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.
Buying media and advertising inventory is a lot like buying seats on an airplane.
The buyer knows the price of the commodity fluctuates, and the guy in the seat (or placement) next to yours may very well have gotten a better rate.
Rates are influenced by how far in advance they are confirmed between the buyer and seller, how much inventory is left at the time of sale, and how desirable that inventory is. Again, it all depends on supply and demand.
Paying the right price for a great seat on that flight to Jamaica is an art form. So is negotiating placement and rate in media buying.
Here are a few ways buying airline tickets is similar to planning and buying advertising inventory:
Time it right. Media buyers bring a great deal of value to their clients in their ability to determine the right timing and delivery of an advertising message. Likewise, the process of requesting information and negotiating specific placements should also be done early enough to get good seats, so to speak, but not too early in the event that market conditions change or audiences move away from a given local media outlet in favor of another. This is where it’s helpful to get an idea of the average rates over a period of time.
Gather information and compare offers. Once the buyer picks a destination (or, a local radio station, for example), the next step is to determine how to get there (how to deliver the message), and how much to pay to get there in that way. A conscientious buyer gathers information and compares offers from multiple sources, be it airlines or media outlets.
Placement–Where to sit on the airplane. Window or aisle? First class, or back by the lavatory? In the radio buy example, peak drive time, or Run of Schedule, when the bulk of the ads in the schedule could air overnight, when the target audience is asleep?
Rate–Keeping an eye on trends in rates, gathering current information, and scheduling not too early but enough in advance to secure a good seat at a decent price as the inventory fills up.
Time Spent–Is it a long flight, driving up the overall cost of a campaign with that local radio station? In media buying, this is similar to the volume of inventory purchased and the relationships established with the sellers, whereas in purchasing an airline ticket, it’s like using frequent flier discounts as a loyal airline customer.
Other considerations for the media buyer are alternatives to vying for mainstream advertising opportunities, such as the most popular country station. Increased relevance might be found in more niche outlets, such as a talk radio or alternative music station, with content offerings and programming that are a good fit for the demographic being targeted.
Getting the best placement and rate depends on the buyer’s understanding of the inventory available, market conditions, how rates have fluctuated over time, and how they might change between planning confirming, and ultimately running the ads. Or flying to Jamaica.
Gathering up-to-date information on a buy is no longer an option, but a necessity. Internet technology eases the process of finding the best seat at the best rate for media buyers and frequent fliers. Think about travel sites like Kayak, Orbitz, or Expedia.
Media outlet contacts change just as quickly as inventory rates and audiences can change, so while gathering one piece of information, why not collect the rest in a standardized electronic RFP? For media buyers, technology addresses the need for
Affordable access to more up-to-date, accurate, and actionable information on an advertising marketplace, and
Elimination of redundant and manual tasks related to gathering, analyzing, and acting on information required for planning a media buy.
The answer to that is media buying automation, and more information on that can be found here.
Read more about advertising rates and negotiating placement:
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.
Insight Marketing Design uses Avenue Right to streamline their media planning and buying and manage all the information related to a buy in one central location.
A full-service agency, Insight Marketing Design buys media in local and regional markets—radio, broadcast & cable TV, newspaper, magazines, outdoor, and online. The agency’s main challenge was to research and plan campaigns efficiently, eliminating manual tasks and finding a central location for all the information related to a media buy.
To streamline media research, planning, and information management, Insight Marketing Design started using Avenue Right in December of 2008.
Since then the agency has been able to save about 25% of the time it takes to research a market by using Avenue Right’s media outlet database.
To learn more about how Insight Marketing Design uses Avenue Right, read the case study.
Media buyers should be able to spend more time on the activities that create value for their clients, such as negotiating placement and rates, rather than manually collecting and organizing information related to a buy. That’s the premise behind Avenue Right’s web-based media buying software.
Avenue Right founder and CEO Brian Gramer was interviewed by “Media Man” Michael Massey on his Internet radio show Your Ad Here (February 12, 2010). This is the third and final post in a series of excerpts from that interview. You can listen to the full recording of the show here.
