Media Buying Automation Blog

Media Buying for the Small Business, Made Simple

Brian Gramer — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 19:48:00 GMT

Sales are down, or at minimum they could be better. You, the business owner, read your company’s financials and determine now is the time to take action. You call a meeting to discuss your advertising and marketing because the only way you can get sales up is to get your phone ringing more, increase store traffic, and/or bring more people to your website.

Consequently, you and your team decide it’s time for an advertising campaign to introduce more people in your local trade area to your business, or to offer something of value to get them to try your product or service again.

You need to find the best way possible to reach as much of your target audience in the local trade area where you do business, and with the highest amount of frequency for the lowest amount of money. Easy, right?

After a quick internet search, you realize this might not be easy after all.

And after weeks of searching for advertising opportunities, calling media outlets to get information, and listening to 100's of hours of sales pitches, you’re overwhelmed. In your local trade area, there are over 10 different types of advertising media that you could use, packaged into over 300 media buying opportunities.

But each package or proposal results in a different idea of where to place those advertising dollars—and why—largely based on the media type sold by the representative a buyer is meeting with.

So you decide to seek a professional media buyer from an agency to help, and quickly learn that the dozens of small agencies in your area very expensive, and the information they give is confusing.

After all, each agency knows more than next about planning and buying media. Some agencies tell you to broaden your trade area, while others tell you to change your target demographic. Still others try to impress you with an analysis of media data, and another advises a market study to help you determine who your customers are, where they are located, and what you should be selling them.

So how can a small business owner make sense of all that information and advice to maximize their advertising dollars?

By using technology to plan and place advertising.

Web-based technology has made nearly every business process more efficient, from accounting and online banking to contact management and internal collaboration.

With media buying automation technology, small businesses can benefit from these same efficiency gains in the advertising and media buying process.

No need to spend hours gathering information, listening to media sales pitches, and trying to determine what media package will work for your advertising campaign. Tasks that used to take hours and weeks now take minutes and days.

They key to being a successful business is being able to take advantage of market knowledge quickly. You can take control of your advertising, and do it yourself when it makes the most sense for your business.

That unsure feeling you as a business owner deciding how and where to spend your advertising dollars is gone.

Learn more about media buying automation and how it's helping small businesses maximize their advertising dollars and get new customers.

What an Airline Ticket Can Teach Us about Media Buying

Brian Gramer — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 13:08:00 GMT

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.
Get the right 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?
Watch for good rates. 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.
Consider 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.

Learn more about local media buying automation and how it can help you keep up on rates, inventory, supply, and demand.

Why Information Should Always be Free for the (Media) Buyer

Brian Gramer — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 18:38:00 GMT

Pretend for a moment that you’re shopping for a used sedan to make those lengthy commutes a bit more comfortable. Two vehicles are in the running, the same make and model—a blue one at Lot A, and a gray one at Lot B. Both have the same low mileage, give or take a thousand, and from what you can tell, they seem to have the same features.

You’d like to do a closer comparison of the two vehicles, their features and pricing. Unfortunately, the research and decision process is similar to the typical process for planning a media buy.

It means that in order to evaluate the two vehicles, you have to pay separately for the data needed to compare the two purchases.

In every other industry, the information required to evaluate a purchase and weigh its risks and benefits is provided by the seller. Eventually that information is provided, too, by a community of people who have experience with the product or service.

But in media buying, the data needed to consider an advertising purchase comes at a hefty price. Ad agencies subscribe to data services to support their media buying decisions, and the media outlets subscribe to this same data in order to be rated and hope for a top spot.

Why not just ask the media salesperson for the data to persuade you that their station is the right fit for the media mix?

Our sales guys at both Lots A and B would be happy to provide whatever information they had in order to sell us on why their sedan best suited our needs and was therefore the better purchase. For free.

A Look Under the Hood

This model could easily work in media buying, too, if agencies have the tools to collect, evaluate, and take action on precisely the information they need from sellers—no more, no less. Really, there’s no point in analyzing all that data until the media buyer first knows what inventory is available.

When data has to be purchased separately for any product—even the ink and air of advertising—the added cost is passed on to the consumer.

