Whenever you buy ad space, the process you go through is media buying. So, what are media buys, and what goes into an effective media buying strategy? Learn more about how media buys work and what this process entails to help you develop your next paid advertising campaign.
In this blog, our VP of Paid Media, Meghan Parsons, will discuss what media buys entail and the benefits of working with a digital media buying agency to develop your next strategy.
What You’ll Learn:
- Why Media Buys Still Matter in the Era of Automation
- Types of Media Buying: From Direct to Programmatic
- Building an Effective Media Buying Strategy
- The Role of a Media Buyer in Digital Marketing
- Choosing a Media Buying Agency: What to Look for
My Expert Opinion on Media Buys
In the old days of digital advertising, you would buy as much ad space as you could and see what worked. However, that old method of advertising just doesn’t cut it anymore, especially with today’s emphasis on precise targeting and personalization, which is where media buying comes in.
I find a solid media buying strategy to be essential to any ad campaign, whether for traditional or digital media. This process requires some real thought and entails measuring the results of your campaigns long after the initial buy.
There are also plenty of ways to approach media buys, with direct and programmatic options available in addition to social media ad buys and radio media buys. Ultimately, the right strategy will focus on the platforms and ad types that are most likely to resonate with your target audiences and optimize conversions, helping you stand apart from competitors taking a more generic approach to advertising.
Here, we’ll get into how to become a media buyer, the various types of media buying, and why it’s often best to leave media buyer jobs to an agency for optimum results.
Why Media Buys Still Matter in the Era of Automation
In today’s online marketing landscape, it’s all about automating processes as much as possible, and media buying is no exception.
With the right approach to digital media ad buys, you can ensure your ads reach the right people on the right platforms and at the right time. You’ll make the most of available ad spend, hone your targeting efforts, and optimize overall cost-effectiveness and ROI.
But first, let’s begin with the basics: What are media buys? In short, media buying involves purchasing a certain type of ad space and block of time. It can refer to both traditional and digital media ad buys. In paid digital advertising, media buys can purchase ad space on search engines, websites, social media platforms, streaming services, and other online channels.
Traditional media buying, on the other hand, has always been a thing since the dawn of advertising. It involved buying ad space for commercials on radio and TV shows, along with newspapers, direct mail, and billboards, and it’s still going strong today.
With the development of innovations like programmatic buying, AI in advertising, and overall automation, this process is even more efficient in helping businesses land high-performing ad placements. These advancements allow for increasingly cost-effective and highly targeted ads that connect with audiences and drive conversions.
Media Buying & Planning: What’s the Difference?
Although they’re similar and work together to optimize ad campaigns, there are some nuances to each to keep in mind.
Media planning works to strategize the advertising approach. This process requires planners to decide on the specific channels to use based on audience insights and develop goals and an overarching strategy to achieve those goals.
From there, media buyers set about negotiating deals and actually purchasing the ad space on the designated channels.
With a better idea of how media buying works, what are media buys that are worth investing in based on your campaign goals?
Types of Media Buying: From Direct to Programmatic
Depending on your objectives, your budget, and other factors, there are several types of media buying you can use, including direct buys, programmatic buys, social media ad buys, and radio media buys.
Let’s break down each and its unique benefits:
Direct Buys
This approach requires buyers to purchase ad space directly from publishers, whereas programmatic buys would use third-party platforms and middlemen to facilitate ad buys.
If you want to buy ad space from and build strong relationships with smaller publishers, this process is often the way to go. For instance, a franchise might want to advertise on an industry-related website like Entrepreneur.com, in which case it’d likely be best to buy directly from the site’s publisher.
The main advantages of direct buys include:
- The ability to effectively secure ad visibility on designated platforms
- Establish potentially long-lasting relationships with publishers that foster loyalty
- Fine-tune your contracts for more agreeable terms
When it comes to pricing for direct buys, negotiations typically involve flat rates, sponsorship deals, or cost per thousand impressions (CPM), often at a higher cost because of their more exclusive nature.
Programmatic Buys
If you want to expand your reach and automate the media buying process, you might opt for programmatic buying.
This process involves using algorithms and platforms to facilitate ad bidding and placement.
More specifically, programmatic buys use real-time bidding (RTB) or paying based on views (CPM) or clicks (CPC).
These ads can be bought through open ad exchanges or more exclusive private marketplaces (PMPs), based on changing audience behaviors.
Depending on the campaign, you might engage in programmatic bidding using demand-side platforms (DSPs), supply-side platforms (SSPs), or ad exchanges that connect both.
The main benefit of programmatic buying is its scalability, as you can push large quantities of ads and scale up or down as needed when your goals and budget change. It’s also capable of more precise targeting.
The cost for this approach tends to be a bit lower than direct buying, with most campaigns falling around $0.50 to $5 CPM, based on certain aspects such as ad format, network, and targeting.
Social Media Ad Buys
You can also purchase ad space on various social media platforms that your audiences use, typically by going directly through the designated platforms.
For example, you could develop and run ad campaigns using native tools on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, TikTok, and other platforms. You can also fully tailor your ads based on interests, demographics, user behaviors, geofencing, and other parameters.
Like programmatic buying, social media ad buys are often cost-effective and highly scalable to help you get the most from your ad spend. CPC models often offer more flexibility when it comes to cost.
Radio Media Buys
Want to generate more brand awareness with your ads? Radio media buys are among the best ways to get your business out there.
Like podcasters and other types of influencers, radio hosts endorsing your brand or offerings can also make their audiences more loyal to you. These ads also help you avoid the harmful effects of ad fatigue on your campaigns, helping you stand apart with ads outside of digital platforms.
