Media Planning & Buying

Media planning and media buying is a combination of services designed to get the most return for your advertising budget by identifying the channels you should be using, the best times, and the best allocation of your media budget.

Our long-standing relationships with stations secure us the lowest rates in the Industry.

There are several steps to a media plan:

• Audience research. Since consumer behavior varies by demographic, planners are tasked with identifying which mediums will be the most effective for a particular campaign. What is your target audience? How does your target audience shift by medium?
• RFP the marketplace. As planners determine which mediums will be the most effective, they will allocate media dollars accordingly to achieve the most substantial results. What percentage of your campaign will be devoted to which types of buys, from display to search and beyond?
• What percentage of your spending will be on guaranteed inventory versus non-guaranteed (RTB)?
• Cross-media client budget authorizations. Are you complying with the authorized amount? Are you tracking authorized spend vs. planned spend?

Media buying is related to paid media — whether your business is buying campaign or ad space on various channels, paying to share targeted campaigns and ads, or negotiating with media vendors. In a world where your business can create and share media on different platforms and successfully reach your audience for free, precise media planning can happen without media buying. However, media buying requires media planning. This is because media planning sets the tone and direction for the buy that needs to occur. Once ad space is purchased, or content distribution plans have been negotiated, there needs to be a strategy (or media plan) to get that media to your audience and customers. Now let’s review the steps in the media planning process so you can begin developing your business’s strategy.