New twist to media buying

I found this on BBC.co.uk and I am breaking a few rules to reproduce a small bit. (read it in total here)

While the advert is going through the various stages of creation, a decision will be made about when to start buying media space. As some forms of media, especially magazines and television, have considerable lead times it may be necessary to start booking airtime or print space very early on. This becomes even more important when prime slots are required as there will be considerable competition.

There are two key roles in a media team: planning and buying. The planner makes decisions regarding which magazine or which television slots to buy in order to reach the target audience. The buyer negotiates to buy the required space at the best possible price.

The media team will need to be briefed carefully to ensure that they know what the campaign aims to do. A media schedule must be produced outlining how the budget is to be spent - how much on television slots, how much on magazine adverts, the frequency of appearances and so on. The buyers will then start to use their negotiation skills in order to try and purchase the most suitable spaces for the best price. Ideally, the media schedule will leave the buyers enough room to pick and choose, so if a good deal can’t be made with one publication that is of interest to the campaign there is room to move on to another.

Of course, the sales teams that sell space on behalf of the newspapers, magazines etc. have to bring money in to keep the company solvent - they rely at least in part upon advertising revenue and in many cases they are heavily dependent. So there are often opportunities for media buyers to play one off against another.

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So basically what goes on in media buying and selling is finding new ways to spend the clients money. Newspapers and TV and Magazines and hoardings have perishable inventory, and hence the need for space sellers to get rid of inventory at cheap prices that a retail advertiser will never get. Media buyers buy in bulk and are sometimes left holding stock that no one wants. Then these smart asses go and put ads of unsuspecting brand managers and charge them the earth.

COnsidering so many advertising con men and women move to client side businesses and are now responsible for the money the organisation spends, you have them now wearing halos and pretending that they never did anything wrong while on the other side. The easiest ploy is to play two media buying agencies against each other. The one who gets the better deal for the client is the winner.

This situation is good for the clients because now you have every media buyer megotiating harder and harder and driving prices down. Sound logic?

Now come to Search Marketing - Google expects you to bid for those damn keywords for prime positions. So when you have so many people bidding for the same keyword at some point the prices become unviable. One cannot pay for the ads anymore. Now if there is no one bidding one would expect the prices to go down, the truth is that it never happens. Google caps at an average high bid and anyone from that point has to bid upwards. Google makes money. No one else really does.

In this case if you have two media buyers working against each other for the same client, the costs are bound to go up. Better positions mean more and more and more money. The client is the loser because some brand manager somewhere wanted to see who could deliver better. Problem is not in the thought but in the understanding. While it is great to do it in traditional media, it is a death sentence for everyone in the search engine driven ppc world.

In the same breath I have to smirk and add that while one can imagine oubidding a rival advertiser for better positions, One cannot see sense in competing against oneself and driving prices up.

In Search Campaigns better written ads work better, better banners that talk sense is a must. One need not occupy position one forever just to ensure visibility. Sometimes positions 5 and 6 at the bottom of the page too give good results.

All those who read this (and I hope some clients read it too) please do remember that there is an emerging set of people who understand interactive media better. Look hard before you pay for something.