Media Buying: The Risen Phoenix of Advertising

2007-03-08 10:33:40

( Business )



Are you raving about that motorcycle plug you saw while watching your favorite reality show? Or are you still in awe about your favorite designer's collection in the magazine?

Perhaps, until now, you’re still raving about the copywriters, the art directors, the photographers, and the videographers who made those fantastic ads happen. Of course, they weren’t called the creative team for nothing.

But those, like every single ad in the world, wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for the material where you saw the ad – whether you saw it on prime time TV, on the centerspread of a glossy mag, or heard it over streaming radio. In the dynamic world of advertising, it’s the media buyer, after the client has provided his/her concept, budget and schedule, which help determine where the creative output should be rightfully placed.

Media buying service involves an inquisitive knowledge of clients, behavior of target audience, and the different forms of mass media. Media buying service for advertising media requires the capability to think of all permutations to increase brand awareness. Otherwise, opportunity (and client’s marketing budget) to properly expose products to target audience might just end up going down the drain.

In achieving the highest possible effectiveness of the chosen medium, the creative output’s level of exposure, and the clientele’s budget, media buying requires a lot of patience, endurance and common sense. Media buyers should be firm and objective, able to look beyond the endless persuasion (and pressure) of broadcasting networks to place the advertisements on them. At the same time, they should also be able to discern if the advertisement fits with the demographics or target audience of the media company – making the process largely creative as well. It’s not very appropriate to see a luxury car advertisement while watching a children's show, or is it?

Once the ads have started proliferating, there are various ways to test the effectiveness of the marketing campaign. Quantitative analysis should have been done before the start of the campaign so that there will be a basis for comparison. Such modes of testing should determine whether, for the product or service, there is a change of perception, or whether there is a change of awareness. While this is not just a gauge of the impact of the creativity done by the agency, this particular role of the media buying service also aims to empirically determine the return of investment of the client’s marketing efforts – making media buying a pivotal process of any marketing strategy.


All rights Reserved © Tradenet Services srl
Do not duplicate or redistribute in any form.