AdTech buyers treat your take rate as a cost to negotiate away, not value to pay for. A real pricing strategy decouples what you charge from raw CPM and gives procurement a reason to stop comparing you on margin alone.
The Problem
CPM compression eats your take rate every quarter
Most AdTech pricing rides on a percentage of media spend, which means your revenue shrinks every time CPMs fall or a buyer renegotiates the fee. Programmatic supply has gotten more efficient and more transparent, so the take rate that funded your business two years ago is now the first line item procurement attacks. When your pricing is mechanically tied to a number you do not control, you lose margin without ever changing your product. The result is a P&L that erodes even as your usage grows.
Procurement benchmarks you against the whole LUMAscape on price
Buyers at holding companies and brands run every DSP, SSP, and measurement vendor through the same procurement gauntlet, and they have spreadsheets comparing your fee to forty other boxes. Because most AdTech companies price the same way – a percent of spend or a flat CPM uplift – the comparison collapses to who is cheapest. Without packaging that isolates your differentiated value, you get shortlisted on price and then ground down in the negotiation. Longer cycles and lower realized rates are the direct cost of pricing that looks like everyone else's.
Three-sided buyers make one price model impossible
AdTech companies often charge brands, agencies, and publishers at once, and each side resists the economics that work for the others. Agencies want margin and a fee they can mark up or hide, brands want performance pricing tied to outcomes, publishers want a revenue share that protects their yield. A single pricing model picks a side and alienates the rest, so deals stall while every party renegotiates their cut. The pricing becomes whatever the last big customer demanded, which destroys consistency and gross margin discipline.
Signal loss broke the metrics your pricing was attached to
Cookie deprecation and signal loss changed what buyers can measure, which undermines outcome-based or attribution-linked pricing that depended on last-click data. If you priced against conversions or addressable reach that clean rooms and privacy rules have since obscured, your value story no longer maps to a billable metric. Buyers now question whether the outcome you charge for is even attributable to you. Pricing tied to a measurement model the industry has moved past reads as a product that has not caught up.
How We Help
We start with a pricing audit grounded in how your buyers actually evaluate cost, not in the model you happen to bill on today. In the first 30 days we pull your real deal data, segment realized take rates by buyer type and deal size, interview won and lost deals on what procurement pushed back on, and map where your fee sits against the LUMAscape adjacency you compete in. We separate the value buyers will pay for from the table-stakes capability they expect for free, and we find the metric your pricing should actually be anchored to.
Strategy development turns that audit into a packaging and pricing architecture. We decide whether your value is best captured as a percent of spend, a platform fee, outcome-based pricing, seat or tier pricing, or a hybrid, and we build the model that decouples your revenue from raw CPM where it makes sense. We design the buyer-specific cuts so an agency, a brand, and a publisher each see economics that work for them without blowing up your gross margin. This is where pricing strategy connects directly to product positioning, because what you can charge for is a function of how the value is framed and bundled.
Execution embeds the new model into the places deals actually get priced. We rebuild the rate card and the packaging tiers, write the discount guardrails and approval thresholds so reps stop giving away margin to close, and rewrite the commercial narrative in the deck and the RFP response. We work with sales and finance so quoting, billing, and contract language all reflect the new model instead of three improvised versions. The goal is that every quote a rep sends defends the same value and the same floor.
Measurement tracks whether the pricing is holding. We watch realized take rate versus list, discount depth by segment, gross margin per deal, win rate at the new price points, and how often procurement still drags you into a pure cost comparison. A pricing strategy is working when reps stop discounting reflexively, gross margin per deal climbs, and your revenue stops moving in lockstep with CPMs you cannot control.
What makes this different is that we run it as operators, not as a pricing consultancy that delivers a model in a spreadsheet and disappears. We sit inside the GTM and finance motion, fractionally, and own the model until it is producing in realized margin. We have run growth at scale, so we build pricing a sales team can actually quote and a CFO can actually forecast.
What we deliver
- Pricing audit with realized take-rate analysis by buyer type, deal size, and discount depth
- Packaging and pricing model that decouples revenue from raw CPM where the value supports it
- Buyer-specific economics for brands, agencies, and publishers that protect gross margin
- Rebuilt rate card, discount guardrails, and approval thresholds for the sales team
- Pricing dashboard tracking realized rate, margin per deal, and discount discipline
In AdTech, the moment your price is a percentage of someone else's media spend, you have outsourced your margin to a number you do not control. The fix is not a bigger take rate – it is pricing anchored to value the buyer cannot get for free.
