Agencies have always incurred costs on behalf of their advertisers that live outside the demand side platform, such as ad serving fees, tech fees, verification tools, and other third-party infrastructure that makes campaigns run. Managing those costs has long been a challenge: fold them into a margin or reconcile them separately after the fact.

Neither approach serves the agency or their client. And in a market where advertisers are putting real scrutiny on what platform fees actually buy, “hope nobody asks” isn’t a viable strategy.Today, IQM is introducing 3rd Party Cost, a new platform feature that gives agencies a transparent, structured way to pass legitimate external costs through to advertisers as a clearly labeled CPM line item. For those agencies, this means a cleaner, easier accounting that creates more visibility into true total cost. In other words, just a complete, honest picture of what a campaign costs and why.

How It Works

Agencies with IQM workspace-level access can enable a 3rd Party Cost for individual advertisers or set a default that automatically applies to all new advertisers onboarded under the workspace. The cost is defined as a CPM value and applies only to impressions served from that point forward (i.e., no retroactive charges on previously delivered impressions).

Once enabled, 3rd Party Cost becomes a named line item in the Total CPM breakdown that is reflected throughout campaign creation, editing, and reporting. It sits alongside other line items including data cost, pre-bid cost, and ad serving cost. In other words, all costs that contribute to the advertisers Total CPM are visible before a campaign launches.

The cost flows through the platform consistently: Deducted from the account balance on a CPM basis, captured in uninvoiced usage, and added to the invoice for the applicable billing period. Every time an agency enables or edits a 3rd Party Cost, the action is recorded in the activity log, creating a traceable record of when costs changed and by how much.

A More Transparent Accounting

A cost that may have previously been invisible or loosely explained now has its own name and its own row in the Total CPM breakdown. That breakdown updates as campaigns are configured, so there’s no ambiguity about the all-in price before a campaign goes live.

Because 3rd Party Cost flows into the platform’s core spend metrics (e.g., Total Advertiser Spent, Total eCPM, Total eCPC) reporting stays consistent throughout the campaign lifecycle. The number in the dashboard matches the number on the invoice, and the components that make it up are always visible.

In reporting, 3rd Party Cost is available as a standalone metric. Agencies can pull campaign-level totals at any time and track how it contributes to total spend across their portfolio.

Our Commitment to Customers

3rd Party Cost continues IQM’s commitment to implementing platform features based on direct customer input. 3rd Party Fees were a pain point for our clients, so we built a solution that gives every agency cost a name, a rationale, and a place in the reporting for cleaner accounting.

Get Started

3rd Party Cost is available now across the IQM platform. Workspace users can enable it from the Finance tab of the Customers app by following the steps provided in the IQM Help Center. To talk through how it fits your agency’s billing structure, reach out to your IQM representative.