20th Century Payments Are Crippling Modern Media’s Growth

The advertising and media industry has spent the past decade reinventing almost everything about how it reaches audiences. Except, remarkably, how it manages the money behind the work.

Creative production has been reshaped by AI, media buying has splintered across thousands of digital touchpoints, and analytics have pushed the business into a state of perpetual optimization.

Yet findings in the October 2025 “Invoice-to-Pay Automation Tracker® Series” report, a PYMNTS Intelligence and Edenred Pay collaboration, reveal that the financial plumbing that makes campaigns possible still runs on spreadsheets, PDFs, emailed invoices, manual approvals, and a patchwork of legacy systems that don’t talk to one another.

It’s in this environment that late payments have grown alarmingly common. The report data suggests that over half of digital media payments this year have arrived behind schedule, adding strain to publishers, freelancers and platform partners who depend on reliable payment cycles to manage their own operations. The cumulative effect is a subtle but meaningful drag on the entire advertising supply chain.

Financial Opacity Becomes Risk

For agencies, delayed or inaccurate payments create more than reputational problems. They can shape the economics of the business. Cash flow volatility can influence hiring decisions, campaign pacing, new business investment, and the ability to scale services. When receivables lag, payables tighten, producing tension between what agencies owe their partners and what their clients owe them.

In an industry that bills predominantly after the work is performed, liquidity becomes a serious concern. A media buyer may front significant spending on behalf of a client, but if the client’s payment cycles stretch, the agency must carry that financial load longer. Without accurate, real-time visibility into invoices and upcoming obligations, forecasting quickly breaks down, making it difficult to plan staffing, negotiate vendor terms, or evaluate profitability.

The challenge is compounded by the sheer velocity of the work. Campaigns pivot weekly, or even daily based on performance data. Yet the financial systems supporting those campaigns often lag weeks behind. When the creative and media sides of the business move faster than the financial apparatus that supports them, operational friction is inevitable.

This gap creates risk in another way: fraud. As invoice volume rises and manual processes persist, the industry becomes more vulnerable to payment errors, duplicated invoices, misallocated spend, and fraudulent requests. Human review cannot reliably detect anomalies at scale, particularly when teams are under pressure and working across multiple systems.

Read the report: A Winning Campaign: AP Automation for Advertising and Media’s Next Growth Chapter

Against this backdrop, accounts payable (AP) automation has begun to shift from a niche accounting upgrade to a cornerstone of modern agency operation. After all, behind every media placement is a web of publishers, content creators, data partners and freelance specialists whose livelihood depends on predictable payments. When agencies pay late, not because funds aren’t available but because internal processes are slow, it introduces friction in relationships that are otherwise built on collaboration.

Automation directly influences this dynamic. By accelerating the payment life cycle, reducing disputes, and providing self-service visibility into invoice status, agencies can rebuild trust with vendors who have grown accustomed to uncertainty. The relationship shifts from adversarial (chasing payment) to cooperative (aligning timelines and expectations).

Looking ahead, AP automation is only the beginning. The broader vision is a fully connected financial ecosystem that unites media planning, buying, invoicing, reconciliation, reporting and payment into a seamless loop. With AI-driven anomaly detection, real-time data ingestion, and predictive forecasting layered on top, agencies could achieve unprecedented visibility into both their spend and their profitability.

AP automation may not be the flashiest technology reshaping the industry, but it is arguably one of the most consequential. Behind every breakthrough campaign, there must be a financial engine to support the work. Agencies that modernize that engine now will be better equipped to thrive in an increasingly demanding, increasingly complex market.