Media planning and buying are all about the method of strategizing, negotiating and buying ad placements, which is also called inventory. The basic thing that the planners must take into account is the product that they are advertising. Figuring out the answers to questions like the target market (audience) and the goals of the campaign will come secondary in the process.
In addition to this, the media buyers are responsible for making the purchase at the initial stage and to continue the process of optimizing their performance throughout the lifecycle of the campaign.
Planning
- As discussed above the first and foremost step is the identifying the target audience. This step is also called “Audience Research.” In this you need to find, who your target audience is, and how does the audience shifts by the medium.
- You need to plan the expenditure on buying. Find out the percentage of funds that you will be allocating to buying and what type of buys on which you would spend the money. Consider the aspects of the display, search and other.
- The percentage of the finances that you will spend, out of that, what percentage will be on the guaranteed inventory and what will be on the non-guaranteed. For guaranteed inventory, in the planning stage, there must be the sending of RFPs (request for proposals) to the suppliers. These suppliers are the ones that you are interested in inculcating in your campaign. For the previously purchased inventory, you can take the programmatic approach which guarantees automation.
Buying
- In a guaranteed inventory, the number of impressions and rate that you are buying the inventory has to be fixed. This can be either done by established rates or by receiving a proposal back from a supplier.
- Execute the media plan by including each placement from all the buyers in the campaign. While doing so, make sure that you include the time frame for which the placements will run.
- Before formalizing the order in the form of an IO, the buyers must take approval for their media plan.
- The budget line will be submitted to the DSPs and the direct publishers by the agency or the agency trading buyers for the RTB facilitated buys.
Role of Digital Marketing
The arena of digital advertising was initially approached as direct sales. In this, the advertisers and publishers directly bought the premium inventory, that they considered being the most suitable for their audiences. In this process, there were a lot of spreadsheets, proposals and follow ups by phone and e-mails -and this is still in practice around the world. But, the digital buying has transformed with programmatic buying (real-time bidding and automated guaranteed) and a much faster RFP process.