We all do purchasing process every day TVs, Clothes, and phones but media buying may sound interesting. Buying advertising space on different platforms to promote your business seems a catchy idea. 

For a successful digital marketing campaign, there are some criteria, and a catchy slogan and appealing banner isn’t enough you need to drive a marketing ROI, have a strong digital content strategy, Ideal planning for your brand message, and brand identity. The media buying team needs to make sure that the marketing message found its way between the client at the appropriate time.

Successful marketing depends on many factors includes where and When to display your ad, and to whom you are going to display it? As it doesn’t only depend on what to do in the ad and how. The place your ad appears determines your ROI and brings the revenue to the media buyers.

What is the media buying?

Media buying and selling are one of the tactics of paid marketing where you put an effort to identify and purchase advertising space on different media platforms that are relevant to your business type and the targeted audience to such as television, newspapers, commercial radio, magazines, websites, mobile apps, over-the-top media services, out-of-home advertising, etc.

Media buying is a set of strategic sales, Negotiations, Arrangements aimed to find the best offer with the lowest price for the advertising period. Media buying can be done using third-party technology platforms that automate the process and also can be done manually with the media planning team.

Media buying can be categorized in traditional marketing and in digital marketing too so it depends on who you are going to use. Where media buying is relevant to digital marketing channels like websites, social media, and streaming but it’s relevant to traditional marketing channels like TV, radio, and printed media. When media buying is done effectively it could achieve its maximum limits and purposes among its targets.

Understanding Media Buying:

Space, time, lead demand, the rate must be considered while media buying for example Television ads depend on many specifics of the marketing campaign itself such as if it will appear in a single country, regional, or nationwide.

If the ad is going to be on a website the deal depends on the number of pages the ad will be on the website and the size of the ad, how many days it will appear, how much traffic gained by the website, and the website demographics.

Stages of Media Buying:

Media buyers must research so they can optimize the ROI on the client’s advertising budget before performing the media buying process. Media buyers also will perform a demographic test for the audience and determine which venue will best serve the business goals. Your budget can determine when the ad should run and where.

Personal relation plays an important role between media buyer and media paneer and the platform owner since the ad time is finite the good and strong relationship of the media buyer with the platform owner can help him get the most opportunity for the ad placement and timing.

  • Pre-launching:

  • Identify Target Audience.
  • Reach the audience.
  • Design Media Buying Strategy.
  • Choose channels.
  • Choose Media Outlets.
  • Track competition.
  • Allocate the Budget.
  • Estimate expenditures.

2. Campaign Launch:

  • Ensure Media Delivery.
  • Respond to Customer Behavior or Competitor Activities.
  • Revise.

3. Post-launch Reflections:

  • Analyze the Effectiveness of the Campaign.
  • Collect Data.
  • Draw Insights.

Types of media buying:

  • Display ads.
  • Social media ads.
  • Paid search.
  • Mobile ads.
  • Video ads.
  • Digital OOH ads (DOOH)

Media buying

Who is the Media Buyer in Marketing?

For any purchasing process, there is someone who, moderates the process for media buying, The media buyer oversees the whole media buying process with the help of the media planning team.

Media buyer needs to fully understand the business marketing goals and target audience determined by the media planning team, Media buyer can then executes the actual advertising space purchasing process.

The process involves negotiation with whatever platform was chosen whether a website or a social media platform or a TV channel and the media buyer must make sure that the ad is on the right channel and that it will appear at the right time and for the correct duration and all within the agreed budget.

Media buyer in any digital marketing agency plays a role in tracking marketing performance and delivery to ensure that the ad follows the agreement and meet the goals of the marketing campaign.

Why is Media Buyer is Important?

It’s not about the ad itself but the media buying team goes beyond this, into the relationship forming with the owner of the platform this relation can yield a great impact on the long term and greater reach with the minimum investment also they can increase conversion and demonstrate higher return on investment.

Media buying teams play a critical role in getting the best deal due to their wide network of relationships which can maximize the value of the investment, as they know how to negotiate and are well known of the industry standards such as the average cost and help extend the benefit of the agreement and push it to its limits.

Media buyers know which platform gets the best engagement as they are aware of the trend and the important events that have a great influence on the ad availability and ensure the ad is delivered to its maximum capacity.

Media buyers should understand the strategy they need to follow to gain the highest ROI and that is able to increase the conversion rate.

Media buying

Media buying and planning and what is the difference between them?

They both work side by side but at the same time, they have a different rule media planning comes in the first place depending on the strategies determined by the media planning team and depending on the planning media buyer executing the ad on the appropriate channel.

The major process of media planning is to focus on the audience establishment, perform clear market research, and frame the ultimate business goal. Media planners work with their clients to know which channel they most like and watch most time and at what time and what message will suit them and most likely to engage with. 

After all establishment from the media planning team here it’s time for the media buyer to contact counterparts across the agreed media platform.

  • Manual bidding: Process through which Media buying is performed directly through an ad platform like Google AdWords.
  • Programmatic buys: This is a trend in the media buying world or ad buying on mobile devices and online on the internet, The use of modern and advanced technology like AI and algorithms plays a significant role in adding ad space to the matching consumer’s profile.
  • Direct buys: When the media buyer negotiates some terms such as the rate and duration of the ad with the platform owner.

How to start with programmatic buying?

You can buy online media without going through all the traditional media buying processes with programmatic buys. without any humans, you can make ad placement, management, and optimization all of this are run automatically all you need is to create a free account and fill the budget of the campaign.

