The things we shouldn’t do and the hellfire consequences that follow always make for a good read, something like the 7 Deadly Sins of {insert Marketing Tactic or Business Practice}. These posts list the gotchas of implementing our plans and programs, letting us know that yes, someone else has been there, too.
This isn’t one of those posts. Instead, it’s a list of habits and characteristics that make for highly effective and efficient media buying— 7 “virtues” that prevent a visit to one of the 9 Circles of Media Buying Hell (yep, already published “that post”).
7 Cardinal Virtues of Media Buyers
1. Hope. Know your advertising objectives or those of your client. Don’t leave the meeting to start planning without being sure of what results the advertising campaign is meant to drive.
2. Faith. Set goals according to these objectives, use them to guide the media planning process, and have faith that the campaign will be on target.
3. Love. Do market research as though it were a hobby you love. (Maybe it is?) Whether buying in a new or familiar market, know every advertising opportunity available, including unrated stations, alternative publications, local websites and blogs, and every park bench.
4. Fortitude.Be specific in your RFP, and ask upfront for what you need (CPP goal, certain placements, flighting, etc.).
5. Temperance. Streamline your communications as much as possible. Wait until you’ve reviewed all advertising proposals before you start responding. Get organized. Get tools.
6. Justice. Measure the advertising campaign across media channels to gauge the cost of reaching a target audience by medium and overall. Multi-channel advertising can be measured by CPM, or cost per thousand: cost/(audience/1,000)=CPM.
7. Prudence. Guard time wisely, and control the communication frequency and touch points with media sellers during both active campaign planning and relationship building. After all, time is money.
Are you a virtuous media buyer? Learn more about streamlining the media planning and buying process with Avenue Right’s web-based platform.
Lists are good. They tell us what groceries to buy, what projects are due this week, what’s left to do to finish the upcoming media buy.
Here’s a list of 45 top resources on local advertising and media buying. It covers local radio, television, print, and online advertising, with links to industry news and commentary, media calculations, and industry associations.
Know of a good local advertising resource that wasn’t covered here? Link to it in the comments.
Be sure to check out our Media Buying Resource Library for the latest white papers and case studies covering multi-channel media buying that reaches the local consumer audience.
As a form of persuasive communication, advertising seeks to guide an audience through a decision-making process that begins with awareness and results in a purchase.
We deliver rational and emotional appeals through words and sound and images that reach our audience based on who they are, where they live, where they shop.
How far that message will reach and with what impact is determined by both the creative and the media through which it’s delivered.
An advertising campaign that uses multiple media channels to target local consumers will be most effective in reaching its intended audience. This allows media buyers to leverage the advantages of each media channel and their unique properties in the overall message delivery strategy.
Different media channels deliver different experiences to different audiences. The success of an advertising campaign ultimately depends on a combination of factors—messaging strategy, media scheduling, creative execution, and audience recall.
When it comes to reaching and influencing an audience, each local media channel has unique advantages and disadvantages that result from a combination of audience media consumption patterns, popularity of the media outlet in its local market, and the nature of the medium itself.
This might be the ability to use emotion or sensory experience to increase recall, or deliver just enough information in just the right place or number of characters to influence the consumer to make that purchase or visit that website.
Understanding how media resonate with the audience through different levels of sensory and emotional engagement helps media buyers leverage the strengths of each advertising channel included in the campaign. The table below illustrates some key points of comparison not only in terms of message delivery, but ease of execution and cost to produce.
Consumers are empowered more now than they ever have been to find information when they want it, and block out unwanted or irrelevant messages on the radio, television, their favorite online magazine.
The ads that do make it through the clutter have to compete for attention.
Recent studies prove that not only are we engaged in media from more sources than ever before, but a large percentage of the population does it simultaneously—already in 2006, 60% of adults surfed the internet occasionally while watching television. Then there are those who listen to the radio while spending time online or reading a print publication. The possibilities for concurrent consumption of media—and advertising—are endless.
As we engage in these media channels, we both seek out and are exposed to advertising messages designed to inform and persuade our feelings toward a business or brand, or our inclination toward a purchase.