One advertising channel that has done well to offer verifiable audience data without added cost to the media buyer is online. Audience measurement services such as Quantcast® offer online audience information in real time, generally at no cost to buyer or seller. Savvy online media buyers have numerous ways to access data about a website’s traffic, and those sellers have the information they need to show how the target audience of the campaign is already visiting that website.

Buyers of traditional media such as broadcast radio and television should come to expect the same open exchange of information for the offline part of the mix as they can get for online advertising. Internet technology and SaaS-based (Software as a Service) products can provide the kind of streamlined, collaborative, trusting environment needed for the packaging and sale of not only online but also traditional media, making it easier to buy.

Enabling the process of collecting, managing, and collaborating on advertising information allows media buyers to get the current data they need directly from the seller, at the right time in their planning process. It eliminates the need to pay large fees for complex data sets of which they may only use half to plan and buy media for their clients that year, and time spent analyzing ratings points for dayparts that may or may not even be available.

With most agencies, the margins for pure media buying are decreasing, yet offering this service is a core necessity to providing their other high-margin services, such as design or branding. Contributing to this are inefficiencies in the media buying process, not having access to the tools and information needed, or having access but paying too much for it.

See how Avenue Right is helping small businesses save time and money in a demo of our media buying automation solution.

Photo Credit: iStock

The Perfect Media Plan in 7 Steps

Jessie Johnson — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 13:52:00 GMT

Decisions are influenced by a number of factors and a variety of thought processes.

Emotions might take over the decision-making process completely, leading to the purchase of the first option we see based on our immediate reaction to it (“Oh, it’s so shiny! I’ll look good driving this car!”). We might base our decision on past experience (“I got this kind last time and like it”), or on a friend’s recommendation (“this worked for me, and we have similar interests”), purely on intuition (“this just feels like the right purchase for me”), or on any combination of factors.

Another approach, one we’re already using in business decisions, is the rational decision-making model. Since it's a logic-based evaluation of weighted decision criteria and examination of alternatives in order to make the best decision, this could even be referred to more simply as due diligence. Most of us are using this decision-making process already, whether formally and systematically or on the white board.

The rational decision-making model can be used to construct a media plan and illustrate the media buying process while highlighting two important steps—prioritizing decision criteria, and considering alternatives.

7 Steps for Deciding Where to Advertise

The media planner/buyer’s decision process, then, would go something like this:

Identify the Problem/Opportunity: Need to raise awareness for a new business, or promote a sale.
List Decision Criteria: For advertising, among the decision criteria would be reach and frequency , CPM, CPP, GRP, total impressions, ad placement, content relevancy to the target audience, and of course, overall cost.
Prioritize Decision Criteria: What matters more, CPM or ad placement? To help compare and evaluate qualitative and quantitative decision criteria together, assign a numeric weight to each criterion (for example, $25-$40 CPM = 10, $41-63 CPM = 7; primetime = 10, front page = 8, etc.) and create a decision matrix to help evaluate the information collected in the RFP and advertising rate request process.
Consider the Alternatives: Have all available media channels and relevant media partners been evaluated for the campaign? What local online advertising placements would complement the offline campaign? Are there any cost-effective, niche local advertising opportunities to consider in the media mix?
Evaluate: Compared against the weighted decision criteria, which advertising opportunities best meet campaign goals, within budget? How would the campaign budget best be allocated across media channels?
Make Decisions: Based on the evaluation, choose the best-performing options to build the media mix for the advertising campaign.
Execute, evaluate, optimize, evaluate.

This decision-making model assumes access to all the information needed for evaluation based on specific criteria, in addition to consideration of alternatives. For media buyers, this often means collecting and reviewing a pile of information that seems large enough to fill the coverage area of the campaign.

The most cost-effective way to gather and evaluate all this information and ensure that the ads reach the most people in the target audience, most effectively, at the lowest cost is to automate the RFP and rate request process. Learn more about Avenue Right’s web-based media planning and buying software, or see how it works in a demo.

Why Automate Your Media Buying?

Jessie Johnson — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 16:39:00 GMT

Local advertising is a multi-billion-dollar industry in the United States. It’s supported by more than 2 million local advertisers and 30,000 media buyers, agencies, and planners interacting with 200,000 media sales representatives to plan and place advertising.