In this excerpt Brian shares a bit of his background and experience in advertising, along with an overview of Avenue Right’s media buying software, the target user for whom the product is designed, and why a “pragmatic approach” to development works in this changing media landscape.
Michael Massey is also author of Your Ad Here: Demystifying the Business of Media and Advertising and an Avenue Right power user.
MM: Welcome to the Friday, February 12, broadcast of Your Ad Here hosted by Media Man, that’s me, Michael Massey. Today’s topic is streamlining the media planning and buying process, and I gotta tell you, anyone that does this can tell you it can be a daunting, frustrating process. Today my guest is Brian Gramer, founder and CEO of marketing technology company Avenue Right. He’s going to share how his company is working to make this process a bit less painful, right Brian?
BG: Correct.
MM: Why don’t we take a couple minutes and sort of explain how you got where you are, what jazzes you, and why Avenue Right.
BG: I got exposed to the advertising business from him when I was 12 years old. My dad brought me to his agency one day, and he said, “We’re going to do some mapping so we can target my clients’ customers and figure out where they’re coming from.”
In the 1980s with advertising, there wasn’t a lot of technology, and my dad’s agency was doing their books by hand. And shortly after that they got their first computer and with it an accounting process.
But he put up a map, which was the state of Minnesota and counties in North Dakota, and took the receipts of his clients and gave me some tacks, and he read of the zip codes from the receipts for where the customers were for his clients. I put the thumbtacks on the board, and that’s how we figured out the geography of where the client’s customers were coming from by looking at where the tacks were.
Then he’d draw up a report by hand and deliver it to the client and say, “Based on where the tacks were, here’s where most of your customers are coming from percentage-wise, and I’m going to break it down county by county. We can continue to build brand awareness and advertise where your customers come from to keep that competitive advantage, and/or we could market in other areas around where your customers come from to try to get other people to visit your retail store.”
But anyway, that was my first exposure, and I’ve been interested in it ever since. So I’ve been for more than 20 years now exposed to the advertising industry and that was my first love.
At the age of 28, I started my first company. It was a niche search engine to help high school kids find colleges, started in 1999. Then I got into the database marketing space and started a marketing automation company called Vtrenz, and after those two ventures, I decided to start Avenue Right.
MM: Tell me who your primary target is. You’ve said media buyers, but can you say more about that?
BG: Yes. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are about 30,000 advertising agencies that have 100 employees or less in the United States, and represent about 20% of all media bought in the United States. But the smaller part of the media spend in the US is about $60 million dollars.
Depending on how well the economy is doing and what report you look at, there’s about $300 billion dollars spent on media, annually, in the United States. Most of that media buy is done by the largest brands and largest agencies, okay, and so 80% of it is spent by them, but 20% is spent by these smaller agencies.
MM: Like me.
BG: Right. So that’s who we’re going after. Because most of the products being built are addressing that larger side of the market, and they’ve neglected to provide products that are affordable and pragmatic for small advertising agencies.
MM: You know what, that’s a perfect mission statement right there, Brian. That’s one of the things that turned me on to this particular product.
BG: That’s why I was saying you have to pick what functionality you’re going to build first when you start these things, and so we decided to address the biggest problem first, which is collecting information. But now we have a customization rolling out in a near-term release where you can actually pull in and manage all the different media, even if it’s not in our searchable database. You can add stuff in there and customize it for budgeting and reporting purposes. And so that’s exactly one of the things we’re adding is the ability to do that, based off feedback, and it’s always been on our roadmap. The question was, what priority are we going to give it, and right now it’s a very high priority.
MM: We just got a question so I want to be sure we address it. Why would someone use this sort of product over something like a Strata or a Donovan or a SmartPlus or a Google TV.
BG: I think all those products have their place in the marketplace, and I don’t think they’re going anywhere. Some of them are very, very expensive, so we like to build pragmatic software.