This brings consumers through the decision process of • Awareness
• Consideration
• Evaluation
• Purchase
• Loyalty
Shaping that path for the consumer are such factors as motivation for the purchase (physiological, social, personal fulfillment); buyer persona; and the way the consumer retains, organizes, and interprets information, which also affects purchase behavior (i.e., impulse purchase online vs. moving through consideration and evaluation stages).
Here’s a closer look at what’s going on in each of those stages. The time spent in each stage varies depending on the product or service and its price, but in general, it looks something like this:
• Awareness – Identifies a problem/need/desire, whether it’s a need for gas in the minivan or a desire that had a little help from marketing, such as a ticket to an upcoming concert or play.
• Consideration – Searches for information or solution related to problem/need/desire.
• Evaluation – Compares options and considers price, quality, benefit, and risk factors.
• Purchase – Decides what, where, when to buy.
• Loyalty – Repeats purchase behavior depending on level of satisfaction with product or service experience.
Keeping the general stages of the decision-making cycle in mind along with the attributes and message delivery capabilities of each media channel can help create a media plan that drives consumers from awareness to purchase.
Avenue Right is pleased to announce the release of Avenue Right 3.1, web-based media buying software that streamlines and automates the process of buying local advertising, across online and offline media channels.
The real-time platform helps media buyers keep up with a changing media landscape and deliver targeted advertising messages more efficiently. The release of Avenue Right 3.1 brings even greater flexibility in communicating and managing information during the media planning process.
Here are some of the new features and enhancements:
The ability for media outlets to attach documents such as an avails sheet when they respond to an RFP,
Enhancements to the Media Schedule Builder and change order process, and
Simpler management of custom fields for media types, building on the features released in May with Avenue Right 3.0.
Avenue Right 3.0 introduced customization features that allow users to add, interact with, and report on any advertising medium that’s included in the overall media schedule, such as OOH and local search advertising, in addition to the standard media types in the database. Also released was the ability for users to create custom media formulas and questions in order to capture and measure specific information in their media planning process.
The ability to plan and manage local online and offline advertising from a central location lets media buyers see where they are getting the most value based on audience delivery and budget, optimize the media mix accordingly, and communicate that value to their clients or business stakeholders.
To see media buying automation in action, request a demo.
Among the most time-consuming tasks in media buying is gathering, organizing, and analyzing information, making sense of the piles of spreadsheets, PDFs, Word docs and other formats to get a clear picture of the advertising marketplace before finalizing the media plan.
Let’s say a media buyer has decided that it’s a mix of local radio, TV, online, and few print pubs that will best reach the target demographic. That was the easy part.
Now it’s a matter of finding the latest information on the advertising opportunities in that local market, and having the tools available to act on that information throughout the planning and execution of a simple or complex media buy.
Meanwhile, the media buyer is accustomed to engaging in social media in her personal and professional life, savvy enough to include those outlets in the advertising plan.
No matter what industry we’re in, we’re used to getting information the instant it becomes available, and being able to act on that info with the proverbial “few clicks” and to share it with a hashtag or two. We like to see what our “friends” are up to without having to ask them. We watch trending topics to gain insight about the world around us, as it happens.
It’s this same real-time technology that powers Avenue Right’s media buying platform, providing not only more accurate and up-to-date market information, but also increased efficiencies by automating manual tasks.
Last week Avenue Right had the opportunity to show off our product at the Speed Geeking demo hour at ReadWriteWeb’s Real-Time Web Summit in New York City. This post expands on the talk we gave during our demo—why real-time matters to media buyers—with all the juicy details that didn’t fit into the 5 minute timeslot.
Power of the Platform
Avenue Right incorporates all media channels—online and offline—into a single platform without interfering with inventory supply and demand or negotiations, biasing information with a commission structure, or remaining static in a digital world grown accustomed to real-time information.
Powered by its user community, Avenue Right is not an ad network or an ad exchange, but rather a resource that brings offline and online local media planning and buying together, staying out of the commission chain in order to provide a non-biased exchange of information between buyers and sellers.
Media buyers can search the local media outlet database using any combination of search criteria and get an up-to-date list of relevant advertising opportunities and contact information. The database includes local radio, broadcast and cable TV, online, and print media outlets, and users can add any other media type they’d like to include in their campaign, such as OOH.
