Operator fees

An operator is an organization that runs campaigns for its clients’ accounts, such as an agency buying media for each client from that client’s own account. An operator fee is a percentage the operator keeps from the client’s gross budget on every media buy, beside Apostra’s own fee. The seller never sees it: it receives a smaller media budget, and nothing else changes for it.

Operator fees are in beta and are switched on per organization. Ask your Apostra contact to turn them on for your organization.

Before you start

You can set an operator fee on a campaign when all of these hold:

Operator fees are switched on for your organization.
The campaign’s account is one of your organization’s accounts, and its media is invoiced to your organization. A client account under your organization is invoiced to your organization by default. If the account’s media is invoiced to anyone else, the fee is refused.
The campaign has a budget. The fee is a percentage of it.
You act for your organization: you are signed in to it, or working in the client’s account through it. Buyer agents cannot set an operator fee.

Set the fee

Send operatorFees with save_campaign, on create or update:

{
  "campaignId": "cmp_123",
  "operatorFees": [{ "name": "operator_fee", "rate": 0.02 }]
}

The entry uses AdCP’s price-adjustment field names:

Field	Meaning
`name`	Always `operator_fee`
`rate`	The fee as a decimal share of the campaign’s gross budget: `0.02` is 2%. Above 0 and at most `0.49`, with at most six decimal places. The 49% ceiling only catches typing mistakes, such as 20% entered for 2%
`beneficiary`	Optional. Your organization’s account id. It is the default, and any other value is refused

A campaign has at most one operator fee. To remove it, send an empty array:

{ "campaignId": "cmp_123", "operatorFees": [] }

You can remove a fee even after operator fees are switched off for your organization. The v2 REST campaign requests take the same operatorFees field: see Create campaign and Update campaign.

When the fee applies

The fee locks onto each media buy when the buy is created, beside Apostra’s own fee terms. Media buys that already exist keep the terms they locked, so a change to the campaign’s fee applies only to media buys created afterwards. Both fees are percentages of the gross budget, and the rest buys media:

operator fee = gross budget × operator rate
Apostra fee  = gross budget × Apostra rate
media        = gross budget − operator fee − Apostra fee

For example, a $1,000 media buy with a 3% Apostra fee and a 2% operator fee gives Apostra $30, the operator $20, and the seller a $950 media budget. Budget changes on a live media buy split again at its locked rates. See Budgets and fees for how gross budgets work. A media buy is refused, with operatorFees named as the field, if the account’s media is no longer invoiced to your organization when the buy is created. Remove the fee from the campaign, or ask your Apostra contact about the account’s invoicing.

Who pays whom

Apostra invoices your organization for the media and Apostra’s fee, as it does today. You invoice your client and keep your fee: it is never charged through Apostra. Apostra records the fee against your organization in its own books so that its statements reconcile with the media buy. Apostra invoicing your client directly is not available yet.

Who sees the fee

The fee is visible according to whose side the caller is on, not their role:

Caller	What they see on a media buy with an operator fee
Your organization’s people and their API keys, including when they work in a client’s account through your organization	The full split: gross budget, media budget, Apostra’s fee and your fee
The client account’s own people, keys and agents	The total cost only, unless your organization lets its accounts see its contract terms, which shows them your fees too
A buyer agent with an advertiser grant	The total cost only, unless the grant is marked `showsFeeBreakdown` and your organization is the agent’s own organization
A seller	The media budget only, as for every media buy

On a campaign read, operatorFees is present only for a caller who may see the split; for everyone else it is absent, not zero. operatorFeeEditable: true says that the caller may set or remove the fee on that campaign. On a media buy, the v2 budget_breakdown carries the fee as its own operator_fees line with its amount and beneficiary. A caller who sees the total cost only receives no budget_breakdown for that buy.

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Before you start

Set the fee

When the fee applies

Who pays whom

Who sees the fee

​Before you start

​Set the fee

​When the fee applies

​Who pays whom

​Who sees the fee

Before you start

Set the fee

When the fee applies

Who pays whom

Who sees the fee