Media buying is the process of buying ad space. Media buyers directly engage with the advertising channels and assign the budget cost-effectively. This often involves monopolizing under-served channels or collaborating with media vendors to strike the best possible deal.
There are different types of media buying because media buyers try to find a way of delivering relevant, targeted ads that meet the campaign goals. The objective can increase conversion rates, boost sales, and strengthen brand awareness.
This article will discuss the different media buying types for businesses while highlighting the importance and tips for negotiating digital media buying.
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What are the Types of Media Buying?
The types of media buying are the different ad placements available for media buyers.
Media buyers can opt for both traditional and digital channels. The conventional channels include:
- TV ads.
- Print ads in magazines and newspapers.
- Radio ads.
- The Out of Home (OOH) ads.
- Anything that is not digital.
Digital or programmatic advertising encompasses a broader and more versatile range of ad opportunities that include:
- Display ads
- Mobile ads
- Paid search
- Social media ads
- Video ads
- Digital OOH ads
- The Digital Out of Home ads is exciting for media buyers, offering multiple opportunities to leverage the platform.
With DOOH, you can create interactive, memorable, and immersive campaigns. Elevator advertising is an exciting and popular medium of DOOH.
Overall, digital ad placements offer scopes for more targeted campaigns than traditional ads, which are better for awareness plays. The suitable digital medium for a business's campaign will depend on the budget, goals, and audience.
Why is Media Buying Important for Businesses?
Media buying is not restricted to paying to get ad space. The ultimate purpose of effective media buying is to forge strong and meaningful relationships with the media channels.
Here are some of the most prominent benefits of media buying for businesses to consider:
Access to Inventory Slots
Media buyers know the channels and slots that offer the best engagement. Plus, they understand how external events affect ad placement and costs. Therefore, they can optimally spend your ad budget.
You become the platform owner when you work with white-label ad tech software to buy inventory slots. This implies that your media buyer can also access the direct publisher's placements via an ad server or connect to a custom supply platform in place of pre-defined traffic sources.
With greater access, you can cut the bid markups by 10-30% by avoiding intermediaries such as ad exchanges and ad networks.
Easy Negotiation of Deals
Media buyers are experts in negotiating and have extensive networks of contacts across the media space. Thus, they enjoy greater exposure to brand ads at lower costs while working directly with the publishers.
In programmatic advertising, the success of the deals depends largely on optimization. The DSP platforms feature algorithms like bidding autopilot, which enables setting bidding rules and multipliers for particular campaigns.
These algorithms adjust the bids automatically, increasing win rates and smartly adapting the bidding strategy per the received metrics. Overall, it reduces your ad spend per conversion in the long run.
Improved Brand Awareness and Quality Leads
Media buying, when implemented right, brings the best leads. You can fine-tune your buyer's profile precisely with the help of granular targeting. This type of targeting allows you to use custom parameters based on the audience data generated by the publishers.
Digital media buying offers unlimited supply, primarily when using a white-label DSP. Here, setting up custom traffic sources is possible. A better understanding of the quality of your conversions is feasible through real-time analytics.
How to Plan and Launch Impressive Ads?
Media buying is an integral part of a successful advertising campaign. However, to deliver a memorable message, you must follow these tips:
- You must choose a targeted placement and not just a high-traffic one. Making many people see your ad is pleasing, but those people must be among your target audience. So, relevance is essential when choosing your ad space.
- Put your early market research to use and let your audience know that you understand them and their requirements.
- Create an attention-grabbing headline because the headline can make or break your ad.
- Make sure your creative matches your brand image. Imagery that connects with your brand is remembered by people long after they have walked away from it.
- Include a call-to-action or CTA to let your audience know the next step they need to take for more information. The CTA must align with the ad campaign or public relations strategy.
- New ad technologies and platforms will keep coming, but these tried-and-true ways are imperative to make the most of your ad.
Tips for Negotiating Digital Media Buying
Negotiation is an integral part of the digital media buying process. Here are five essential tips for making good media buys:
Have a Clear Goal
The first key to choosing suitable media buys for your campaign is identifying and understanding what you want each media buy to achieve.
A clear and precise goal will let you target marketing channels and avoid mistakes. You will also get a baseline for later determining your media buys' success.
Stay Aware of Your Context
It is crucial to be aware of not just the campaign's content but also its context. It would help if you kept an eye on what is going on in the cultures living around your advertisements. Doing this is vital for optimizing your campaign and avoiding mistakes.
Staying aware of the context gives you a more comprehensive perspective on your media mix, which, in turn, directly benefits your individual media buys.
Mix It Up
Usually, an ad campaign is not limited to a single marketing channel. The most pertinent question is not related to how TV media buying or digital media buying works but is about how the media buys can work together.
When brands mix up their individual media buys, they support one another as a team better and work towards achieving the campaign's goals. A good mix of media buys offers a broader range of strategic buying options, ultimately putting businesses in a better position for individual negotiations.
Consider Your Budget
If you have ever worked in any part of the advertising industry, you know how important it is to consider the budget.
While making media buys, it is essential to know the price points and start negotiating well below them. A media buy that blows up your budget is not desirable at all.
Get What is Paid for
A significant difference between PR vs. marketing is that you must ensure that the market channel offers you precisely agreed-upon services when it comes to marketing and advertising.
Contracts play a critical role in media buying. When you sign a contract for a media buy, be sure that it states all the terms and conditions of the purchase. Doing this early on will protect you before, during, and after the advertisement is put in place.
Takeaways on Types of Media Buying
The landscape of media buying is continually evolving, bringing in unique marketing channels and innovative media buying practices.
This, however, will not change the goal of media buying.
A good media buy through the right channel will expose your brand to the right people in the right light. It will foster a meaningful relationship between a brand and its audience.
