetings: they cannot always trace what they bought. An agency that celebrates market growth while ignoring the trust deficit will pitch you into a conversation you are not prepared for.
Ask each candidate to state your buyer's top three doubts about your segment, in the buyer's own language. Then ask what evidence would retire each doubt. The distinction echoes the one in how to choose a PR agency for MarTech, where budget holders now audit vendor claims line by line. Growth is the weather in AdTech; confidence is the climate your revenue depends on.
II Machina
Your story is audited against log files, supply paths and privacy notices
In this sector, a claim is only as good as the trail a sceptical buyer can follow after reading it.
Journalists covering your launch will ask which exchanges you connect to, how your fees are disclosed and what happens to user data at each hop. Regulators and answer engines reward the same specificity, because both are built to extract verifiable statements from vague marketing. Your agency must therefore work from your supply path documentation, not from a positioning deck alone.
Ask candidates to show you a claim register for a comparable launch: each public statement, its supporting document and its owner. Compare that rigour with the full scope of public relations services before you decide what to retain. In AdTech, transparency is not a theme for your content; it is the test your content has to pass.
III Exemplum
The transparency study gave your buyers a number they now quote back at you
Twenty one marketers opened their supply chains, and the result became an industry benchmark.
MarTech, 2023, reported the ANA Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study, which tracked 123 million dollars of spending and 35.5 billion impressions. The study found only 0.36 dollars of each dollar entering a demand side platform reached a consumer, with the rest absorbed by fees and low quality inventory. MediaVillage, 2023, reported the same programme estimating 20 billion dollars of waste across the open web ecosystem.
Notice why the study travelled. It followed money through named intermediaries and published the arithmetic, so buyers could repeat it in negotiations. Your agency should be able to build that kind of follow the money narrative for your own product, with your fees and outcomes stated as plainly.
Retail and commerce media sellers face adjacent questions, and how to choose a PR agency for consumer technology covers the consumer trust side. A number with a method behind it outlives a slogan with a budget behind it.
IV Damnum
Opacity is priced into your deals long before it appears in your coverage
Procurement teams discount vendors they cannot audit, and the discount compounds quietly.
The ANA findings reported by MarTech, 2023, put waste at 22 billion dollars of an 88 billion dollar open web market. Campaigns from study participants ran across an average of 44,000 websites and apps, a footprint no team could genuinely curate. Each of those figures becomes a reason for a buyer to demand shorter contracts, audit rights and fee disclosure from you.
Weak counsel deepens the damage. An agency that responds to transparency research with lifestyle messaging about creativity confirms the buyer's suspicion that your company prefers the fog. A stronger partner helps you publish your supply path standards, your made for advertising policy and your measurement approach before a prospect asks.
Fog is a pricing strategy for intermediaries and a tax on everyone trying to sell trust.
V Genus
A demand platform, a verification vendor and a retail media network answer different charges
Your sector label groups together companies accused of opposite sins.
Identify your charge before you brief a candidate. A demand side or supply side platform is accused of taking hidden margin. A verification vendor is accused of blocking good inventory and missing bad placements. A retail media network is accused of grading its own homework when it reports sales lift.
Your agency should demonstrate fluency in the specific charge your class attracts, and in the evidence that answers it. The table below makes the test concrete.
| Your class | The charge you live under | What you ask a candidate to show |
|---|---|---|
| You run an exchange or platform | Margin taken without clear disclosure | A fee explainer a procurement lead can forward internally |
| You sell verification tools | False confidence sold as safety | A methodology note that states limits and error rates |
| You operate a retail media network | Self reported lift that buyers cannot check | A measurement story validated by an outside party |
| You sell identity or data services | Privacy promises that outrun consent practice | A consent narrative reviewed against your actual data flows |
fons: Classes framed from ANA transparency research reported by MarTech, 2023, and CMA findings summarised by RPC, 2020.
Class determines which documents a journalist requests first. Mobile specialists meet a related version of this scrutiny, which how to choose a PR agency for mobile applications examines through app store and privacy rules. Hire the partner who has answered your charge before, in public, under questioning.
VI Regio
Competition authorities have already drawn the map your story must fit inside
Your positioning will be read against findings that regulators published years before your launch.
RPC, 2020, summarised the UK Competition and Markets Authority market study, which found two large platforms taking over 80 percent of UK digital advertising spend and search prices running well above a rival benchmark. The CMA and Ofcom joint statement, hosted at GOV.UK, 2022, recorded that a lack of transparency in the market was undermining competition. Those findings frame how European and British reporters hear any claim about openness or fairness.
