Media Spend and Agency Relationships
With Media Procurement Expert, Wojciech Raś
Wojciech Raś, founder and CEO of Progmatic GmbH, shares thoughts on media governance, agency relationships, and ad waste, and what to pay attention to in a media procurement setup.
When you walk into a company for a media audit or governance engagement, what’s the one question you ask first that sets the tone for the whole project?
“Do you have contractual cost commitments in place?” This one point tells me a lot about the degree of control and media governance the advertiser has over their media spend. Based on it, you can also take an educated guess about the quality of the contract, the way the business has been awarded to the media agency and the potential severity of media value leaks.
How do you balance being a “good steward of company money” with the pressure to deliver creative, high‑impact campaigns that marketing teams want?
These things don’t contradict each other—until someone loses perspective. When that happens, your job is to re-anchor the conversation in business reality.
I’ll give you two examples: Once, the brand and a creative agency insisted on going to some remote exotic island for two weeks (with half of the brand team tagging along) just to shoot an exceptional sunrise at the beach (“there’s no such light anywhere in the World!”). This is something that would appear in the ad for about half a second and would seriously strain the budget.
Another time, a young brand manager on a budget laundry detergent brand came up with a brilliant idea that was never done before: For an in-store promotion in Poland, almost two decades ago, you could win a Hummer. There’s a good reason no one has done this before.
What are the biggest red flags you look for when auditing a brand’s existing media‑procurement setup?
When the buyer tells me with pride that the media agency doesn’t charge any fees, you know there’s a massive governance issue, and the advertiser is being taken advantage of. Another one is when the advertiser doesn’t know if they buy any inventory media or what it means. Both tell you the same thing—the advertiser isn’t in control of their own spend.
The real question isn’t competition versus stability, but rather it’s whether you’ve created the conditions where a good agency is motivated to keep performing. Good governance does that.
How do you handle the tension between wanting competition in media pitches and maintaining long‑term, stable agency relationships?
This tension is more apparent than real, and it’s worth unpacking why it comes up so often. Brands that run pitches well but neglect ongoing governance often find themselves back at the table every three years, resetting rather than building.
The real question isn’t competition versus stability, but rather it’s whether you’ve created the conditions where a good agency is motivated to keep performing. Good governance does that. It keeps the relationship honest without needing the blunt instrument of a pitch every time something drifts. This is something great agencies understand. Those who build their relationship and demonstrate the true value rather than coasting on the contract are always the ones still in the room five years later.
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What does “media waste” mean to you beyond the usual “invalid traffic” or non‑viewable impressions?
Media waste consists of every penny spent on advertising that is not contributing to building the brand, is off-strategy, or has negative ROI. It can have many forms across different media types. The usual suspects are of course invalid traffic, non-measured or non-viewable impressions, but also no geo or frequency-capped campaigns, inadequate formats, bad keywords, wrong audience, wrong channel affinity, bad or incomplete creatives, wrong OOH locations, MFA sites, and brand safety risks.
Interestingly, high quality placements may also be treated as media waste. [For example], not everyone should be advertising at the Super Bowl. While, in itself, it’s a good placement, there may be much better, more cost effective alternatives. Sometimes the total campaign premise is off. I recall a location-based mobile campaign for an expensive coffee machine that was 10 times the normal CPM and was triggered when someone got within 1 km of the selected stores. For a standard consumer, a €1000 EUR ($1153 US) buy is rarely made based on an impulse. It’s a high-consideration good, with lots of time spent in the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT). For me this also qualifies as media waste.
Where do you see the biggest opportunity for brands to cut waste without sacrificing performance—inventory quality, agency fees, or campaign structure?
This greatly depends on the level of sophistication of the brand’s media governance. In the beginning there are typically some low-hanging fruit worth addressing quickly. Media quality should hit its cost-benefit sweet spot. Not all premiums are worth paying, when they give you incremental benefit relative to the extra cost. I’d have to go with process and diligence improvements—they yield the largest gains, because they open doors to further optimizations.
I don’t think one should focus much on the agency fees. This is what the inexperienced procurement people start with because it’s the easiest to quantify. But, unless the agency is abusing it (crazy rates, low performance, failure to deliver on the scope), it adds small value overall to the company, strains the relationship, and can in the long run be detrimental to the overall performance. Any supplier should be compensated in a way that keeps a healthy profit, but at the same time they are responsible for managing their costs.
How should brands approach the “stack” of ad‑tech and data‑management tools so they don’t inadvertently create new layers of hidden waste?
Start by mapping who actually benefits from each layer of the stack—because it isn’t always you.
A demand-side platform (DSP) sitting inside an agency trading desk, for instance, creates an obvious conflict of interest: The agency is both recommending inventory and profiting from it. Similarly, data management platforms (DMPs) and clean rooms can look impressive on paper but quietly drain budget in licensing and integration costs while delivering marginal targeting improvement over what a well-negotiated publisher deal would give you.
Here is my rule of thumb: If you can’t clearly articulate what specific decision this tool improves and by how much, you probably don’t need it yet. And if your team can’t use it fluently within three months of onboarding, the tool isn’t the problem; the readiness wasn’t there. One area that is often overlooked is this: Make sure you own your data and that the feeds are clean. The best engine won’t run properly on the wrong fuel, and it won’t run at all if someone else has the keys.
What advice would you give to a mid‑level procurement or media lead who wants to push for better governance but feels they lack the authority or political capital?
Start with what you can control: Know the spend, understand the contract, set measurable targets and track them consistently. The snowball effect is real. Early wins open doors to deeper improvements, and reliable data becomes your most persuasive internal selling point. For procurement professionals especially, the seat at the table isn’t given but earned. Do the homework first.
Start with what you can control: Know the spend, understand the contract, set measurable targets and track them consistently.
If you could change one industry‑wide practice in media procurement or media buying, what would it be and what ripple effects would that have on waste and trust in the ecosystem?
Transparent dealings by agencies would transform the industry overnight—better trust, less waste, more money actually working for brands. But I’m a realist: the structural incentives against transparency are deeply embedded and aren’t going away on their own. What can change and what I see changing with the right clients is the advertiser side of the equation. Brands that build genuine governance muscle stop being easy targets. They get better value, better relationships, and a compounding advantage over competitors who are still flying blind. While you can’t fix the whole ecosystem, you can make sure your corner of it works.
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About Wojciech Raś
Wojciech Raś is the founder and CEO of Progmatic GmbH, a Media and Marketing Procurement Consultancy supporting Advertisers in getting the most out of their media spend and agency relationships. He has also been a media procurement director at AB InBev, a senior procurement manager at Procter & Gamble, and a global account director for MediaPath/Ebiquity. He has broad experience covering supplier management and governance, agency and media contract negotiations, pitch conduct, programmatic in-housing and media innovation.