One of the things I would say first off is that in relation to this, some businesses need QuickBooks to run their accounting, and some need programs like Microsoft Dynamics and these huge accounting programs for companies that have multi-national operations in 80 countries and they have 4,000 users using the accounting system, from office admins to controllers to CPAs, right? And with QuickBooks, it’s an office manager that needs to input simple invoices and billings and stuff, which most businesses need QuickBooks, not the big one.
It’s not that these other systems aren’t valuable; it’s just way too much functionality for their needs and way too costly. Some of the products they described, that’s the limitation—it’s way more functionality than a small agency needs, and it’s too costly. That’s going to be the determining factor for the agencies. People don’t need all that functionality in many cases, and they don’t want to pay for if they don’t need it.
Strata is a different product. I don’t even think of them as a competitor. They do a great job, but for a bigger agency that needs all that functionality. And so in many instances small agencies bit the bullet and said this is the only choice I have. I don’t need 80% of the functionality they’re delivering, but I’ll buy it.
The second thing is that they are limited by media type with a lot of the products. The third thing is that many are seller-side solutions and we’re a buyer-side solution. Our whole goal is to make tools to make media buyers more efficient, and we think the sellers will naturally come. So again, we’re making buy- side solutions, not sell-side solutions.
MM: Another question we got is to have you share, in your opinion, what are one or two strengths and one or two weaknesses that you feel are there in Avenue Right.
BG: One of the strengths is that we’re multi-channel, media agnostic, and not involved in the commission process. We don’t have any financial stake between the buyers and the sellers, which allows you to things a little differently, and better.
Another strength is that we look pragmatically and simply at the problem, we try to add the most valuable functionality that solves your biggest problems first. We know it’s not going to solve everything, but I think our pragmatic approach is why people are buying us, even though the system doesn’t do everything already that they wish it would today.
The disadvantage we have is that we’re new, so we’re finishing building our roadmap.
The other disadvantage we have—and this is a disadvantage for everybody—is that the media buying landscape continues to get more complicated. And this is always going to happen in media, so you’ve got to make the system flexible like we’ve talked about so you can customize it and have an open API. But the disadvantage for all of us is there’s always a new type of media. There’s always a new outlets being created. There’s always someone else providing content and trying to make money off advertising, you know. So being fluid.
That constant change is a disadvantage for a software company because you really have to think about how you develop the product in a world of constant change, and if you’ve never done it before, it’s really hard to do. So I think that’s an advantage for us is that we’ve done it before.
Media buyers should be able to spend more time on the activities that create value for their clients, such as negotiating placement and rates, rather than manually collecting and organizing information related to a buy. That’s the premise behind Avenue Right’s web-based media buying software.
Avenue Right founder and CEO Brian Gramer was interviewed by “Media Man” Michael Massey on his Internet radio show Your Ad Here (February 12, 2010). This is the second in a series of blog posts with excerpts from that interview. You can listen to the full recording of the show here.
This excerpt examines how buyers and sellers adapt to new technologies and changing the way they do things, such as exchanging information.
Michael Massey is also author of Your Ad Here: Demystifying the Business of Media and Advertising and an Avenue Right power user.
MM: On the other side of the fence, I’m getting a lot of resistance from media properties. And I think, well, I know why. But what I want to hear from you is why do you think certain media properties are really resistant to using a service such as this?
BG: There are a variety of reasons, and some of them are real simple ones. First off, technology-wise when my agency-owner father was sending faxes to media departments, people had just started using faxes. Before that you actually had to send it by mail courier. And then the mail courier would be back.
So when they started sending faxes, they were resistant to that at first because it was a new way to get an order. So then all of a sudden email comes along, and I don’t know if you were in the business when the changes started, when people started faxing orders, and then they started emailing them and there was resistance—wait a second, I’m not going to take an email because I need a real signature and to see that it’s on the paper.
MM: Yeah, I remember that.
BG: And then all of a sudden email became acceptable, but change takes time. And some people today still use fax. So now we’ve got fax orders and email orders.
