AdTech buyers cannot buy a feature list. They buy tiers, bundles, and a price they can defend internally. We turn your DSP, SSP, or data product into a packaged offer that procurement can approve and a sales team can quote without a custom deck every time.
The Problem
You sell capabilities, not a product anyone can buy
Most AdTech companies price by negotiation, where every deal is a one-off built on take rates, CPMs, seat fees, and platform minimums stitched together in a spreadsheet. That works for the first ten logos and breaks the moment you scale a sales team. Reps cannot quote without an SE and a finance approval, deals stall in procurement because there is no list price to anchor on, and your margin walks out the door in every negotiation. A capability is not a product until it is packaged into something a buyer can say yes to without a six-week pricing exercise.
Three-sided buyers force three incompatible price models
An AdTech company often monetizes brands, agencies, and publishers at once, and each side expects a different economic model. Brands want managed-service or self-serve seats, agencies want a take rate they can mark up, publishers want a revenue share that respects their yield. When you try to serve all three with one undifferentiated price sheet, every deal becomes a custom build and your finance team cannot forecast. The result is a pricing model nobody trusts and a discount floor that erodes every quarter.
Signal loss reset value and your pricing did not move
Cookie deprecation, clean rooms, and first-party data shifted where the value actually sits in the AdTech stack. Companies still pricing on impression volume or third-party-data access are charging for the thing the market is walking away from. If your packaging does not isolate and price the post-cookie value – identity resolution, clean-room activation, contextual, measurement that survives signal loss – buyers assume your product is priced for the old world. Stale packaging signals a stale roadmap, even when the underlying tech is current.
Enterprise sales cycles punish unpackaged offers
AdTech enterprise deals already run two to four quarters through legal, security, and procurement. An offer with no defined tiers, no clear entry point, and no expansion path adds months because every stakeholder negotiates from scratch. Procurement cannot benchmark a price that does not exist on a sheet, and your champion cannot sell internally without a tier they can point to. Unpackaged offers do not just lose margin – they lose deals to competitors whose pricing is simply easier to approve.
How We Help
We start by mapping how your product actually creates value for each buyer, not how your pricing sheet is currently organized. In the first 30 days we pull your last several quarters of closed deals, reconstruct the real economics behind each one, and find the patterns – which capabilities buyers actually pay for, where discounts happen, and which features get bundled in for free that should anchor a tier. We interview won and lost deals across brands, agencies, and publishers to learn what each buyer is comparing you against and what they can get approved internally.
Strategy turns that into an offering architecture. We define the packages – the entry tier that lands the logo, the core tier where most revenue sits, and the enterprise tier that expansion runs through. We decide what is metered, what is flat, and what is a take rate or revenue share, mapped to how each buyer type actually budgets. We isolate the post-cookie value so identity, clean-room, and measurement capabilities are priced as the differentiated layer rather than buried in a platform fee. This is where packaging connects to product, because how you tier the offering should reflect where the roadmap is investing.
Execution turns the architecture into something a sales team can quote on Monday. We build the price book, the tier definitions, the bundling and discount rules, and the quoting logic so a rep can configure a deal without an SE in the room. We rewrite the pricing page, the sales deck pricing slides, and the proposal templates so the same tiers show up consistently from website to contract.
Measurement watches whether the new packaging is doing work. We track average deal size, discount depth, the share of deals that close on a standard tier versus a custom build, time-to-quote, and net revenue retention as expansion paths open up. Good packaging shows up as faster quotes, fewer custom deals, and a margin floor that holds. We watch which tier most deals land in and whether the entry tier is actually feeding expansion or just cannibalizing the core.
What makes this different is that we run it as operators inside your GTM and finance motion, not as a pricing consultancy that hands you a model and leaves. Packaging that the sales team will not quote and finance cannot forecast is just a slide. We have built and sold growth offerings ourselves, so we package AdTech products in a way reps can sell, procurement can approve, and the board can model. We stay embedded until the new tiers are producing in pipeline.