Ask candidates to map your announcement against the regulatory findings in each market where you sell, naming which sentences need evidence or legal review. Then ask how they would handle a journalist who quotes a regulator's finding back at your spokesperson. Geography in AdTech is a legal and editorial reality, not a translation task.
A story that ignores the regulatory map will be corrected by people who drew it.
VII Occasio
Money is moving toward channels that can prove what they did
Retail media and video are winning budget because their sellers promise a shorter line between spend and sale.
Internet Retailing, 2024, reported WARC figures putting retail media growth at 18 percent in 2024, reaching 154.8 billion dollars globally. Campaign Asia, 2024, reported WARC forecasting total global advertising spend of 1.08 trillion dollars, with pure play internet platforms taking 68.8 percent. Marketing Brew, 2024, reported GroupM expecting global advertising revenue growth of 9.5 percent, passing one trillion dollars for the first time.
That movement rewards vendors who can document outcomes in language a chief financial officer accepts. Your agency should build stories around audited results, named advertiser outcomes and measurement methods, rather than around impression volumes. Measurement led platforms will recognise the standard, since how to choose a PR agency for data analytics applies the same evidence test. Budget follows proof of effect, and proof is a communications asset you build deliberately.
Ask each finalist to design that asset with you in the room: one advertiser outcome, documented end to end, from brief to measured result to the permission needed to publish it. Note how long each team spends on the measurement method compared with the headline they hope to write from it. Teams that start with method will protect you when a reporter asks how the number was produced. Teams that start with the headline will leave you answering that question alone.
VIII Structura
Ask who handles the day a placement scandal carries your name
Your logo will appear in a screenshot beside content you never chose, and the response window is measured in hours.
Ask candidates to walk you through a brand safety incident: who monitors placements, who contacts the publisher or exchange, who drafts the advertiser note and who decides whether campaigns pause. AdTech crises are documentary, so the team must be able to read logs and placement reports while speaking plainly to affected customers. General assurances about relationships will not substitute for that fluency.
Examine reporting structure in calm times too. A sound report links coverage to the claims it carried, the advertiser questions it prompted and the corrections it required, so you can watch credibility move. Game advertising carries its own version of this exposure, covered in how to choose a PR agency for gaming technology. The screenshot is forever; your preparation decides what it says about you.
IX Consilium
Choose the agency that can defend your fee model in a hostile interview
If your partner cannot explain what you charge for, a journalist will explain it for them.
Set a practical test for finalists. Hand over your pricing page, your supply path summary and one critical article about your segment, then ask for a briefing document a spokesperson could use on record. Score it on accuracy about fees, candour about limitations and command of the regulatory background.
Agree your weightings before you see the results, using the table below as a starting frame.
| Your next platform change | Test this before tactics | Decline when |
|---|---|---|
| A platform launch or relaunch | Fee and supply path clarity | Your margin model is described only in adjectives |
| A measurement product release | Methodological candour | Lift figures appear without a validation route |
| A privacy or identity launch | Consent practice fluency | Legal review is framed as a delay to be managed |
| An incident response retainer | Log literate crisis handling | The plan relies on issuing a general statement |
fons: Frame drawn from ANA research reported by MediaVillage, 2023, GroupM forecasts reported by Marketing Brew, 2024, and IAB, 2025.
Sign only when the agreement names your senior lead, your approval rights over fee and measurement claims and your incident escalation route in plain terms. In a market pricing opacity, candour is a commercial advantage you can actually keep.
X Quaesita
Questions
What should an AdTech company ask about transparency experience?
Ask how the agency has communicated fee models, supply path standards or measurement methods for a client under buyer scrutiny. Request a redacted example of a claim register or briefing document they produced. Fluency shows in documents; slogans about thought leadership tell you nothing useful.
How can you tell if an agency understands programmatic buying?
Give the candidate a recent trade article about supply chain waste and ask which findings affect your product directly. A capable answer separates transaction costs from quality losses and names the intermediaries in your own chain. The ANA research reported by MarTech, 2023, is a fair baseline text for that conversation.
What proof should lead an AdTech launch story?
Audited outcomes, named advertiser results with permission and a measurement method stated in full sentences should lead. Impression totals and reach claims now read as filler to buyers trained by transparency research. Ask finalists which of your current numbers they would publish first and which they would retire.
How should an agency prepare for a brand safety incident?
Preparation means placement monitoring, a drafted advertiser note, a named decision maker for pausing campaigns and a log review process agreed in advance. Ask who performs each role and how quickly the first customer communication can be approved. Vague answers in the pitch become slow answers during the incident.
