Highest-Ranked Media Planning and Buying Companies

Impressions still dominate dashboards, but they no longer tell the full story. Paying attention to how long someone genuinely notices an ad is fast becoming the metric that matters most. Recent data from Lumen Research shows attention time correlates with purchase intent three times better than viewability does. That finding has turned heads inside agencies and media investment teams.

Across campaign planning, conversations now start with what holds focus, not what reaches screens. Buyers evaluate ad length, placement clutter, and creative pacing alongside cost. For many, it's less about chasing every impression and more about crafting fewer but sharper exposures.

This mindset also ripples into connected areas; content marketing, SEO, and advertising now share a single aim: hold human attention long enough for meaning to register. The idea is not to add metrics, but to elevate measurement quality. The next phase of planning will likely blend attention data with emotional resonance tracking, forming the closest link yet between creative craft and media investment. In practice, the media that wins won't just be seen. It will be felt.

Retail media has quietly become the third pillar of advertising, joining digital and TV. According to Insider Intelligence, global retail-media ad spend is set to surpass $150 billion in 2025, a figure that reflects how deeply commerce and advertising are now intertwined .

For brands, these platforms offer direct access to shoppers in buying mode ads appearing on product pages, in search results, or within checkout flows. For planners, this changes everything. Retail networks like Amazon, Walmart Connect, and Target Roundel are now part of standard media mixes. Budgets are shifting, but not randomly. They are being redistributed toward inventory that shows real sales correlation.

In a landscape where PPC and SEO already measure intent, retail media adds transaction-level evidence. It’s the meeting point between marketing precision and advertising impact. As data walls rise elsewhere, these closed-loop ecosystems give marketers what they crave most clarity. The smartest planners now view retail media as performance media, not a retail experiment.

A new question has entered boardrooms: what's the carbon cost of a campaign? As advertisers chase accountability, sustainability is fast becoming a metric in its own right. Research from Scope3 and the ANA found that digital advertising contributes roughly 3–5% of global marketing’s total emissions.

For agencies, this means rethinking inventory, ad weight, and server choices. Many media teams now use "carbon calculators" to estimate emissions per impression before final buys. The cleanest media isn’t just ethical it’s efficient. Smaller creative files, lightweight pages, and better email marketing cadence all help.

Sustainability also ties directly to brand trust. Clients ask their marketing partners to show energy data next to CPM or CTR. The shift feels subtle but significant: accountability is expanding from spend to impact. The next generation of media planning will measure success not only in conversions or cost but also in footprint. In the end, greener media isn't just good optics it’s good business.