These advertisers have more ways than ever before to reach their target audience, from broadcast to cable to niche community publications and websites.

The average local market has upwards of 400 media outlets representing traditional and online advertising opportunities. Each buyer-seller conversation results in a different idea of where to place those advertising dollars, largely based on the media type sold by the representative a buyer is meeting with at the time.

The media landscape is constantly changing—rates change daily, inventory changes weekly, and the audience changes based on season, interest, and age. The media plan that works today won’t work a few months from now.

The data needed to evaluate these media outlets objectively is unavailable or cost-prohibitive to all but the major advertisers and their agencies—and it’s inherently biased. In today’s buy-sell environment, the person with the most information wins, but collecting and evaluating it all takes a lot of time.

Unless the process is automated.

Media buying automation means using technology to streamline media planning and buying processes. Automation cuts costs and reduces the time it takes to plan and place advertising by eliminating redundant, manual, administrative, and cumbersome processes.

Automating the process of buying traditional and online advertising space can reduce media planning time by up to 50%. In fact, A Centro study found that 50% of respondents spent their time in spreadsheets and email, while media buying automation increased productivity by 31-65% (as cited in a MediaPost article).

So where to start with media buying automation? The RFP process.

Automating the Advertising RFP Process

An automated RFP process helps media buyers collect, organize, and analyze information from media sellers more efficiently. Media buyers save time by tracking and managing RFPs, media outlet contacts and communications, and advertising proposals from a central location rather than disparate systems, spreadsheets, emails, and sticky notes.

Thos who take advantage of media buying automation technology can collect the most current audience and rate information from more media sellers across more media channels in less time. More information means more leverage in the negotiation process, resulting in better media buys.

Find out how media buying automation works in a demo of Avenue Right, tailored to your media buying needs.

How to Create an Effective Media Mix for Local Advertising

Jessie Johnson — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 19:48:00 GMT

Back in the 1950s and ‘60s, media buying wasn’t as complicated as it is today. Advertisers could reach everyone in their local market—a few times—with mass media.

Today’s media landscape is decidedly more complicated. While its “fragmented” state brings more complexity to media buying, it also brings more opportunity to segment and target a consumer audience.

The right mix of local advertising reaches that audience where they live, work, and play. It delivers a message through more relevant, immediate, and in-the-moment media, moving consumers through the buying stages of awareness, consideration, and action.

Familiarity with the different media channels as well as the local market can help media buyers more narrowly target their audience and deliver the most relevant messaging based on location, demographic profile, and media habits.

Radio

Broadcast radio continues to be a leading source of information and entertainment across demographics. Based on a Monday-Sunday 24-hour weekly cume estimate, radio reaches 93% of all consumers in the U.S. every week.

Some benefits of radio advertising:

Targeted and local (geographically, demographically)
High recall even among distracted listeners
Flexibility for copy/creative changes and event-triggered campaigns
Mobility (listen in the car, at work, at home)
Strong ties to community, events, and promotions
Low-cost production

Television

Television continues to offer the greatest reach of all local media channels, and its ads are characterized by sensory impact and emotional engagement.

As an awareness medium, television advertising performs well in multi-channel campaigns designed to inform and persuade through different media and conversion paths. One study found that television advertising led to brand website visits more often than radio and print ads drove them online, with 26% going online to find more information within 30 days after viewing a television ad.

Additional benefits of television advertising:

Targeted (geographically, demographically, psychographically)
Connects with consumers through their involvement in the programming
“Intrusive” medium that makes an immediate impact through sight, sound, and action
High-impact branding capabilities
Original, engaging programming for high audience involvement and viewer loyalty

Broadcast television offers extensive reach and full DMA coverage for advertisers, and local cable television reaches a generally higher income audience with more niche programming and specific geographic targeting.

Print

Declining print readership has received much attention from the industry over the past few years. For newspapers, much of this missing audience has gone online to read the news—of those respondents to the Pew Research Center’s 2008 news media consumption survey who had read the news the day before, only 25% read the print version. These online news sites are a great way to extend reach at a low CPM, and display ads on these sites may be part of an advertising package with space in the print version, or the placement may be thrown in as a value-add.

