- More brand marketers are worrying over principal media, when ad agencies act as each the principal buyer and reseller of media, but only 57% have governance guidelines over the practice, based on a brand new report from the Association of National Advertisers.
- Among client-side marketers surveyed by the trade body, 90% cite uncertainty that principal media is of their best interest as a top concern. That’s up from 79% who said the identical in 2024, when the ANA began analyzing principal media in greater detail.
- More than one-third of surveyed marketers said their contracts with agencies don’t address principal media or they were otherwise unsure on the matter. The group’s research and advice for navigating principal media follows increased scrutiny into the space, with fresh questions over whether agencies keep media rebates received from publishers.
Principal media has grow to be a much bigger focus for media agencies, particularly large ones inside ad-holding groups that transact substantial publisher deals. The practice entails agencies purchasing media, becoming its principal owner, after which reselling it to their clients quite than exclusively acting as buying agents on the clients’ behalf. Even as principal media is growing more common in promoting, brand marketers are encountering significant knowledge gaps, with many not implementing thorough governance and a few being unsure of whether their agency agreements account for the practice in the primary place.
The ANA shared several suggestions for marketers trying to tackle the issue, including: introducing a more rigorous approval process; ironing out contracts to specifically address any uses of principal media (for instance: forbidding principal buys to be intermingled with standard agent-led buys); setting caps on the quantity of budget that can be allotted to the category and ensuring a transparent window into the outlets where principal media deals are applied. In addition, the trade body really helpful clients push their agencies to put out concrete business use cases for pursuing principal media in lieu of alternatives, inclusive of cost and audience delivery comparisons with standard agent-led media buys.
“Principal media is becoming a more common a part of the media ecosystem, but marketers need to make sure they’ve the proper safeguards in place,” said ANA CEO Bob Liodice, in a press release attached to the report. “For our members, that starts with ensuring agency contracts explicitly address principal media and establishing clear internal approval processes. Marketers should all the time understand whether their agency is acting as an agent or a principal in any media transaction.”
Principal media can be a helpful profit-driver for agencies but has amplified long-standing transparency concerns, with renewed controversy over rebates, wherein agencies pocket the advantages of hitting certain spending thresholds with publishers though they achieved those goals using a client’s promoting budget. The media rebate issue — a poorly kept secret that clients and agencies have regularly butted heads over — is at the middle of a current lawsuit against WPP Media by a former worker, who alleges he was fired from the corporate for calling out rebates that weren’t properly disclosed to clients.
Several aspects are contributing to the broader uptick in principal media, including mounting pressure on publicly traded holding firms to show financial performance. Building on that, industry consolidation is accelerating the trend, per the ANA.
Omnicom’s $13 billion-plus acquisition of rival Interpublic Group last yr, which has created the world’s largest marketing services organization and mashed together two already massive media operations, has “significantly expanded the dimensions and strategic importance” of principal-based media buying, the ANA wrote within the report. Omnicom has estimated its media and promoting segment could grow between 50% and 60% with the addition of IPG’s assets.
“Increased scale changes the economics of media buying, making it more practical for agencies to buy inventory in larger volumes and deploy it across multiple clients,” the ANA report reads. “In that context, principal-based trading becomes more scalable and financially attractive.”
Seventy-six percent of marketers see cost reductions because the chief good thing about principal-based media buying, the ANA found. Proliferation of principal media is reflected elsewhere within the ANA survey findings, with 56% of marketers expecting to make use of principal media this yr versus 41% who said the identical within the 2024 study. Similarly, 37% have seen their principal media usage jump prior to now yr, in comparison with 24% who said so previously.
The ANA surveyed 114 client-side marketers between Oct. 10 and Dec. 19 of 2025 to assemble its findings. A majority of respondents, 81%, held director-level or higher positions.
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