Users can assign search terms to media outlets and make them available to other users, and local media outlets not found in the database can be added and made available to other Avenue Right users. The information on media outlets in local marketplace stays up to date through a combination of efforts, including the media sellers who are actively engaged in their Avenue Right portal to help promote their inventory.
And to give things that social feel, media buyers can just check out their dashboard to see what outlets have updated their profiles lately, or responded to an RFP from the media buyer.
Managing the information collected and the schedules negotiated is a daunting task. Depending on the media mix and complexity of the buy, this could result in any number and combination of placements, and a whole lot of calculations to go with them. And sometimes—unless a format is specified—with the proposals received in as many different formats as there are response to an RFP.
Better Information = Better Media Buys
Rates and inventory change daily depending on supply and demand. Even in familiar markets, media buyers need to keep track of things like media outlet sales rep contact changes, or even format, programming, or editorial changes.
Many companies provide data designed to give some level of perspective and education into local markets; however, most of that data is already stagnant given its outdated survey methodology. But throughout the past 30+ years, this data has been considered the standard in media planning, resulting in educated guesses being made from data that in many cases is not relevant to your buy today.
Avenue Right is building a new “living” ecosystem to bring greater visibility, transparency, and efficiency to the media buying process. By taking advantage of modern data management techniques such as crowdsourcing, Avenue Right is able to get faster and constant updates for marketplaces from people who already know and understand that local market. We capture data passed through our platform during the collaborations between buyer and seller and create non-biased benchmarks, based on current, real-time information.
The information is current, relative, immediately available, and actionable NOW.
Avenue Right’s platform learns, grows, and evolves with the changing local media landscape. The technology leverages the real-time web to
Enable instant, streamlined communications and collaboration between buyer and seller,
Provide better insight into a local advertising marketplace, and
Increase efficiencies for media buyers by automating information collection, negotiation, and confirmation of media schedules.
Avenue Right is the first web-based media buying software to deliver a multi-channel media outlet database, real-time communications and marketplace data, an automation engine, and contact management as a comprehensive media buying solution. To learn more or see how Avenue Right can help your agency gain a competitive edge in the marketplace, request a demo today!
A good way to get the information you want is to ask for it. In media buying, including specific questions on proposal requests results in better information with which to compare advertising opportunities and less time spent in negotiation volleys.
The local media buyers we’ve talked to all have different processes for planning and measuring their buys. No matter what the process or depth of information collected on an RFP, being specific means being efficient.
The questions on an RFP don’t need to be cryptic and complex. But asking them in that initial communication touch—the RFP—not only saves time spent in the evaluation and negotiation process, but helps the buyer communicate goals and objectives to the seller.
The request itself indicates to the seller how the buyer is measuring and comparing the media buys for a campaign. This allows media outlets to respond with competitive proposals that focus on what matters most to the buyer (i.e., target audience delivery, overall reach and frequency, CPP, CPM, and so on).
Think about an upcoming media buy. If you could ask three specific questions of the media seller, what would they be? And what answers are you looking for?
The Three BEs
Until a magic formula or template exists that can be standardized for every local advertising RFP, suitable for campaigns of every size and shape, here are 3 tips for getting the information you need the first time around:
1 – Be strategic in your RFPs. Develop a planning strategy before sending proposal requests, not the other way around. Know what metrics you want to collect and how, rather than waiting to see what the media outlet provides.
Let the media outlet know who the client is and the purpose of the campaign—branding, immediate sales, introduce new product or service, event promotion, etc. It will help the seller prepare a proposal tailored to the campaign goals and parameters.
2- Be clear in what you’re looking for and how media outlets can win your business.
Duration of campaign
Budget range. Let them know approximately how many stations/sites/publications/etc. will be included in the buy.
Primary demographic? Secondary?
Is the purpose of the campaign to remarket to existing customers, or raise awareness in a new location?
Specific programming or editorial?
Specific placements or dayparts?
CPP if applicable (what they can provide in the initial proposal, not your target CPP goal)
What’s more important—as many eyes and ears as possible, or the eyes and ears of a specific demographic, alongside specific programming/content? If it’s a rated station, for example, ask for audience delivery information for the specific demographic you’re targeting.