Some benefits of local print advertising:

Geographically targeted
Tangible media (touch/feel it) and portable
Good for coupons and sale events (inserts)
May be demographically, geographically, psychographically targeted
Engaged audience involved in content
Tangible media (touch/feel it) and portable

Internet

The internet is a cost-effective and measurable way to deliver an advertising message with high reach and frequency. For local advertisers, online advertising is an affordable way to raise awareness, promote events, and influence decision-making through easy access to information about a product or service.

Online advertising is useful at every stage in the decision process, from awareness to purchase:

Increased reach and frequency
Highly targeted (demographically, geographically, psychographically, behaviorally, linguistically)
Highly measurable and accountable with provable ROI
Can drive traffic directly to a website
Interactive creative

Local search advertising is an effective way to generate website traffic and leads. Keywords can help advertisers further align their messaging with each stage of the decision funnel.

OOH

OOH advertising is any advertising that reaches consumers outside their homes, such as billboards, bus stops, and those loud and splashy ads on the back of the bathroom stall door.

In most cases OOH offers broad reach along with the ability to target a very specific location, such as the all-night diner off the next freeway exit. CPM is usually low, the ad is available 24/7, and unique formats such as digital OOH can be high-impact.

And finally, presence in social media—both paid and unpaid—is an essential component of the media mix. A good resource for more information on the role of social media in today’s advertising and marketing efforts is Brian Solis’ The Hybrid Theory Manifesto: The Future of Marketing, Advertising, and Communications.

So what's your media mix?

To learn more about creating an effective media mix for local advertising, download the white paper, Realize the Power of Multiple Media: 7 Steps to an Effective and Measurable Multi-Channel Advertising Campaign.

A Three-Minute Guide to Ethos, Pathos, and Logos in Advertising

Jessie Johnson — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 15:08:00 GMT

All advertising is, most fundamentally, an attempt to persuade an audience. We want those people to buy our products, to enlist our services, to support an organization or cause.

The media we use to deliver these messages should match the habits of our target audience, and the message needs to remain consistent, however it’s presented within the media mix.

Just as the media buyer needs to incorporate multiple media channels to reach an audience, the ads need to blend a combination of rhetorical appeals to be effective.

It’s not good enough anymore to tell the audience that a treat from Peggy’s Pie Palace is a guilt-free experience—we need some evidence telling us why it’s a low-calorie snack option.

The art of persuading an audience means using the three basic appeals that Aristotle first described: ethos, pathos, and logos.

This means using the appeal of personal character, emotion, or logic, respectively.

Ethos

Ethos is the appeal of a speaker’s/actor's character or authority, such as the use of local celebrities or the business owner/employees in a company’s advertising.

This appeal gives character and personality to the message, making it easier for the audience to relate to, trust, or place authority in the figure represented.

Ethos may be represented differently in different media. Visual media has the benefit of using images, such as that of sports hero, where text-only ads and auditory media such as radio rely on style, tone, and name recognition to convey ethos.

Pathos

Perhaps the most powerful tool in advertising, pathos is an appeal to the audience’s emotions. It can be used to create feelings of confidence and intrigue in a brand (“established in 1915”), to reinforce value (“find more time for you with Acme Widget”), or to promote a sense of urgency (“don’t spend another night with bedbugs”).

The emotions to which the message appeals may be many and varied: safety, well-being, pride, anger, insecurity, desire.

Logos

Logos is a logical appeal typically marked by facts, figures, and data. This information is quantifiable and helps us rationalize our decisions through hard data on money saved, time saved, higher status, and so on.

One tactic that combines all three rhetorical appeals is telling the audience how many people, just like them, have purchased a product or service. This social proof approach

helps lower perceived risk and lessens our insecurity about the purchase (pathos),
paints a concrete picture of market share through data (logos), and
introduces like-minded characters and personalities through testimonials (ethos).

Learn more about creating an advertising content strategy that results in decision and action. Get the complimentary white paper 3 Tips for Aligning Local Advertising with the Consumer Decision Process.

