How much do media buyers make? Salary, freelance rates, agency fees and what the biggest names publish

Quick answer

It depends on the format. In US job postings on Indeed, the average media buyer salary is $68,475 a year, about $5,700 a month; in Germany it is €45,461. Freelancers and agencies earn fee times clients instead: 10 clients at $975 a month, the minimum WebFX publishes, bill $9,750 before taxes and costs.

Why is there no single answer to how much media buyers make?

Because the job title covers two different markets. In one, a company or agency hires a media buyer to run ads and pays a salary. In the other, the media buyer serves several businesses at once, as a freelancer or agency owner, and bills each one. The first shows up on salary sites; the second almost never shows up in any survey.

There is a second trap: a salary is what lands in your account; revenue is what comes in before taxes, tools, team and the client who pays late. Comparing a job posting salary with the revenue a freelancer announces compares two different things. In this article every number says which of the two markets it comes from, and every source is linked at the end.

How much does a media buyer make in the US?

Dividing by 12 only makes the number easier to read. It does not include bonus, benefits or employer taxes, which these pages do not break down in the headline figure. Payscale lists bonuses from $955 to $8,000 a year and a total pay range of $46,000 to $84,000, separately from the base.

Two sources we expected to use did not make it in. Glassdoor blocked our access when we tried to read its media buyer page, so we do not quote it. And the US Bureau of Labor Statistics does not publish a media buyer occupation: the closest page, market research analysts, shows a median of $78,760 in May 2025, but that is a neighboring job, not this one.

Does experience change the number?

Yes, and Payscale is the only source we opened that splits it with a stated sample. An entry level media buyer with less than one year of experience averages $45,392 in total compensation, based on 12 salaries. With 1 to 4 years, the average is $56,431, based on 98 salaries. Payscale does not show a figure with a sample for the more senior bands, so we do not quote one.

How much do media buyers make in Europe?

Europe is not one market, and the sources disagree with each other more than in the US. This is what each page shows for the media buyer title, in euros, without any currency conversion on our part:

For Germany, Indeed and Talent.com are €15,301 apart (45,461 minus 30,160). That gap is the honest answer: each site collects different postings under the same title, and in Europe "media buyer" also covers traditional media planning roles. Read each country as a range between sources, not as one number. UK salaries are paid in pounds and are outside this table.

How much do freelance media buyers charge?

Freelance rates are public in two places we could open. On Upwork, the category of Meta Ads specialists shows a typical range of $15 to $40 an hour, the Google Ads experts category also shows $15 to $40, and PPC advertising specialists show $20 to $45. Upwork says these are typical hourly ranges from historical contracts worldwide, so they mix every country and experience level on the platform.

For Europe, the Freelancer-Kompass 2025 survey by freelancermap, with respondents only from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, puts online marketing freelancers at an average of €92.11 an hour. By experience: €76 with under 5 years, €84 with 5 to 10 years and €99 with more than 10. That is the whole online marketing category, not media buyers alone.

Why do hourly rates understate what experienced freelancers earn?

Because most freelancers who serve several clients stop billing by the hour and charge a monthly retainer per client. At that point income depends on how many clients fit in the week, which is the math in how many clients a media buyer can manage: around 15 for a solo media buyer and around 40 for an agency, as a market reference.

How much do agencies charge for paid social management?

We did not find a survey of agency fees with an open sample. What does exist are agencies that publish their own prices, which are real prices, not averages. Two examples, one in dollars and one in euros:

WebFX also states on its pricing pages that management typically costs 10% to 20% of ad spend across the market, and its PPC page lists an entry plan at $750 a month. Werk von Morgen adds €150 a month per extra channel on the Starter plan. At the top of the market, Heath Media says it manages monthly ad budgets from $6,000 to more than $2 million, without publishing a price.

What does fee times clients look like in practice?

The revenue math is simple: gross monthly revenue = average fee per client × number of clients. Using the published prices above as the fee:

What are the pricing models for media buying?

There are four, and almost every contract is one of them:

The WebFX rule shows how a minimum protects the percentage model. A client spending $5,000 a month: 15% is $750, below the $975 minimum, so the fee is $975. At $20,000 a month, 15% is $3,000. At $40,000, the Enterprise rule applies: 12% is $4,800, above the $4,500 minimum. We did not find public data with a sample on performance fee percentages, so we do not quote one.

A performance fee is only fair when the sale is measured outside Meta. The setup that ties each order to the ad that drove it is in UTM parameters for Meta Ads.

Who are the biggest names in paid social worldwide?

Anyone researching how much media buyers make ends up reading the people who turned Meta advertising into a career path. To pick three, we looked for people who meet four criteria at the same time: more than ten years publishing about Meta ads, a business with figures they publish (agency, membership or training company), a paid training or community product and an audience beyond their own site (YouTube, podcast, conference stages or press).

Several well known names meet part of that list, including Depesh Mandalia, Andrew Foxwell, Ralph Burns, Nick Shackelford and Savannah Sanchez. We chose three who also represent the three ways of earning in this article: agency, independent expert and training company. What follows is what each one publishes on their own channels, with the source linked. Ads Editor has no partnership with any of them.