Our Methodology
Our pricing strategy build for AdTech runs as a 90-day sprint, not an open-ended consulting study. Phase one is the pricing audit: we segment realized rates from your actual deal data, run won/lost interviews on what procurement objected to, and map your fee against the competitors buyers compare you to. We come out of phase one knowing where you are leaking margin and what value the market will actually pay a premium for.
Phase two builds the model and the packaging. We choose the pricing mechanic that fits your value – platform fee, outcome-based, tiered, hybrid – and design the buyer-specific economics so each side of a three-sided deal sees terms that work. We set list prices, discount floors, and approval guardrails, and we map every price point to the value it captures so the model survives a procurement review.
Phase three installs the model into the commercial motion and the operating cadence. We rebuild the rate card and RFP language, train sales on the new packaging and discount discipline, align finance on billing and forecasting, and stand up the dashboard that tracks realized rate and margin. Unlike a consultancy that hands you a pricing model and leaves, we stay embedded until the new model is producing measurable margin improvement.
How We Work
Initial engagements run 3 to 6 months because a pricing change only proves itself once it has been quoted across a meaningful number of deals. The first 30 days are the pricing audit: realized-rate segmentation, won/lost interviews, and competitive benchmarking. Days 31 to 60 produce the packaging architecture, the new rate card, and the discount guardrails. Days 61 to 90 roll the model into sales enablement, finance, and contracts, and stand up the measurement.
Our team includes a pricing strategist who owns the model, a packaging lead who structures the tiers and buyer-specific economics, and a GTM operator who embeds the new pricing into sales and finance workflows. From your side we need CEO or founder time for the pricing decisions, sales leadership for won/lost and enablement, and finance for billing and margin validation. We handle the analysis, the model build, the asset rebuilds, and the rollout.
The cadence is a weekly working session during the build and a monthly review once the model is live. Weekly sessions move the model and assets forward; monthly reviews tie pricing work to realized take rate, gross margin per deal, and discount discipline. Most AdTech companies see reps quoting the new model within 30 to 45 days and measurable margin movement within a full sales cycle.
- Higher realized take rate as packaging defends value over a flat percent of spend
- Improved gross margin per deal through discount guardrails and approval discipline
- Less revenue exposure to CPM swings the company does not control
- Cleaner forecasting and contract terms ahead of a raise or board review
If your adtech company needs pricing strategy leadership, we should talk.
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Frequently asked questions
How much does a pricing strategy engagement cost for an AdTech company?
Most AdTech pricing strategy engagements run between $20K and $50K per month depending on deal-data complexity and how many buyer types and pricing models are in play. That is a fraction of the margin a single mispriced enterprise deal can cost you, and far less than a full-time VP of pricing plus a consultancy retainer.
How long before we see results from a pricing strategy engagement?
Reps typically start quoting the new model within 30 to 45 days of it being finalized. Margin and realized-rate movement show up across the next full sales cycle, which in AdTech is usually one to two quarters.
How does the pricing strategy team integrate with our sales and finance staff?
We embed in your GTM and finance motion rather than working as an outside consultancy. We run weekly working sessions with leadership during the build, then train reps on the new packaging and discount guardrails and align finance on billing and forecasting.
What makes Winston Francois different from a traditional pricing consultancy?
Pricing consultancies deliver a model in a spreadsheet and a slide deck, then leave you to enforce it. We treat pricing as a GTM and margin problem and stay embedded until the model changes how deals get quoted and closed.
How do you measure ROI from a pricing strategy engagement?
We measure realized take rate versus list, gross margin per deal, discount depth by segment, and win rate at the new price points. The headline metric is improved realized margin without a drop in win rate on the deals you want.
What type of AdTech company is the right fit for this service?
Series A through growth-stage AdTech companies between $5M and $100M ARR that are watching their take rate erode, losing deals on price, or running improvised pricing that differs by rep. The strongest fit is a company with real differentiated value that its current pricing model fails to capture.
