Media Buying

When it comes to selling a product or a service, it is almost impossible to establish a successful business without some form of advertising. However, advertising is more than creating and launching an ad for the masses. At least advertising has changed a lot in the 21^st century.

Advertising is an intricate and sophisticated process that further involves various processes, techniques, and the expertise of many professionals. One such process is “Media Buying.”

If you’re a new entrepreneur, businessman, or aspiring marketer, here is a detailed guide on media buying.

You will be able to learn what is media buying, its types, objectives, importance, and the process itself.

What is Media Buying?

Media buying involves planning, negotiating, and buying advertising space on various traditional and digital advertising mediums. The goal of media buying is to build brand awareness and promote a product or a service.

Companies engage in media buying either directly or with the help of an advertising agency. The process of media buying involves several steps, including:

Planning and choosing ad spaces
Negotiating rates
Deciding the timing and placement of advertisements
Deciding terms and conditions

Media buying is crucial in advertising the right product to the right audience. Media buyers strive to optimize advertising while keeping the prices as low as possible. This helps drive better ROI from a particular advertising campaign.

Modern-day media buying is available in

Traditional mediums like television, radio, billboards, and print
Digital mediums like social media, websites, and streaming apps

Media Buying Vs. Media Planning

People often confuse media buying and media planning. Even though they are both parts of an advertising campaign, they both serve different purposes.

Media Planning

Before a team even decides to buy ad spaces, they go through a process of media planning. They go over a series of steps and procedures like:

Market research
Budget establishment
Resource allocation
Creating buyer persona
Establishing campaign goals

This process establishes the groundwork necessary to formulate the media buying process. Without media planning, a company risks wasting time, money, and resources on advertising campaigns that yield little to no results.

Media planning is important to understand the needs, demographics, preferences, and problems of the target audience before you decide to advertise your product or service to them.

Media buying comes after media planning. Once a team has addressed the questions above, they reach out to various advertising outlets to buy ad spaces. It can be traditional media or digital media.

The process usually involves sales and accounts executives as they find the right advertiser while staying under the budget and getting as close as possible to the campaign’s goals. The media buying team negotiates rates, placement, time, and campaign duration with their advertiser.

Media buyers either use manual/direct methods of media buying or programmatic (automatic) methods, which we’ll discuss further.

Objectives of Media Buying

Certain objectives underpin the entire media buying process. If one of these objectives remains unaccomplished, media buying is considered unsuccessful.

Sending the Right Message to the Right People. The success of an advertisement relies heavily on delivering the right message to the right people. For example, it doesn’t make sense to advertise a luxury car to a demographic of low to middle-income. The goal of efficient media buying is to identify the target audience before advertising begins.
Achieving the Desired Advertising Goals. The goal of an advertisement is not to always sell. Sometimes a company wants to build brand awareness; other times, it wants to educate people about their contributions to society. A media buying process determines and understands the advertising goals before spending money and resources on ad spaces.
Resource Optimization. Without informed media buying, a brand can spend bucket loads of money and create teams upon teams but may still lose money without increasing revenues. A media buying team aims to strike a balance between resource spending and return on investment so that the ad spaces they buy bring in the most profits for the least amount of money.

Importance of Media Buying

Experience and Leverage

Negotiating advertising spaces and getting the best deal is more challenging than it sounds. Experienced media buyers bring with them a wide network of relationships within the advertising industry.

Using these connections, an efficient media buyer can leverage the maximum benefit out of an ad space while negotiating the deal’s best terms. These professionals are adept at negotiation techniques and industry standards and use this knowledge when buying media.

Getting the Best Spots

Media buyers know the advertisers, and they know the clients who need advertising. As a result, they’re aware of the best advertising spaces and current advertising trends that might influence the importance of ad space in the future.

With their help, you can get the most profitable ad spaces for your campaign.

Having a Foolproof Strategy

Media buyers know the most effective strategies, perfect media mix, and best practices that can make your ad purchases the most productive.

A media buyer buys the most efficient range of ad spaces based on your target audience so that you can always reach them wherever they are without going over your budget.

Types of Media Buying

Direct Media Buying

Direct media buying is a manual and traditional type of media buying. In this type, an advertiser directly contacts the owner of ad space which can be a billboard, a website, or a newspaper placement.

The two parties discuss terms and conditions, negotiate prices, and the ad goes live once an agreement is reached. Direct buying can be time-consuming and requires one to have enough connections in the industry.

Programmatic Media Buying

Programmatic media buying is a modern and automatic type of media buying. In this type, an advertiser uses various online/digital advertising channels like Google AdX, PubMatic, AdRoll, etc., to place an ad automatically with the help of software.

The software uses online data and algorithms to place your ad in appropriate spaces. In this type, an advertiser has little choice of ad space. However, the software allows advertisers to get in-depth data about their ad performance. This type is also more time-efficient.

The Media Buying Process

Following are the 7 steps of the media buying process explained.

Set the Budget: Set the appropriate budget you’re willing to spend on ad space purchases.
Reach Out to Media Outlets: Reach out to different media outlets to get the best spaces and prices to create the most efficient media mix.
Finalize the Purchase: Finalize your ad space purchase with the media outlet by sending them an Insertion Order(IO).
Engage the Creative Team: Engage your creative team and put them in touch with media outlets to decide on appropriate sizing and specifications for a particular ad space.
Time to Launch: It is time to launch the advertisements on the purchased ad spaces. At this point, it is important to begin monitoring the performance of your campaign.
Analyze and Optimize: Based on the performance of your ad campaigns, make changes and adjust them so that they achieve their KPIs consistently with the same ad spaces.
Regulate Spending and Budget: Keep the budget in check to ensure it doesn’t exceed the limit and increase the funding appropriately if an ad performs well. Similarly, revise your strategy for the underperforming ads with the help of creative and marketing teams.

Key Factors Affecting Media Buying

Various factors can influence your media buying decisions. Learning about these factors can help you make calculated decisions.

Target Audience

Target audience is the most critical factor in guiding your media buying choices. Choosing your target audience involves things like:

Age
Location
Income
Interests
Problems
Behavioral traits

For example, your audience between 18-30 is more likely to respond to modern ad spaces like social media.

Type of Product or Service

Your product or service type will influence your media buying decisions. For example, advertising pool cleaning services to a demographic of rented apartments is a bad idea.

Budget

The budget you have and how you allocate it will go a long way in influencing the performance of your media buying. It is best to buy a mix of different media so that your audience is sufficiently covered while avoiding overspending.

Ad Space Location

Depending on your target audience, you must pick the best ad space in a location that will likely reach the largest group of people. For example, advertising a children’s toy in a school district will yield promising results.

Competition

If your competitor is seeing better results by advertising in a particular location, you can benefit from advertising there too. This gives your audience more choices, and you have a better chance to capture their attention.

Using your competition’s strengths and weaknesses also saves time in devising the perfect media buying strategy.

Ad Space Availability

Good media spots are taken up quickly and for a premium price. Make sure you stay ahead of the curve and scoop up the best media spaces before they’re booked with your competition.

Expertise in Media Buyer

Having an experienced, intuitive, and professional media buyer on your team will save you time and money, as they’ll help you figure out the best media buying approach. Conversely, an inexperienced media buyer can turn an efficient campaign into a black hole of resources.

Final Words

Media buying, if done correctly, can make all the difference in your ad campaign. It can save you from advertising to the wrong audience or buying out inefficient spaces. Learning about media buying can put your business on the fast track to higher profits.