If you think of our system, we’re sending sellers a link to a website—a secure portal—and we’re saying, “Hey, here’s a spot for you to approve and order.” The only difference from email is that it doesn’t live in an Inbox, it lives on the web. And this is a new way now. And there are plenty of industries, by the way, who do orders through this technology, so the first thing I’m going to say is they just have to get used to change. It’s change management—them getting used to it.
The reason they accepted the change with the fax and the email is that the buyers forced the change, right? One of our beliefs is that the buyers are going to force the change with the media outlets. And if the buyers request it and want to do it this way so they can manage media buys more efficiently for their clients, we think the sellers will fall in line.
MM: You know what? I do believe that is the case. I’ll use myself as a prime example, if you don’t mind. This is relatively new to me; I was buying 4 markets, multiple mediums—cable, television, and radio. I set them all up ahead of time, I said, this is what’s going to happen. You’re going to get an email from Avenue Right, they are not an agency, they are not another media property, and they are not a commissionable business. It’s a portal. I need it, and I use it manage all of my information.
Every email I got back said yep, ok, sounds great. I mean, I got as few people that said well, I don’t really know how to do that, but I’m sure I’ll work it through. Of the 50 RFPs, I bet you there were at least 10 that just ignored the request, said I’m not going to do it I’m going got send it this way. And one of them was a TV station. And I said you know what, because we’re on a time constraint I’m going to allow it, but it’s not going to happen ever again. You need to do what I tell you to do, so I guess, Brian, what I’m saying is I think you’re right on. The buyers have to stand firm though—they can’t use it and then go ok, yeah, I guess you can do you that way.
BG: I agree with you. And that change will come with the more value we can provide you as a buyer with reporting and customization and the tools we’re making for you. It’s likely the buyers are going to stand firm. Remember these technologies like fax and email were such huge changes in productivity that it was a no-brainer for the buyer to push back and say listen, you’re going to take it this way. I’m not going to get a courier to run over there every time.
But you’ll be surprised. It still took time—you have to have a battle with the media outlets to make that change happen. The media outlets have been burned, so it’s not all their fault. There are a lot of players out there that try to take business from them, and from agencies. Google had a radio product to allow small businesses to buy their own media so they didn’t have to go to an agency. They took a commission from the radio stations themselves, and once you start taking that commission, you’re looked at differently. So again, it was better for the stations to fight in that instance and say, “I don’t want to take orders that way and give up commission because they are competing with me.”
And some of the products that have taken a first run at this problem, they’ve taken it from an angle that made all the agencies and all the media outlets competitors, so there’s a little bit of this reaction, “Oh here comes another one,” right?
The other thing about change is that our system is designed to remember things that were done in the past, so there is less manual input for them every time they use it. So the same goes for you as a buyer. But all these systems are the same. The RSS feed that collects information is a hugely productive tool, but you still have to set up your RSS feed. You still have to figure out what you want to search for as far as news and different things in the feed.
So there’s always, in any technology, the part where you have to get things set up, and it seems manual, but I would say that it’s worth my time to set it up. And that’s our challenge—we have to show them that it’s worth their time if they spend a little time on the frontend getting set up. In the long run, it’s going to save them a ton of time.
MM: I think you’re right, that is the way to look at it. And it’s a little painful, I have to acknowledge from personal experience, to get everything set up at the beginning, but I’m already feeling once better because I’ve already told media properties—and I told Erin (Avenue Right Client Services Manager) this yesterday—I can’t fill binders of their papers. I can’t do it. I need to be able to look at everything one place. So I’m willing to be flexible with you, but you’ve got to give this a try.
Media buyers should be able to spend more time on the activities that create value for their clients, such as negotiating placement and rates, rather than manually collecting and organizing information related to a buy. That’s the premise behind Avenue Right’s web-based media buying software.
On February 12 Avenue Right founder and CEO Brian Gramer was interviewed by “Media Man” Michael Massey on his Internet radio show Your Ad Here. This is the first in a series of blog posts with excerpts from that interview. You can listen to the full recording of the show here.
Michael Massey is also author of Your Ad Here: Demystifying the Business of Media and Advertising, to be released next month, and an Avenue Right power user.