Market Forces & Media Buying Automation

Brian Gramer — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 20:59:00 GMT

No matter what industry you’re in, meeting frequently with a lot of vendors and salespeople just isn’t feasible. The amount of time spent in those meetings could be otherwise spent growing a business or keeping customers happy.

It’s no different for small businesses placing local advertising. Meeting with hundreds of media salespeople can be costly and confusing. So what do you do? Either you don’t meet with them, or familiarity and bias leads to meeting with only selected media salespeople, no matter the changes in the advertising landscape or media consumption habits of the audience you want to reach.

The local advertising marketplace changes rapidly for both traditional and online media—rates fluctuate, inventory availability changes, and new formats and advertising packages are introduced every week.

Small businesses have two options--buy media on their own (“in-house”) and commit a lot of time and effort in order to create ROI in their advertising, or hire an ad agency to keep up with market changes and place effective, measurable advertising that increases visibility and generates sales.

Margins, Media, & Market Forces

Even in the second option, the core challenge remains—the ad agency has to deal with those market forces and fluctuations, too.

How agencies deal with this problem affects how they get paid. Ad agencies generally get paid when your media runs, and only if it runs. Every bit of research or data they spent time on or paid for in the planning process, and all the time spent finding rates and inventory and gathering proposals, cuts into the agency’s profit margin. For an agency, the media buys with the highest profit margins are those for which they need to deal with the smallest number of media outlets.

In these conditions, the perfect media buy is the one in which the entire budget is spent with one media outlet.

Unfortunately, that’s just not possible in the modern media landscape. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. More media outlets means more targeted media buys.

It’s not that small businesses advertisers shouldn’t use a media buying agency. But those that do hire out their media buying should choose an agency partner with automated and streamlined planning and buying processes over a provider that says their personal relationships with media sellers is their secret sauce to get better buys.

Competition in the marketplace creates biased relationships and non-transparency, an easy way out of exploring each and every advertising option and media channel that might be relevant to a client’s campaign.

And even then, how many relationships can be maintained? Relationships take time, even in business, and time is money.

In this cost/benefit analysis, information, technology, and efficiency always win.

Media buyers—whether buying advertising for their own business or on behalf of their clients—need to automate. These are the media buyers with time to analyze information, options, and proposals, rather than spending their time trying to collect it all.

Learn more about media buying automation and cost efficiency in small business advertising. Get a demo of Avenue Right, or read more about local media buying automation.

Advertising vs. Marketing: Which Works Best for Small Businesses?

Jessie Johnson — Wed, 18 May 2011 16:08:00 GMT

Are you looking to grow your sales this year? Who isn’t, right? But promoting your business can be expensive, with results that may or may not correlate to the time, effort, and budget spent on a campaign.

Choosing the right messaging and the right vehicle(s) for the target audience is the key to realizing positive ROI from these efforts.

So which is more cost-effective for small businesses, advertising or marketing?

Well, both are equally effective, if done well. In fact, for longer sales cycles, advertising may be dependent on the marketing efforts that follow in order to close the sale.

Let’s look at the definition* of these terms to highlight differences in these two activities that are critical for both brining in new business, and to keep those current customers coming back time and again:

Advertising \ad-ver-tis-ing\

the action of calling something to the attention of the public especially by paid announcement

Marketing \ˈmär-kə-tiŋ\

1) the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service, or 2) an aggregate of functions involved in moving goods from producer to consumer

*Source: Merriam Webster

Perhaps the most important thing to note here is that advertising is a component of marketing, a part of the whole experience for your prospects and customers.

Advertising raises awareness of your business, product, or service offering, filling the top of the sales funnel (read more about Local Advertising and the Consumer Decision Process). In addition, advertising can help create brand loyalty among existing customers.

Marketing follows through on that brand awareness to bring prospects further down the sales funnel, to the point of not only making their initial purchase decision, but keeping that customer coming back in the future. The notion of the customer lifecycle pulls that sales funnel upside down and sideways, until it looks more like this:

You’re marketing already. Every touch point with customers and prospects says something about your brand and reinforces their decision to purchase (or not to purchase, in some cases). The folks who leave your store and spread the word about your great products and the service they received are an extension of your marketing team, and undoubtedly its most valuable members.

