American Career College wanted more efficient reach to prospective students. In a live, head-to-head test, agentic media buying delivered more than twice the qualified reach per dollar of the previous approach.
PITTSBURGH, PA — Level Agency, a digital marketing agency, today announced results from a head-to-head test pitting agentic media buying against an incumbent demand-side platform for its client American Career College, using AgenticOS, PubMatic’s agentic and supply-side media buying platform. Running simultaneously with identical budgets and objectives across May and June 2026, the agentic approach delivered more than twice the qualified reach per dollar of the incumbent, judged on the client’s own measurement.
The real advantage was control. Setup time and media costs, long treated as fixed, became variables an expert team could actually move, putting more of ACC’s budget into working media and more of the team’s time into refining and testing what works. It is an example of bringing enterprise-grade programmatic sophistication to a mid-market budget.
The strategic work came first. Level’s team developed the media plan, identifying the audiences and channels most likely to reach ACC’s prospective students, and that plan gave the platform its context. The platform returned recommended audiences and sourcing matched to ACC’s goals, along with estimated fees. Level refined the recommendations and applied them once the team was aligned. Because a supply-side platform buys closer to the publisher, platform fees were significantly lower than a traditional demand-side path. And a launch that normally takes hours dropped to minutes.
Measured against the client’s reporting, the agentic approach delivered:
- More than 2x reach per dollar, at 351 qualified impressions per dollar versus 164
- Roughly 53% more efficient CPMs on premium streaming inventory
- A 54% higher video completion rate
- Zero brand-unsafe placements across 1,755 unique publisher placements
- Campaign setup in roughly 30 minutes, down from the typical 3 to 5 hours
“Every technology decision we make starts with one question: will it move the needle for our clients? So we ran the experiment and let the data decide. Agentic buying turned speed and cost into things we could finally control, and freed our team to spend that time on strategy. That is exactly why an expert partner still matters as media buying goes agentic.”
— Patrick Van Gorder, Chief Partnership Officer at Level Agency
American Career College, a Southern California institution offering career-focused certificate and diploma programs across healthcare fields, was among the first advertisers to put the approach to a controlled test.
“We’re always looking for ways to reach students more efficiently, and this test delivered. Running agentic media with PubMatic through Level got us better results than our existing approach, at a lower cost. It’s a good example of how Level tests new tools quickly and brings us the ones that actually move the numbers.”
— Tim Lee, CEO of American Career College
The test remains live, with Level and American Career College continuing to expand it. Read the full case study for the complete methodology, or visit www.level.agency.
About Level
Level is a digital marketing agency that partners with ambitious brands in complex, high-consideration markets to turn insight into compounding growth. Level unites AI-powered strategy, media, creative, content, and data science into a single performance system, with capabilities spanning performance media planning and buying, marketing automation, data science and analytics, AI SEO, and strategy and consulting. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA with employees across the US and Canada, Level serves clients in higher education, technology, professional services, financial services, home services, and consumer health. Learn more at www.level.agency.
Public contact
Brad Stephenson
SVP, Marketing & Sales Enablement
brad.stephenson@level.agency
