In the Madison metro the BLS counts 200 advertising sales agents; the median wage in the occupation is $63,840. Below: what the job is, how the money works, and what the public data says about Madison as a market.
You do not have to live in Madison. The territory is the metro, the work is mostly phone, video and email, and some reps meet business owners in person because it helps them close. In practice the role is a pipeline: businesses in the Madison metro that advertise or should, outreach with real context, a discovery call, a plan, a signature, and then a relationship you maintain.
Pay is a flat 18% recurring commission on every dollar of ad spend your accounts run, every month, for as long as they keep running it and you keep the relationship in good standing. There is no base salary, no hourly and no draw; it is a 1099 role.
Sign an account spending $3,000 a month and you earn $540 a month on it, automatically; twenty accounts at that average is $10,800 a month before you close another deal. Who it is for: hunters who self-direct, former local-media reps who know how to talk to business owners, and people with a side business who want compounding referral income. Who it is not for: anyone who needs a guaranteed paycheck on day one.
Start with the count: 200 advertising sales agents in Madison, WI (0.5 per 1,000 jobs). Concentration matters more than the raw count: a location quotient of 0.8 means the occupation is thinner here than in the US workforce, which usually means many local businesses have never had a dedicated advertising rep. Pay in the occupation runs a mean of $80,960 and a median of $63,840 a year, against $80,670 and $64,820 nationally, so local wages are about the same as the US median. Those numbers describe the salaried version of this job in Madison, WI. The version on this page pays a share of monthly ad spend with no cap, which is why the size of the local business base matters more than the median wage.
| Role | Employment | Mean wage | Median wage | Local median vs US |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wholesale and manufacturing sales representatives 41-4012 | 3,750 | $80,650 | $65,400 | 9 percent below |
| Market research analysts and marketing specialists 13-1161 | 2,640 | $74,820 | $67,990 | 14 percent below |
| Web developers 15-1254 | 230 | $89,830 | $83,500 | 10 percent below |
| Advertising sales agents 41-3011 | 200 | $80,960 | $63,840 | about the same as |
Who would you be calling on? 17,791 employer establishments in Madison, WI, 25.7 per 1,000 residents, 3 percent above the national figure. Counted by establishment, the top local trades are restaurants (1,302), personal care services (378) and landscaping companies (302). Home services, the category that advertises most consistently, is 859 establishments here, 4.8% of the base and about the same as the US share. One trade stands out against the national mix: child care centers hold about 1.4 times the share of the local base they hold nationally, which means more of them competing for the same customers and more reason to advertise. Every trade in the metro, counted and compared with the US mix, is on the Madison, WI market page.
Madison proper counts 278,001 residents with a median household income of $78,050, 12 percent below the metro as a whole. Homes carry a median value of $372,900 (about the same as the metro figure) and 46% are owner-occupied. 128,261 households live here; 59,009 own their home and 69,252 rent. A labor force of 166,777 carries 4,421 unemployed, an unemployment rate of 2.7%. The median age is 31.8. A four-year degree or more: 105,173 adults, 59.9% of the adult population. That is 40.2% of the 691,830 people in the metro. The metro and state pages carry the complete figures: Madison, WI, Wisconsin.
BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, metropolitan area Madison, WI (SOC 41-3011, 13-1161, 15-1254, 41-4012). US Census Bureau ACS 2024 5-year estimates for Madison city and the Madison metro. County Business Patterns 2023. National comparisons use the same BLS and Census series. Pay terms for the YelloPost role are YelloPost's own.
Email a resume and a few lines on your background; Brandon or Rob will call you personally within 48 hours.
careers@yellopost.com · (916) 260-2570