MM: Why don’t we take a few minutes to explain how you got where you are, what jazzes you, why Avenue Right?
BG: When I started Avenue Right 2 years ago, I said I’m going to solve a problem and it’s this—how do we create one place for media buyers and advertising professionals to go and find media buying opportunities for their clients so they don’t have to manually gather this information?
The thing is, you can say that seems pretty simple, is that really going to provide value? And what I’ve found talking to advertising agencies is that they spend half their time manually collecting information. And the information they collect isn’t secret information, it’s not private. It’s media sales contact information and email addresses for media outlets. Things like rate cards, media kits.
This is what the media buyer has to do all day long instead of the things that they do really well, that provide value for their clients, like strategy and planning and placement. They are spending a good portion of their time just collecting information that I thought should be automatically collected and updated somewhere. It shouldn’t have to be manually collected all the time.
But the reason this is always manually collected is that the information changes all the time—rates change daily, the media outlet sales department has a 100% turnover, depending on the outlet, and inventory supply changes.
And now with the Internet, there are no barriers to creating a media publisher, or creating and distributing content. So there are more and more options, and how do you keep up with all that? That was the creation and idea of Avenue Right.
MM: Give me some typical examples of what media buyers are wanting, 5 or 12 things everybody wants. I can’t be atypical in some of the demands I’m making.
BG: You would think there would be a lot of commonalities in what media buyers want, but there are a lot of anomalies. And you have to manage all those needs so you don’t create too complicated of a product, but create the core functionality that provides the most value.
They do want visibility into what they’re doing in more granular detail, but they also want to provide that visibility to their clients. Any kind of reporting we can provide agencies, they can provide their clients, so the agency can show the value that they are creating for their clients. So if you think of media buyers in the past, all the work they do doesn’t show up on a neat client report. Negotiating with media outlets, all the services you provide, theirs wasn’t an easy way to show clients all that value you’ve created for them, all that work.
MM: Brian, I’m going to record what you just said, and send it to all my clients.
BG: Well, it’s been a difficult thing, right? One of the things we’re doing to augment our product is try to continually provide our agencies with better internal reports, for your own internal processes. How much media did you buy across certain geographies, how much media did you buy by client?
MM: As a buyer, I’ve been doing this for 12 years, and before that I was a seller of media. And really, when you’re working on a media plan, a lot of the work is up front, because you’re doing exactly what you just said. You’re contacting the media properties, you’re negotiating, you’re gathering all the data, you’re putting the plan together, you’re putting it in a nice report and then you just have to kind of shepherd it for 6 months or throughout the year or whatever it is.
But there is a ton of work that goes into it at the beginning. And I’m not even including the constant influx and volume of email and phone calls you get from media reps.
So any time you can show a client that this is the time you spent and the value created, there’s something to that.
BG: Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of visibility they want to provide if they are using an automated system to do some of their process. It’s very difficult to buy media if you have to manually do it in a spreadsheet after you’ve done all the work.
Other feedback is related to reporting and it’s being able to integrate our system to other tools to get data out of those tools. Even if you’re doing social stuff, or anything, any data source you might want to pull or you’re managing some other type of media buy that doesn’t go in our system.
For example, if you’re managing search for your clients, you can pull that data in and report on it on the spot. And that’s the other request we get—incorporating other data into our system to pull that data into the same system as their offline buys. So we’re going to work on integration—that’s feedback we’re taking to heart and going to make happen.
MM: Can you say more about the actual modules that are available? Originally I think it just started out with radio and print, but in the near past you’ve actually added some other components. Do you want to talk about those briefly?
BG: We’re in version 1 of TV, cable and broadcast. And again we’re taking a bunch of feedback from users to enhance that. We’re probably in version 4 of radio. Print includes magazines and newspapers, but if you look at online, our approach and what we want to represent is local display advertising.
So an example of that right now in our system would be a local newspaper that has pushed their content online, right? They are moving their content online, and some of those content sites have a lot of traffic for their geographies, and they can prove it. A ton of reach and frequency for a particular geography.