3 – Be consistent. Collect the information in a consistent format from each media outlet (and for each media channel) in your consideration set for more accurate and efficient evaluation once all proposals have been received. At minimum, get proposals in spreadsheet format rather than pdf for easier cross-media analysis for the entire campaign. Or do it better with media buying automation technology.
Gather information from each media outlet in a consistent format, put it all together, and run your formulas to evaluate and place media. (For example, if you run your own calculations for CPP and 3+ Reach, request TRP, Reach, and Frequency in the RFP.)
Keep it Simple
One factor in determining the complexity of an RFP and analysis of proposals is the degree to which the buy is based on ratings data. For many stations, ratings data is unaffordable, but they are still viable advertising mediums for a client’s message. For these buyers, the information request may be as simple as “looking for placement next to Widget Parade story.”
The number of questions on an RFP and their complexity depends on and varies by each campaign, no matter what media channels are used (traditional, online, or any combination). Knowing what information you need to evaluate and place media for a local ad campaign is the first step in saving time in the request and negotiation process and ultimately gathering better information for analysis and decision-making.
Read about negotiation after all the proposals have been collected, or get a demo of Avenue Right’s media buying automation platform to see how easy it is to streamline media planning, information analysis, and scheduling.
To keep up with a changing media landscape and deliver targeted advertising messages, media buyers need access to real-time market information, automation tools, and a central platform to manage their activity across media channels. That’s the premise behind Avenue Right’s web-based media buying software, and the release of version 3.0 brings even greater flexibility in working with various media channels and measurements.
Avenue Right announces the release of version 3.0 of its web-based media buying software, the first on-demand platform that allows small to mid-size advertising agencies to plan, buy, analyze, and report on local advertising across media channels.
Challenging the complex legacy processes of planning and buying media, the platform delivers not only real-time information about a local advertising marketplace, but also the tools media buyers need to make that information actionable and manageable.
Instead of spending hours searching the internet or on the phone, media buyers can login to Avenue Right and quickly identify online and offline media outlets that reach their local target audience, get contact information and rates, finalize schedules, generate reports and calendars, and communicate with media outlets.
Avenue Right increases efficiency in the media buying process by automating manual, administrative processes and providing a central location to manage and report on all the information related to their media buys.
The platform streamlines the media buying process through access to a real-time database of local advertising opportunities, electronic RFP and media scheduling tools, contact management, dashboards, and reporting. This recent feature release brings even greater flexibility for cross-channel media buying with customization.
Avenue Right’s database consists of over 50,000 local media outlets—radio, broadcast & cable TV, newspaper and magazine, and online display advertising.
The release of Avenue Right 3.0 introduces customization features that allow users to add, interact with, and report on any advertising medium that’s included in their overall media schedule.
For example, alongside the local traditional and online display advertising opportunities found in Avenue Right’s database, media buyers can include OOH and search advertising in their planning, budgeting, and reporting for a campaign.
This integrated approach lets media buyers can see where they are getting the most value based on audience delivery and budget, optimize the media mix accordingly, and communicate that value to their clients or business stakeholders.
“The media landscape is fragmented and more targeted,” says Brian Gramer, Avenue Right founder & CEO. “The platform increases efficiencies in the buying process by leveraging automation technology, and empowers decision-making by integrating data directly into the media buying process.”
In addition to custom media, the release of Avenue Right version 3.0 lets users request more detailed information from media outlets in the RFP process, such as custom data fields and questions. A new calculator lets users create and save media formulas to capture and measure information such as CPP or Reach and Frequency.
Ad agency users can also organize information on their clients and services with custom fields for the client environment.
Customization has been on the product roadmap for some time. Feedback from agency users helped the company make these features a development priority this year.
Avenue Right is an affordable and pragmatic solution that serves small to mid-size ad agencies that buy online and offline media for local and regional advertising campaigns.
The platform connects media buyers and sellers in real-time, saving time through automation and providing the tools needed to gather, analyze, and act on information about an advertising opportunity or marketplace.
“Avenue Right lets media buyers focus their time on what they do really well and what provides the most value for their clients,” Gramer says, “like strategy and planning and placement.”
Request a demo to see how you can automate media planning and buying.
To help media buyers find, segment, and evaluate their target audience, Avenue Right has integrated online audience service Quantcast®. This effort allows users of Avenue Right’s web-based media buying software to view and compare expanded audience information for online media properties, side by side with offline media, using a consistent measurement across media channels.
