All companies understand how valuable media is, but it’s hard for them to understand the value of someone who plans and buys media. To spend less money, many marketing directors do it independently instead of hiring a media buying agency.
Media buying is not that simple. It requires a lot of research, planning, time, post-analysis, experience, and more. Nearly two-thirds of companies rely on data that’s 20% to 40% incomplete or inaccurate. That’s why marketing directors often don’t know what to do.
They think they are saving money, but in the long run, they are losing it because of all the benefits that media buying agency gives you. What are those benefits, and how do they affect us? Don’t worry. We are going to go through them in this article.
What is Media Buying, and Why is it Important
Media buying is a paid marketing process. The goal of this process is to find, identify, and buy ad space on platforms that are being used by their target audience.
Media buying is everywhere. It’s being used in both traditional and digital platforms. You know media buying was done successfully when you get high exposure for minimal investment.
To do media buying effectively, you need more than just a simple transaction involving giving money and getting ad space in return.
Usually, media buying teams create meaningful relationships with media owners, which as a result, gives more reach and fewer investments. That allows marketing teams to increase the number of conversions and show a high return on investment to potential clients and shareholders.
These are just a few benefits coming with a media buying team worth mentioning now:
Get the Best Deal
Media buyers almost always have many connections and relationship networks, Which they can use and get that edge to maximize the value of your initial investment. Professionals in this field are very experienced, have negotiation tactics, and can arrange better deals than you. All that is mixed in with their connections, and you can get more exposure and ad space for the same cost.
Get the Best Spots
These professionals know the ins and outs of everything and understand that every marketing dollar counts. They know where to put your ad for maximum exposure and minimum money. Media buyers are aware of everything happening in the world at the moment and how that will affect ad availability and placement.
Plan Campaigns with Best Practices
The main benefit here is that you are working with professionals who are experienced in this field. They know what strategies are best and which will lead to higher exposure and more conversions. This may be as small as what time of the day ad needs to show, but in their experience with a previous campaign, they know that even that makes a difference.
Difference Between Media Buying and Media Planning
Although media buyers and media planners are connected and work very closely together, they have different roles in this field. Media buyers are executing a plan that media planners made.
Media Planning
The main media planning is establishing an audience, doing market research, planning a budget, and figuring out the goals. Media planners work closely with their clients to determine their target audience and what platforms they use at what time.
They are also trying to understand what type of message this audience will engage with. When the planning team has all this information, the next step is to figure out and select which platform to buy ad space and at what price.
Media Buying
When media planning does its job, its media buyers turn to get their connections and people on already agreed upon sites. These are almost always executives from sales whose job is to find reputable and relevant adversaries.
The next step is for these two sides to sit and negotiate a deal. They usually discuss cost, placement, and for how long and when the ad will be on the site.
Media buyers usually have predetermined tactics on how they are going to make media planning instructions come to life. These are three that are most in use:
- Programmatic Buys: AI and algorithm-based bidding on ad spaces that the client is interested in.
- Direct Buys: This is when the buyer negotiates with an advertiser directly about ad rates and run times.
- Manual Buys: Like traditional bidding, you go on an ad platform like AdWords, and you directly bid on ad space
Challenges of Media Buying
Investing in agencies that do media buying means that they are bringing some type of value. To do this, these teams need outstanding analytical capabilities that improve their conversions and KPIs on a specific ad. They also need to have real-time access to metrics if they need to make a change to an underperforming ad.
The most common challenges they face are:
Marketing Measurement.
When marketing money, it’s crucial for media buyers to know which campaigns are working so they can make a budget. Many companies have a problem with knowledge about their target audience, ad timing, and ad placements. Only 13% of companies know how to measure success properly. That makes it harder for media buying agencies to place ads and get desired conversions and exposure.
Optimizing Campaign
One of the most stressful challenges for media buyers is optimizing mid-campaign. Most of the results aren’t available until the end of the campaign, which is a problem in it of itself because you can’t adjust marketing spending. Therefore media buying agencies need to invest in platforms that have the ability to deliver granular insights while the campaign is up and running.
Avoid Ad Fraud
Ad fraud is real, and it happens when some organization pays for ad space on a platform that is fraudulent or when marketers have to pay more for ad space based on clicks that are from bots. This problem mainly occurs in programmatic advertising because ai and algorithm-based software can’t really review sites.
Closing Thoughts
We covered some of the benefits of media buying agencies, but more than enough to help you understand what is better. Now you know why it’s better to hire a media buying agency to do your marketing for you.
You are going to spend a little more money at the start, but u can expect that this money is going to actually do something. If you choose the DIY method, you are more likely to lose money than to gain positive ROI.
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