What we deliver
- Deal-economics teardown across brand, agency, and publisher closed deals to find what buyers actually pay for
- Offering architecture with entry, core, and enterprise tiers mapped to each buyer's budget model
- Pricing and packaging model – metered, flat, take-rate, and revenue-share components defined per tier
- Price book, quoting logic, and discount rules a rep can use without an SE
- Rebuilt pricing page, deck pricing slides, and proposal templates aligned to the new tiers
In AdTech, you do not have a pricing problem – you have a packaging problem. Buyers will pay for the value; they just cannot buy a capability list. The moment your offer becomes three tiers a champion can point to, your sales cycle gets shorter and your discount floor stops sliding.
Our Methodology
Our packaging build for AdTech runs as a 90-day sprint, not an open-ended pricing study. Phase one is the deal-economics teardown: we reconstruct the real numbers behind your recent closed deals, segment by buyer type, and find where value, discounting, and free bundling actually happen. We come out of phase one knowing which capabilities anchor revenue and which are giveaways that should become tier gates.
Phase two designs the offering architecture and the price model. We define the tiers, decide the metering and revenue-share structure per buyer, and isolate the post-cookie capabilities so they are priced as the differentiated layer. Every tier gets a clear entry point, expansion path, and a price a champion can defend in procurement. We pressure-test the model against won and lost deals so it holds up against the alternatives buyers are actually comparing.
Phase three installs the packaging into the GTM surfaces and the quoting motion. We build the price book and discount rules, rewrite the pricing page and deck, and train sales on how to position and quote the tiers. Unlike a pricing consultancy that delivers a model and moves on, we stay embedded until reps are quoting the new tiers and finance can forecast off them.
How We Work
Initial engagements run 3 to 6 months because packaging only proves itself across a few sales cycles and a full quoting rollout. The first 30 days are the deal-economics teardown and buyer interviews. Days 31 to 60 produce the offering architecture, the tier definitions, and the price model. Days 61 to 90 build the price book and quoting logic, rebuild the pricing surfaces, and train the sales team.
Our team includes a packaging and pricing lead who owns the offering architecture, a GTM operator who builds the quoting logic and sales enablement, and a strategist who ties the tiers back to the roadmap. From your side we need founder or CEO time for the pricing decisions, finance access to reconstruct deal economics, and sales leadership for won/lost and rollout. We handle the analysis, the model, the asset rebuilds, and the enablement.
The cadence is a weekly working session during the build and a monthly review once the tiers are live. Weekly sessions move the architecture and quoting logic forward; monthly reviews tie packaging to average deal size, discount depth, time-to-quote, and the share of standard-tier deals. Most AdTech companies see reps quoting the new tiers within 30 to 45 days and measurable movement in deal size and discount discipline within a full sales cycle.
- Larger average deal size as buyers land on standard tiers instead of negotiated one-offs
- Tighter discount floor and improved gross margin per deal
- Faster time-to-quote when reps can configure without an SE
- Clearer expansion paths that lift net revenue retention
If your adtech company needs packaging design leadership, we should talk.
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Frequently asked questions
How much does an offering packaging engagement cost for an AdTech company?
Most AdTech packaging engagements run between $20K and $50K per month depending on how many buyer types you monetize and how complex your current pricing is. That is far less than a full-time VP of pricing plus the cost of margin you lose to undisciplined discounting every quarter.
How long before we see results from a packaging engagement?
Reps typically start quoting the new tiers within 30 to 45 days of the architecture being defined. Movement in average deal size and discount depth shows up across the next full sales cycle, which in AdTech is usually one to two quarters.
How does the packaging team integrate with our sales and finance staff?
We embed in your GTM and finance motion rather than working as an outside pricing firm. We run weekly working sessions with founders, finance, and sales leadership during the build, then train reps on how to position and quote the tiers.
What makes Winston Francois different from a traditional pricing consultancy?
Pricing consultancies deliver a model and a spreadsheet, then leave you to roll it out alone. We treat packaging as a GTM problem and stay embedded until reps are quoting the tiers and finance is forecasting off them.
How do you measure ROI from a packaging engagement?
We measure average deal size, discount depth, time-to-quote, the share of deals closing on standard tiers, and net revenue retention as expansion paths open. The headline metric is larger deals at a tighter discount floor without lengthening the sales cycle.
What type of AdTech company is the right fit for this service?
Series A through growth-stage AdTech companies between $5M and $100M ARR whose every deal is a custom negotiation and whose margin erodes through discounting. The strongest fit is a company with a real product that buyers want but cannot easily buy because there are no defined tiers.