The system will select the right placement that matches the marketing campaign criteria automatically and will select the potential customer who is really interested in what you offer by this media buying and planning process get ll automated.

Media buying

benefits of buying media programmatically:

  • The traditional media buying campaign may be difficult to track but programmatic media buying offers you optimization and easy to make modifications to campaign flow in a timely.
  • Programmatic buys make it easy to address your targeted audience across different channels on mobile apps, Desktops, OTT, and CTV mediums too.
  • Compared to traditional media buying Programmatic media buying is cost-effective as it’s optimized on pay on the go.

Why is media buying important?

Media buying is so important as purchasing media can have a huge impact on your business’s success. Media buyers can purchase ads across several platforms with the help of traditional and digital media working side by side. Ads must be placed in the right location and within the right time too so they reach to its maximum capacity.

Challenges of Media Buying

Like any other job title each of which has its challenges and as a business owner you should invest in a qualified media buying team so the team is able to demonstrate value for the business. the needs analytical capabilities that will help them to attribute conversion and Key performance indicators back on a specific ad, also access to real-time matric is going to help the team in making up to date campaign.

It’s important for any media buyer to understand where to put his ad and what is the goal the marketing campaign is looking to achieve, To allocate the budget, and to remain within the determined budget.

The campaign must be applicable for being optimized at any time the common problem is that the insights are available just after the campaign is over which makes it hard for any modification in the campaign while it’s still active.

A fraudulent site or paying more for ads based on clicks will lead to a mismanagement of the campaign as this fraudulent site lack good and direct and honest management.

Negotiation about the contract is one of the important and crucial missions of any media buyer and all terms should be clear about what they want to do. for example, a client may want to target an audience so he should be clear about that point while signing the contract because companies may waste time, money, and effort on the wrong audience.

How to Negotiate Media Buys?

Negotiation is an important skill that should be found in your media buyer our daily life is running over negotiation so negotiation is important in order to push your ad to its maximum limits and get the most value.

  • Understand the market and what leads cost and the price of standard ad on a various site, the type of ad its display size and what is the perfect site suit your ad?.
  • Determining your budget is so important and how to get the maximum benefit of it and if there is flexibility to pay more if needed or it’s a fixed budget.
  • Your pickup plan will make you a total difference while negotiation cause you might be surprised that the platform you want to work with is fully booked or out of your budget so you need to have a standby plan to ensure an immediate solution for any urgent issue.
  • Don’t assume that you can change or adjust any filter on your lead after the negotiation.
  • Get what all the negotiation aimed to written into a contract to avoid changing terms If an email gets a lot of your media buyers to have changed for any reason.

Types of media buying negotiations:

  • Zero-sum negotiation: in this type one or both parties are not completely convinced about the whole terms of the contract.
  • Integrative Negotiations: in this type of negotiation both parties work together to ensure that both parties get what they want or at least are convinced about.

Factors to Consider when Negotiating Media Buys:

Due to the availability of many channels you can purchase a space on and the different ways you can perform the purchasing process:

  • Programmatic/Direct Buy: It’s the media buying process that depends on technology to a great extent such s artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms, it often takes place over Facebook or google usually requires accurate audience targeting rather than focusing on the media itself.
  • Ad Placement for TV: purchasing an ad space during a season or event usually occurs during the upfront season just to catch opportunities between several competitors, you also need to make sure when buying an ad on a TV that your ad is not getting bumped with another ad or upon the optimal time.
  • Radio Placement: it’s a great way for any media buyer to reach his targeted audience, when purchasing and radio air try to get space at the beginning or at the ending because listeners tend to raise down the volume during radio break.
  • Out-of-Home: out-of-Home media is such as billboards and it would be a successful way to reach people during their everyday life, Media buyers should work with the creative team to get an out of box ideas.

Media buying

Media buying online:

When talking about your online media buying you need a company that gets adapted to all your marketing campaign and adjust its ultimate goals just onto your business goals.

In creative minds, one of the best digital marketing companies in Egypt our media buying team makes sure to reach your targeted audience through your marketing campaign through specific plans which include:

  • Customizing solutions are made especially to satisfy your digital marketing needs and connect your potential customer to your website in a strong networking community depending on a good buyer persona profile made.
  • A large team of professionals in the online space ensures that your ad will appear to the right audience.
  • 24\7  online supporting team of media buying professionals who are monitoring and testing to focus on the website that is most visited and have a higher conversion rate for your business.

Media buying

Best Digital Media Buying Platforms:

  • Google Display & Video 360
  • The Trade Desk
  • AdColony
  • Amazon DSP
  • AdCritter
  • Adobe Advertising Cloud
  • Verizon Media
  • Criteo
  • StackAdapt
  • AcuityAds
  • Simpli.fi
  • Adelphic
  • Amobee
  • Basis by Centro
  • Xandr Invest

Media Buying 101: Terms You Should Know

Cost Per Thousand (CPM) – It’s the price of 1,000 ad impressions.

Flight Dates – The start and end dates of the promotion.

Frequency – This is the number of times the user views a given advertisement over the course of a set period.

Impressions – The number of individuals who see a specific advertisement. 

Media Mix – This refers to the distribution of time and money specified for your ad across different platforms.

Media Planning – Selecting suitable media platforms for marketing. 

Net Reach – The number of individual people that an ad serves at least one time.

Rotation – Rotation refers to the distribution of ads across certain days and hours within the flight period.

Media buying course:

Media buying and planning courses help you learn the fundamentals of media buying and planning is designed to help you design a marketing campaign and understand business goals and how to identify the right and ideal customer for your business and how to analyze the performance of the campaign.