FIGURE 02 The commission rate — the 15% didn't die, it peaked
How to read this
still mark = grade A — an audited / settled reading.
shimmering mark = grade C — uncertain; the amplitude is the
uncertainty. (Grade B sits between: a faint life.)
cyan = an independent number — an audit, a census, a court
finding: held by a third party, not the party being judged.
amber = a seller-owned number — the party being judged counting
its own audience, setting its own price, billing its own log.
struck red = a corrected / DEAD claim — a popular legend this
piece knocks down.
Reduced motion: every shimmer becomes a static hatched band — denser for a
softer grade — so the uncertainty is still seen, just not moving.
commission received, % of media billings (US Census / SoI)
DEADThe 15% commission died in the 1980s.Commission actually received held near 14% right through the
decade — 14.13% (1977), 13.92% (1982), 14.16% (1987) — and did not break until after 1992.
DEADSearch advertising killed the commission.The rate was already sliding — 13.18% by 1992, 10.98% by 1997 —
before search advertising existed at scale; the record dates the real collapse to the
unbundling of media buying, after this window.
Agency commission actually received, as a percent of media billings, held flat near 14% from
1977 through 1987, then dropped — 13.18% in 1992, 10.98% in 1997. The flat-then-late-fall shape
is the rebuttal: the 15% did not die in the 1980s; it peaked, then fell after.