Bridging advertiser and agency payment terms of 90 to 180 days

Network commissions are slow, but they are predictable. Direct deals with advertisers and agencies are a different animal: when you invoice a brand or an agency for media you have run, the payment term written into the contract can be brutal. Net-90 and net-120 are common, some large advertisers effectively pay closer to 150 to 180 days, and late payment even against the agreed term is a well-documented pattern across the ad industry.

This guide is specifically about direct advertiser and agency arrangements — not network commission payouts, which have their own separate timing. If you bill brands or agencies directly, these terms land on top of any network delays you also carry, and the gap between spending on media and being paid for it is the single biggest pressure on your working capital.

Direct deals, not network commissions

It is worth being precise about what this guide covers, because the two income types behave nothing alike. Network commissions are paid by the network, on its schedule, after its hold and validation periods. Direct deals are an invoice relationship: you agree terms with a brand or agency, do the work, raise an invoice, and wait for that counterparty to pay it.

The long terms here — net-90, net-120 and beyond — are a feature of the direct and agency world, driven by big advertisers using their size to set terms in their own favour. If your income is purely network commissions, the network payout-terms guide is the relevant one. If you run direct media or sit in the agency chain, read on, and remember these two timelines stack: you can be waiting on a network and on a direct invoice at once.

How 90 to 180 day terms actually work

A payment term is the agreed window between a valid invoice and payment being due. The catch is that the clock often starts later than you think and runs longer than the headline number.

• Net terms. Net-90 means payment is due 90 days after the invoice or the agreed start point — not 90 days after you did the work.
• The real start date. Some counterparties count from invoice receipt, others from month-end after the invoice, or from an approval step. Each variation pushes the effective date out.
• The 150 to 180 day pattern. Among publishers and agencies, very long effective terms with the largest advertisers are an industry pattern rather than a precise benchmark — treat it as a risk to plan for, not a fixed number you can rely on.
• Late even on that. Paying late against the contracted term is common in the ad industry, so the contracted date is a floor, not a promise.

Contracting to reduce the gap

You may not get a large advertiser to abandon its standard terms, but the contract is still where you have the most leverage, and small wins compound across many invoices.

• Pin the start date. Write down exactly when the clock starts — on invoice receipt, ideally — so the term cannot quietly stretch.
• Stage the billing. For larger engagements, bill in milestones or monthly rather than in one lump at the end, so money starts arriving sooner and your exposure to any single late payment is smaller.
• Ask for a deposit or upfront on media. When you are fronting ad spend, an advance against media costs keeps you from financing the advertiser's campaign out of your own pocket.
• Define late-payment consequences. A clear interest or fee clause for overdue invoices, even if rarely invoked, changes the incentive to leave you waiting.
• Invoice cleanly and immediately. A correct, complete invoice raised the day work completes removes the easiest excuse for a delayed start to the clock.

Funding the cash-flow gap

Even with good contracts, you will be paying for media long before the matching invoice settles. Managing that gap is mostly about keeping an honest picture of timing and a buffer sized to it.

Map each direct invoice to its realistic payment date — the contracted term plus a margin for the late payment that is normal here — and set that against the ad spend you must fund in the meantime. The difference is the working capital you need to carry. Keeping a reserve sized to your largest expected gap, rather than spending against invoices that have not paid, is what stops a slow advertiser from stalling your other campaigns. Holding money in the currency you will be paid in, and converting only when you choose, also stops a long wait from being made worse by a rate move on the day funds finally land.

How Altery fits

Altery gives you a business account suited to the long, lumpy timing of direct advertiser and agency work. You can hold balances in USD, EUR and GBP, so an invoice settled in one currency stays in that currency and you convert on your own timeline rather than at whatever rate applies the day a slow payment arrives. Ring-fenced reserves let you set aside the working capital needed to bridge a 90 to 180 day gap as a visible, separate balance.

Real-time balances and clean transaction records make it easy to map each invoice to the payment that settles it and see what has been received versus what is still outstanding. Business cards with limits and mass payouts let you fund ad spend and pay any sub-affiliates from the same account, and multi-entity management keeps an agency arm and a direct-media arm cleanly separated. Altery is not a bank, and this is general information rather than financial or legal advice — but holding, reserving and tracking your money this way is what makes a brutal payment term survivable.

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