To hire media buyers, companies and ad agencies earlier would not only spend a large portion of their in-house budget but also leave room for experimentation based on hunches. Think, media buyer Harry Crane from Sterling Cooper.
He and other characters from a fictional ad agency operating in 1960’s America, in AMC’s period drama Mad Men, whose competitors were the likes of McCann, demonstrate an accurate profile of the ad industry and its jobs of that decade.
However, times have changed and so has the industry. The digital boom has happened. To hire media buyers today essentially means to hire a digital marketer who is an expert in digital media buying services.
Remember that old maxim, “the more things change, the more they stay the same”? So, while there are significant changes in the demands of consumers today- giving rise to different media buying channels and vehicles- the goals and approaches of media buyers largely remain the same as the commercial TV era of the 1950s.
Media Planner vs. Media Buyer
To understand what to look for when hiring a media buyer for performance marketing, we will first have to start by explaining what media buying is, and then how it differs from media planning.
According to HubSpot-
Media buying is the process of purchasing ad space and time on digital and offline platforms, such as websites, YouTube, radio, and TV.
Media planning is the process of determining how, when, where, and why your business shares media content with your audience.
Media planning is generally followed by media buying and both must work in tandem with the other for a comprehensive digital media strategy that personalize campaigns and deliver more returns on investment.
Both media buying and planning taken together decides an outbound marketing content strategy- what type of content to create, which media channels to distribute them through, and at what engagement frequency- to meet business goals.
In short-
Media planners research the market, outline media goals and objectives, allocate budgets, and create the media channel plan.
Media buyers are their operational counterparts, who go to the market to achieve these goals through buying ad space and timeslots from media channel vendors.
A brief look at various media channels-
Traditional
- TV
- Radio
- OOH (out of home, e.g., billboards)
- Events
- Direct Mail
- Newspapers
- Magazines
Digital
- Social Media
- Website
- Display Advertising
- Search Advertising
- Streaming Service
- Affiliate Marketing
What is Performance Marketing?
Performance marketing and organic marketing are the two foot soldiers of a modern digital marketing strategy.
Where organic marketing is an inbound marketing method that works to build brand awareness, paid ads or performance marketing is your good old outbound method that converts target audiences to customers.
However, performance marketing does not only involve paid advertising in today’s saturated digital age. It also includes various other channels which your media planner strategically considers as per your custom needs and goals.
Performance marketing includes affiliate marketing, influencer marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), native advertising, and social media marketing. All these channels require a one-time payment only when they can drive results- say, meeting a goal like filling out a form, or downloading an e-book, or simply, increasing click-through rates.
Media buyers are crucial in this type of marketing. Why? Remember, we said that earlier advertisers had room for experimentation based on hunches? That was because of big ad budgets. With shrinking budgets and increasing competition, getting the bang for buck is ever so important now.
This makes the criteria to hire media buyers ever more selective, with media planning skills being a necessity for performance marketing strategies, especially in small and medium-sized businesses.
Importance of Hiring Media Buyers for Performance Marketing
First and foremost, whether you are looking for in-house media buyers or vetting one from an agency you have outsourced your marketing operations to, look for a data guy. What do we mean by this?
In today’s saturated digital age and chronically online target audience, customer journeys are no longer clear-cut and linear. Unlike Mad Men, advertisers are no longer shaping cultures one-way, the vice-versa is the norm of the day. Brands must adapt.
That is why media buyers (or planners) with experience in analyzing, interpreting and integrating customer data in their strategy for digital media buying services is crucial.
Components of Media Buying
Digital media buying services have two broad categories- direct and programmatic. You need to focus on programmatic media buying- which, according to HubSpot, automates the buying and selling process using algorithms to place ads and exchanges in real-time, allowing precision targeting and participation in multiple exchanges at once, for limited budgets.
Programmatic media buying has three broad categories- demand-side platforms (DSP), supply-side platforms (SSP), and ad exchanges. In the media buying ecosystem, DSPs are where media buyers set up their campaigns, bid on ad inventory, and optimize their ads. SSPs are where publishers sell their ad inventory. Finally, ad exchanges are virtual marketplaces that connect the DSPs to the SSPs where real-time bidding (RTB) takes place.
Media Buyer for Performance Marketing- What to Look For?
According to Workable, the following are the skills you should look for in a media buyer-
- Developing effective media buying strategies
- Negotiating ad space and time slots with various media channels
- Participating in media planning
- Identifying target audiences and analysing demographic