These ads aren’t relegated to traditional radio, either—you can land ad placements on streaming services like Spotify and iHeart.
In many cases, these media buys base their cost on cost per thousand listeners, which can often range from around $5 to $30. However, you may need to pay as much as thousands of dollars for placement on local and national radio stations, and you can expect to pay the most during peak listening hours.
Building an Effective Media Buying Strategy
Ready to put together your own media buying strategy? Be sure to include the following key elements to succeed with your next approach:
Audience Insights
Before developing any kind of media plan, it’s crucial to understand your target audience.
What platforms do they use? Where are they most likely to see and engage with your ads? What audience segments are you trying to reach? When are they most active on each platform?
In learning the ins and outs of your audience, look at aspects like age, income, interests, geographic location, and lifestyle. Not only will this data help with ad placement, but it will also give your ad messaging and visuals a clear direction.
Specific Goals
As with any other type of campaign, media buying should also go off of clear and attainable goals you have in place.
Examples of potential goals could include brand awareness, increasing website visits, boosting conversions, or retargeting people who’ve visited your website previously.
The goals you put into place will subsequently determine which channels to use and how to use your ads on them. They’ll also indicate which metrics to use to measure your campaign results.
Channel Mix
When targeting your audiences, don’t put all of your ad spend into one or two channels. Instead, try to incorporate a mix of platforms to maximize your reach and brand recognition.
The more places you reach your audience, the more they’ll come to know and trust you over other competitors, especially if your ads speak to them.
You might have audiences that use a particular social media platform, while Google Ads can help connect with audiences across the web. Also, keep in mind that there are currently around 1.8 billion people who use video streaming services, making connected TV (CTV) and over-the-top (OTT) advertising potentially very lucrative.
Budget Allocation
Make sure you allocate sufficient ad spend for each channel.
The ones that generate the highest ROAS and overall ROI should ideally use the majority of your budget, while channels that don’t see as much engagement might be worth scaling down or dropping entirely, depending on performance.
If you notice that certain popular channels are underperforming, you may want to increase your ad spend for these.
Over time, you can adjust and scale your budget accordingly, which is particularly doable with programmatic buying.
Bidding Strategy
The goals you set and the platforms you use will also dictate the best kind of bidding strategy to use, whether it’s:
- Cost Per Mille (CPM): Ideal for brand awareness campaigns trying to maximize visibility.
- Cost Per Click (CPC): Suitable for lead generation campaigns and those in need of high-performing ads, including search, display, and social media ad buys.
- Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): With this setup, advertisers pay when people complete a particular action, such as completing contact forms or buying a product, making this strategy good for campaigns targeting high-value leads for maximum ROI.
- Cost Per View (CPV): Streaming ads frequently use this model, charging advertisers when viewers watch ads for a certain length of time.
- Real-Time Bidding (RTB): Great for campaigns that require scalability through programmatic advertising, utilizing dynamic price adjustments.
Creative Considerations
Resonant ads, or ads that are meant to connect with your audience on an emotional, cultural, or personal level, will also incorporate the right creative assets based on the target demographic.
Contextual advertising, ads shown based on the content of a webpage and dynamic ads that change visuals and messaging according to audience and platform will maximize relevance across channels.
Other Aspects
There are other elements to keep in mind with your media buys to get the best results.
- First Party Data: Collecting valuable information from your audiences through contact forms with their consent. This method of collecting data can build trust among your audiences while helping you better understand them.
- Performance Loops: Continuous measurement, optimization, and budget reallocation can keep your campaigns on the right track. Measure performance against your goals to determine what’s working and what needs improvement.
- Attribution Modeling: Tracking the right types of attributions can help figure out which ads at which touchpoints are responsible for conversions.
The Role of a Media Buyer in Digital Marketing
A big component of successful campaigns is the involvement of experienced media buyers who know how to engineer them.
So, what is a media buyer, exactly? They can help you pinpoint the best channels, ad networks, deals, and bidding strategies to continually optimize performance.
As such, media buyer jobs require the following critical skills:
- Analytical thinking
- Negotiation skills
- Platform fluency
- Budget management skills
These media buyers collaborate with media planners, data teams, and creatives to develop holistic ad campaigns, aligning their efforts with all other teams.
In learning how to become a media buyer, aspiring experts also earn certain certifications to prove expertise on various platforms, including Google Ads Certification, Meta Blueprint Certification for social media, Amazon Advertising certification, and other more advanced certification, including becoming a Certified Digital Media Buyer (CDMB) with the Digital Marketing Institute.
Choosing a Media Buying Agency: What to Look for
In seeking media buyers to help with your campaigns, you may opt for a media buying agency or a digital media buying agency.
If you don’t have the in-house resources or expertise to effectively handle media buying, it can pay to have the right agency behind your campaigns. In fact, having a reliable partner can maximize cost-effectiveness and help you reach your goals with a lot more efficiency.
The key is knowing how to vet a potential digital media buying agency partner. Look for qualities like transparency, in-depth and regular reporting to keep you updated on performance, and experience in your industry or a similar vertical.
Optimize Media Buys With Ignite Visibility by Your Side
When looking for a compatible media buying agency to build your next strategy, Ignite Visibility is one of the most experienced companies out there. We know what it takes to build a fully tailored and optimized media buying strategy, with the resources, knowledge, and experience to help you dominate the competition with high-performance ads.
Here are just some of the aspects we can cover:
- In-depth audience research
- Channel selection based on where your audiences are
- Bid strategizing based on your unique goals
- Continual tracking and optimization
- Ad content development with tailored creatives
- And more!
Speak with a member of our team to learn more about how our team can help today!