Marketing technology company Avenue Right has integrated online audience service Quantcast to help media buyers evaluate and compare online display advertising opportunities alongside their traditional media, such as radio, TV, and print.
Avenue Right provides a channel-neutral platform that streamlines the media buying process for small to mid-size advertising agencies. The web-based software provides full functionality for planning, scheduling, buying, and measuring both online and offline media—radio, broadcast and cable TV, print, online, from one central location.
Quantcast’s real-time, direct measurement of web traffic and audiences for websites that have been “Quantified” gives media buyers better insight into audience-based activity on properties during the strategy, planning, and buying process. The integration will allow media buyers using Avenue Right’s web-based software to view and compare audience information for online media properties side by side with offline media (local radio, broadcast & cable TV, newspaper, magazines) using a consistent measurement across media channels.
An industry standard for online audience measurement, Quantcast provides real-time audience measurement and demographic data for over 25 million online media destinations. The solution is free and, when website owners Get Quantified, they receive directly measured site traffic and detailed audience insights around demographics, affinities, geolocation and business usage. Quantcast is currently used by all 10 of the top 10 media agencies.
Among other efficiency gains, Avenue Right’s technology introduces a standardized electronic RFP process for multiple media types designed to simplify the process of gathering information, negotiating media schedules, and ultimately confirming and analyzing the buy. Tools such as the schedule builder, electronic negotiation, campaign dashboards, and customized reporting allow media buyers to make actionable the information collected in the planning process. Users searching the media outlet database for online advertising opportunities will be able to view Quantcast’s audience information in an integrated window within the Avenue Right platform.
During the RFP process, if a media buyer would like to include an online media property in their consideration set but the site lacks third-party validated audience information, the media buyer can request that the site be “Quantified.”
With both technologies delivered via the internet, the offering reflects the need for real-time, actionable information for evaluating and placing advertising; better audience data through, real-time direct measurement rather than historical, panel-based survey methodologies; and a standard approach to information collection and management in the advertising industry to help streamline business processes for both media buyers and media sellers.
We humans are, in general, drawn to simplicity and efficiency, at least once in a while. Strategically packing the washing machine to fit one load instead of washing two. Using search engines instead of yellow pages. Our professional selves really aren’t much different.
“The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple,” wrote physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson.
For some media buyers, one simple technology having a profound effect on the research process is Avenue Right’s real-time media outlet database.
Granted, a database of media outlets and contact information isn’t as groundbreaking for all of “human life” as the idea of cutting grass into hay, highlighted in Dyson’s Infinite in All Directions, but for media buyers and agency owners, it’s close.
Media buyers can search Avenue Right’s media outlet database based on the criteria of a specific campaign, and filter their search results by media type—radio, broadcast TV, cable, online, newspaper, magazine, other.
Search results include local online and offline advertising opportunities in a market(s), along with media outlet profiles and contact information for sales reps. Buyers can get results quickly—a list of local advertising opportunities in a given market based on campaign criteria, geographic location, medium, and/or demographic/psychographic match—and build a multi-channel consideration with a few clicks.
Based on campaign criteria, a market with 400 media outlets can be narrowed to the most relevant 40 (more or less, depending on user preference) in minutes, compared to the hours of search engine queries and phone calls that were once need to determine where to buy media in a new market, not to mention the massive spreadsheets to keep track of it all.
Since it’s an on-demand platform, media buyers get real-time market data that’s up to date each time they log in, including as average rates by medium for a campaign market (if statistically valid) and potential campaign reach. Information on media outlets and advertising opportunities is kept up to date through a media research team, platform activity, and media sales reps updating their profile.
While it’s not something you can feed to your livestock, the real-time media outlet database is a technology that has a profound impact on the media buying process, especially for researching new campaign markets and keeping up with changes in market conditions.
The database is one of the core features of our media buying software—simple to search with a big impact on time savings–and we’re happy to share how our clients are using it.
From an office in a renovated warehouse near downtown Sioux Falls, SD, full-service advertising agency Insight Marketing Design develops campaigns for clients throughout the Midwest. The small agency (12 employees) uses Avenue Right to streamline their media buying, saving about 25% of the time spent researching media outlets.
