A media agency with no reason to overspend your money.
When a media agency earns a percentage of what you spend, guess what it recommends you do more of. We're paid on what the media produces.
Definition
A media agency plans and buys advertising space and time — across television, digital, out-of-home, audio, print and retail media — and decides how a marketing budget gets deployed across them. Pinstorm does this work without the industry's foundational conflict of interest: we are compensated on the outcomes the media produces, not a commission on the volume it spends, so the plan serves your growth rather than our margin.
The media agency business model has been broken since before the internet. Commission on spend means the agency earns more when you spend more; undisclosed rebates mean the 'recommended' channels are often the ones paying the agency back; and the annual media audit exists because nobody, including the auditors, fully trusts the numbers. It's a business where the client's cost is the agency's revenue.
We removed the conflict instead of managing it. Pinstorm's media work is paid on what the media produces — the revenue, the penetration, the growth — which means every planning decision faces one question only: does this buy move the number? A cheaper channel that works beats an expensive one that pays better. Under commission economics, that sentence is a joke. Under ours, it's the whole model.
Planning on evidence, not on inventory deals
Media planning has one job the industry keeps forgetting: reach the category's buyers — all of them, including the light ones — at efficient cost, with enough continuity that the brand never goes dark. The evidence base is clear: reach beats frequency, continuity beats bursting, share of voice predicts share of market. Our plans start there, not with whichever platform's sales team visited last.
That produces plans that often look unfashionable: broader channel mixes than a digital-only agency would sell you, more weight on reach media than a performance agency would dare, and budgets sized to the growth ambition rather than to last year's spend plus inflation.
Buying without the margin games
We buy across TV and connected TV, search and social, programmatic, OOH and DOOH, audio, print and retail media — with full transparency on cost, because we have no rebates to hide and no arbitrage margin to protect. What the media costs is what you pay; what we earn depends on what it produces.
The same incentive keeps us honest in-flight. A commission agency has no reason to tell you a channel is saturating — the spend still pays them. We do: every wasted rupee, dirham or euro of your media money is money that produced no outcome, and our income lives on the outcome side of that ledger.
What's included
- Media strategy and budget allocation across brand and activation
- Reach-based planning on the effectiveness evidence
- TV, connected TV and online video buying
- Digital: search, social, programmatic, retail media
- OOH, DOOH, audio, print and cinema buying
- Transparent cost reporting — no rebates, no arbitrage
- In-flight optimisation and post-campaign effectiveness readouts
Frequently asked
What does a media agency do?
A media agency decides where advertising money gets spent — planning the channel mix and buying the space and time across TV, digital, OOH, audio, print and retail media. Pinstorm does this without commission-on-spend economics: we're paid on the outcomes the media produces, so the plan optimises your growth rather than our billings.
How does Pinstorm's media model differ from a traditional media agency?
Traditional media agencies earn a percentage of spend, plus rebates from media owners — both of which reward spending more, not spending well. Pinstorm's compensation is tied to the outcomes the media produces, with transparent costs and no rebate income, so there is no structural reason for us to recommend a bigger or worse plan.
Do you buy traditional media or just digital?
Both, deliberately. The effectiveness evidence favours broad-reach channel mixes, so we plan and buy TV, connected TV, OOH, audio, print and cinema alongside search, social, programmatic and retail media — whatever mix the growth target actually requires.
Can you work alongside our existing creative agency?
Yes. Media-only engagements are common — we plan and buy while your creative partners produce the work. The outcome terms are set on the metrics media can honestly move: reach delivery, cost efficiency, and the growth effects of the plan.
Related services
Want media planning & buying that's paid on results?
If you'd like a marketing partner who only gets paid when you grow, talk to us. If you'd like to understand the philosophy first, read about outcome-based marketing and evidence-based marketing.