The story. Independent agencies say big DSP spend has not bought them direct access or lower fees. Buying on The Trade Desk and Amazon DSP often carries two layers of fees, and agencies are cutting spend or pushing back. (Digiday, 21 October 2026; AdExchanger, 22 October 2026)
01What happened
- A 15-person New York agency. It cleared The Trade Desk’s $100,000 monthly spend bar last summer and still pays 17% to the DSP plus 12% to the reseller Mogl.
- It has cut back. The agency said The Trade Desk will not allow direct buying or change its fees, so it reduced its Trade Desk spend to very little. It did not disclose the current figure.
- A 25-person Washington state agency. It pays a 10% reseller fee on top of Amazon’s 15% fee. It was told that committing to a specific budget is the way to a direct seat.
- A Texas agency of about 20 staff. It buys Amazon through a reseller while negotiating a direct seat. Its executive called the experience “shifting sand”: resellers first, then a minimum, then no minimum.
- Buyers’ verdict. Ten media buyers described the reseller route to Digiday as “a toll booth with no exit”.
- The platforms’ answers. Amazon says there is no minimum spend for ads and some advertisers prefer paid service partners. The Trade Desk says direct seats carry commitment levels agreed per client and that others can use certified resellers, including Goodway Group and Mogl.
- The defence. The Trade Desk argues higher upfront costs are justified by performance. CEO Jeff Green said on the 6 August earnings call that rivals’ buyers focus on price rather than value.
02What it means inside a GAM network
None of this is a publisher’s fee, and publishers do not see it. It still shapes what reaches you.
Take the New York agency’s figures. If both fees are charged on gross spend, which Digiday’s account does not specify, 29 cents of each dollar is gone before a bid is placed and 71 cents is left to buy media. The Washington agency’s 25% would leave 75. An agency with that arithmetic has a reason to push for cheaper inventory and to look for ways round the stack.
That is where a publisher feels it. Spend moves between DSPs when the toll becomes too visible, and the agency that cut its Trade Desk buying has not stopped buying. It has moved to wherever its margin survives. Your deals and floors in Ad Manager need to work in whichever DSP the budget lands.
The roundup also notes that DSP fees for small agencies are unlikely to improve soon. So expect the same pressure at the next renewal: lower clearing prices on open exchange, more requests for curated and private deals, and more questions about which supply path is the shortest.
A fair counterpoint: the Trade Desk’s case is that its fee buys performance, and some buyers do pay it willingly. We have only the agencies’ side of the dollar figures; neither DSP gave its own.
Fees that publishers never see still move budgets that publishers do see.
03What publishers should do about it
04The bottom line
Fees that publishers never see still move budgets that publishers do see. Read the fee stack as a forecast of where agency spend goes next, and be present there with the same deal.