MM: I’m all about unique and new media, so I’m your timeline there for architecture. Are you guys going to look at mobile advertising, texting?
BG: Yeah, mobile is a big one. Our approach is this, and it’s a really simple approach—we’re going be the platform to take whatever data is necessary for you to plan budget and report on your media to your clients. At worst case you can enter and create these categories yourself in the tool if they don’t exist.
MM: So I’ll have the ability to customize it myself.
BG: You can customize it yourself, right. Let’s say you customize it and put in information on a billboard company, or say it’s park bench advertising on the busiest street in some city you advertise in for a client. And it just happens to be a great advertisement because of the type of client you have and the traffic that it gets.
So let’s say its park bench advertising and you put that in our system. See, we’re a software as a service, we’re a platform. If that information is not private, and its public, meaning the park bench advertising company wants to sell more advertising to other people, not just you and your clients, we release that for the whole community. So the next time somebody comes into the system, now that company is listed and that category will be listed. That’s where we’re headed.
MM: You’re almost making it like a Wiki, a community.
BG: It’s crowdsourcing, right? That’s the advantage of the platform, crowdsourced by the community. In addition to that we’re going to add some community features onto the tool that allows agencies to rank media outlets.
MM: Oh, watch out for that one!
BG: So the idea is to let you customize your dashboard, customize your reporting.
We’re always going to be developing, enhancing, and we’ve got that built into the cost of our company. And that’s an advantage to customers, too, an advantage of being a SaaS product. With on-premise software, you develop all this functionality, and then you release it and everyone has to get the old version off their desktops or laptops and load the new version, right, and transfer their data into the new version.
In our world, you don’t have to do that, so we can monthly releases and constantly change based on your feedback to enhance the product. And that’s what we’re going to need to do to be competitive and stay ahead, because again, it’s always changing.
There was a time when only a few major publications and a handful of radio and television stations existed in a local market, making it easy to plan and buy advertising. Today there can be hundreds of media outlets in the average US market, competing for both audience attention and advertising dollars.
For most advertisers, the target audience is no longer exposed to their messages only through daily newspapers or broadcast commercials. Now that audience can go online anytime to find exactly the content they want, when they want it, probably watching TV or listening to the radio at the same time.
Accordingly, marketers are spending more of their budget online, but traditional media—primarily television and radio—continue to capture a fair share of audience attention.
The US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2009-2014 from Forrester Research reports that individuals are spending about 34% of their time online, with the rest of their time spent with traditional media—watching TV 35%, 18% listening to the radio, and 13% reading print media.
Keeping up with the changing media landscape and the divided attention of a target audience requires not only efficient tools to work with every medium, but also the real-time information and collaboration environment we’ve become accustomed to thanks to web-based technology such as search engines, social networks, and document sharing.
The challenge for media buyers and the agencies that provide those services is to be able to plan and manage multi-channel advertising campaigns efficiently, keeping up with market changes while eliminating time- and labor-intensive tasks related to planning, negotiating, and buying media.
Media Buying Automation
Media buyers can now plan, negotiate, buy, and analyze local online and offline advertising, together, with Avenue Right—radio, broadcast and cable TV, print, and online, and soon, the ability to add and customize whatever media type they want.
It’s not an ad network or exchange, but rather an agnostic media buying solution that allows its users to deliver an effective multi-channel advertising campaign without spending too much time on manual business processes, phone calls, and follow ups.
With a quick search of Avenue Right’s media outlet database, users can quickly find local advertising opportunities that specifically match their campaign criteria. Along with more mainstream local media outlets such as daily newspapers and popular radio stations, buyers can use search tags to find niche advertising opportunities, such as a community newspaper or local parenting website.
Other features and gadgets for media buyers include electronic RFP tools, multi-channel consideration sets, media schedule builders and templates, budgeting, and campaign reporting. To manage it all, there are campaign calendars, dashboards, contact management, and a customizable File Cabinet for each user.
Avenue Right not pre-purchase inventory or take commission on transactions, so the platform and any recommendations provided remain free of bias.