Ben Heath and Heath Media

Ben Heath represents the agency path. According to the Heath Media site, he has spent the last 11 years in digital advertising, started by helping his mother's interior design business and now shares his work on two YouTube channels with more than 500,000 subscribers, inside a community of over 1 million people across YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook.

His agency, based in the UK, publishes these figures about its own operation: more than $300 million in managed ad spend, more than 5,000 businesses served, over $1.2 billion in revenue generated for clients and monthly ad budgets from $6,000 to over $2 million. The site also describes Heath Media as the only Meta Megaphone partner in the UK. Prices are not published: the done for you service starts with an application and a 30 minute call.

Jon Loomer and the Power Hitters Club

Jon Loomer represents the independent expert path. According to his about page, he launched jonloomer.com on August 29, 2011, 11 days after a layoff, and focused on Facebook marketing about six months later. He writes that he made Social Media Examiner's top 10 social media blogs lists for 2013, 2014 and 2015, and that he gradually stopped taking consulting clients to focus on products.

His main product is the Power Hitters Club, a private community started in 2014. The Elite membership page lists $147 a month, $1,176 a year or a one time Access Pass of $1,764, with weekly webinars and a chatbot trained on his content. One-on-one consultations are listed at a regular price of $897, or $397 for Elite members. He is the example of a media buyer whose income comes from knowledge products rather than client fees.

Molly Pittman and Smart Marketer

Molly Pittman represents the training company path. According to her site, she joined DigitalMarketer as an intern in 2012, became Vice President within four years and left in 2017. She co-hosted the Perpetual Traffic podcast, which she says passed 5 million downloads, and says she has taught paid traffic to more than 10,000 paying business owners. In March 2020, Ezra Firestone announced her as CEO of Smart Marketer.

Her best known program is Train My Traffic Person, a 12 week media buying mentorship. Its sales page says the program reached 1,793 students across 12 cohorts in 6 years and is now retiring, that she has overseen $100 million in ad spend and that her agency team has $600 million in cumulative ad spend. On the day we read it, the page showed a standard price of $2,997 and a single payment option of $2,497. Her older about page cites $16 million in profitable ad spend: the two figures come from different dates and measure different things.

What does the price of a program say about what its buyers earn?

Here it is worth separating fact from reading. The fact: an Elite membership with Jon Loomer costs $1,176 a year and Train My Traffic Person was listed at $2,997. The reading: programs at that price tend to attract people who already bill enough to pay for them. That signals who these programs serve; it does not prove how much the average media buyer earns.

The same logic works the other way: the average job posting salary, close to $5,700 a month in the US, and the ad spend figures published by the biggest names describe different populations. Both are true within their own slice.

Opening our own numbers

This article quotes other people in the market, so it is fair to say where our view comes from. I am Matheus Mello, founder of Ads Editor and owner of Yep Agência, a performance agency in Brazil. Our numbers:

• 200+ clients managed since 2020.
• A lean team: we have always chosen fewer clients with a higher average fee over volume.
• I started during the pandemic, in 2020, as a solo media buyer.
• In 2022 I ran 45 clients alone, with no one else on the team. After a few burnouts, that is what made me build Ads Editor over the last 3 years, out of the dozens of automations I wrote to cut the manual work in the agency's operation.

The revenue figures from that period are in Brazilian currency and published in the Portuguese version of this article; we do not convert them here. It is the same fee × clients math as above, with the repetition taken out of the week: the number of accounts grows without the team growing at the same rate.

How can a media buyer earn more without working more hours?

In the fee × clients math, only two numbers move income: the fee and the portfolio. Raising the fee depends on delivering something the client can see, and the best proof is a sale tied to an ad, not a screenshot of Ads Manager. Growing the portfolio depends on how many hours each account takes per week.

• Time one week. Separate repetition (uploading creatives, launching campaigns, checking balances) from decisions. The method is in how many clients a media buyer can manage.
• Kill the Friday report. A report link the client opens alone saves hours every month; see the client report for Meta Ads.
• Batch the repetition. Uploading ads, copying campaigns and watching balances across many accounts on one screen is what frees room for one more client. Everything the tool covers is on the features page.

What do media buyers use most in Ads Editor to win back hours?

Looking at real usage of the tool over 30 days (September 3 to October 3, 2026), five functions concentrate the work that leaves the media buyer's hands. They are the ones that show up most in the operation of people who run many accounts:

How the AI connection works is on the MCP page. How many hours this gives back is your math: time one week before and one week after.

What these numbers do not tell you

• They do not tell you what the average media buyer earns worldwide: no source with an open sample covers freelancers and agency owners.
• Indeed and Payscale salaries come from job postings and self-reported profiles, not tax records, and they mix cities and company sizes.
• Upwork's range mixes every country on the platform, and the freelancermap average covers all of online marketing in the DACH region.
• The figures from Ben Heath, Jon Loomer and Molly Pittman are published by the people who sell the service or the program, without published methodology.
• Revenue is not profit, and no source in this article publishes an agency margin.