What reporting suits an AdTech account?
Expect placements paired with claims carried, advertiser questions raised, analyst and regulator context and any corrections issued. That format shows whether your transparency story is being believed or merely published. Agree it before work starts, because changing measures mid contract usually protects the agency rather than informing you.
Should your agency pitch you on growth statistics alone?
No, because buyers have learned to pair every growth figure with a waste figure from the same market. IAB, 2025, recorded record revenue while ANA research continued to circulate in procurement discussions. A balanced agency uses both halves of that picture and shows where your product reduces the waste side.
When is it time to replace an AdTech agency?
Act when coverage repeatedly misstates your fee or measurement model, or when an incident exposes that the team cannot read your own placement data. One weak quarter of coverage is a pipeline question; repeated accuracy failures on the facts that define your credibility are a structural problem. Keep dated examples for the review conversation.
How this guide was built
This guide rests on the ten published sources below, covering advertising revenue, programmatic transparency, global forecasts and competition findings. Each figure appears exactly as its publisher reported it, with the publisher and year stated beside the number. Transparency findings describe the spending their authors tracked, forecasts are projections rather than outcomes, and competition findings reflect the markets their authorities examined. No research was commissioned for this guide, so the criteria reflect published evidence about your buyers and regulators rather than claims about individual providers.
Sources
- IAB, report summary announcing US internet advertising revenue of 258.6 billion dollars for 2024, conducted with PwC, 2025. https://www.iab.com/news/digital-ad-revenue-2024/
- MarTech, reporting the ANA programmatic transparency study finding that 25 percent of spending was wasteful or unproductive, 2023. https://martech.org/ana-study-finds-25-of-programmatic-ad-dollars-are-wasted/
- MediaVillage, reporting the ANA first look findings on programmatic supply chain waste, 2023. https://www.mediavillage.com/article/ana-provides-first-look-at-in-depth-programmatic-media-transparency-study/amp/
- Campaign Asia, reporting WARC forecasts of global advertising spend reaching 1.08 trillion dollars in 2024, 2024. https://aws1.campaignasia.com/article/global-ad-spend-to-hit-1-08-trillion-in-2024-as-digital-and-tv-grow-warc/499631
- MediaBrief, reporting GroupM end of year forecast of 9.5 percent growth in 2024 advertising revenue, 2024. https://mediabrief.com/groupms-end-of-year-global-advertising-forecast-projects-9-5-growth-in-total-2024-advertising-revenue/
- RPC, summary of the CMA final report findings on online platforms and digital advertising, 2020. https://www.rpclegal.com/snapshots/technology-digital/cma-publishes-final-report-on-online-platforms-and-digital-advertising/
- GOV.UK, joint CMA and Ofcom statement on online safety and competition in digital markets, 2022. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cma-ofcom-joint-statement-on-online-safety-and-competition/online-safety-and-competition-in-digital-markets-a-joint-statement-between-the-cma-and-ofcom
- TV Technology, reporting IAB full year 2024 digital advertising revenue by category, 2025. https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/iab-digital-ad-revenue-surges-14-9-percent-yoy-to-usd259-billion-in-2024
- Marketing Brew, reporting GroupM forecasts of global advertising growth for 2024 and 2025, 2024. https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/2024/12/09/global-advertising-to-grow-9-5-in-2024-groupm-forecasts
- Internet Retailing, reporting WARC figures on retail media growth within global advertising, 2024. https://internetretailing.net/global-advertising-to-surpass-1trn-with-retail-media-making-huge-gains-during-peak/
XI Incipe
Aerovector makes AdTech claims that a procurement team can trace
Your buyers will follow your story into your fee model and your supply path, and Aerovector prepares the whole trail before the first pitch is sent. The practice helps clients rank for AI search results and guarantees media coverage, which in turn generates leads for the platforms and networks it represents. Answer engines also follow trails: they repeat the claims that arrive with documents attached and drop the ones that arrive with adjectives only.
The working tools match that reality. A Media Map identifies the reporters, analysts and search questions shaping your category, a Coverage Reporting cycle records each placement beside the claims it carried, and a Message House keeps fee and measurement language consistent under questioning. If a launch, a measurement release or an incident plan is on your calendar, send the details through the form on the contact page so the evidence trail can be checked first.
Aerovector turns AdTech transparency into the reason buyers return your call.
Walk Aerovector through your supply path using the contact page form
Additional Details
Description: How to Choose a PR agency for AdTech: the evidence to demand, the trade offs to weigh, and the questions that separate a sound hire from an expensive one in.
Published: 2026-10-25