Here are some (certainly not all) examples of activities that fall within the advertising and marketing:

*Advertising (Paid Promotion)*	*Marketing (Relationships)*
Radio or Television Commercials	Social Media
Print Advertising (Newspapers, Magazines)	“Drip” Nurture Campaigns
Online Search and/or Display Advertising	Email Newsletters
Billboards/OOH	Educational Content
Direct Mail	Event

Advertising keeps the top of the sales funnel full, and marketing brings those prospective customers closer to their purchase decision and, eventually, loyalty.

A balance of media, creative, timing, and repetition drives consumers from awareness to purchase. Learn how to optimize the advertising media mix based on messaging strategy, timing and delivery of the advertisements, the product, and the target audience. Download the complimentary white paper, 3 Tips for Aligning Local Advertising with the Consumer Decision-Making Process.

If you decide to outsource your advertising and marketing to an agency, here are 9 Things to Communicate with Your Advertising Creative Team.

Why Your Business Should Advertise Both Online and Offline

Jessie Johnson — Mon, 02 May 2011 15:21:00 GMT

In 1955, television had $1 billion of the $5.7 billion US advertising spend (see Ad Age's 1950s TV Turns on America). The rest went to print media, which had about $3.2 billion of the total advertising spend (NAA).

It wasn’t terribly difficult to decide where to put those advertising dollars.

Today that target audience spends time with both online and offline media—internet, video, radio, television, OOH, magazines, newspapers, social. And the same advertising messages can be delivered on a mobile device as those viewers, listeners, visitors, and readers go on about their business.

Advertisers can no longer simply choose between a television campaign or a series of inserts in the only daily newspaper available within a 50-mile radius of the target zip code.

Reaching today’s consumer audience requires a media mix built around reach, frequency, and relevancy factors specific to a target audience and their media consumption habits.

Especially for small businesses, adding local online and search advertising to the media mix increases the reach and frequency of a campaign, making those online and offline ad impressions—and the resulting behavior, action, and sentiment—more measurable.

Online advertising is expected to show the most growth in 2011 among small to midsized businesses (SMBs), with Borrell Associates 2011 Outlook finding that 84% of survey respondents planning to buy online/digital advertising, and 53% growing that area of their marketing spend.

But traditional media still have a considerable audience. No longer does any single media channel continue to lose audience to another; rather, we’re just spending more time with more media channels.

Over the past three years, the amount of time US adults spend with each media channel has leveled off and become somewhat consistent.

Television continues to dominate with 40% of time spent per day. But the internet and radio aren’t far behind, with 23.5% and 14.5% of time spent, respectively, by the end of 2010 (via eMarketer).

For many local business-to-consumer advertisers, traditional media channels such as television, radio, and print are high-impact, delivering results that balance campaign goals and target audience with the unique properties of each media channel.

Traditional media comes with some mystical calculations like ratings, shares, GRPs, and TRPs, and CPP, measuring target audience reach and overall cost.

This can be just as effectively measured and evaluated in traditional media channels, such as radio and television, as in online advertising using the media measurement CPM.

A consistent measurement across online and offline media channels helps businesses and their agencies determine the best vehicles to use in an advertising plan, and report ROI of the campaign post-sales.

The common measurement for audience and cost, across media channels, is CPM (Cost per Thousand people reached). Its formula is simple:

cost/audience x 1,000=CPM

Learn how to use CPM as the common denominator in your media buying, and check out some sample formulas for converting traditional media measurements to CPM. Download the complimentary white paper, CPM: The Common Denominator in Media Buying.

Meet Mabel, MultiTasking Media Buyer

Jessie Johnson — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 15:18:00 GMT

Meet Mabel the Media Buyer. She’s prepping for a client meeting in precisely 12 minutes.

She checks her email for an updated proposal from a radio sales rep, gathers her notes from a phone conversation with the daily newspaper ad sales rep, and prints the avails sheets she received from the local television stations.

Then she gets a call from another client. It’s a retailer that needs a proposal for a killer advertising campaign by the end of the day tomorrow. Same mix of radio and print advertising as last time, says the client, but this campaign will run in a different market to announce to grand opening of a new store!

Larry of the apparently expanding Larry’s Lumps and Lures explains how he put off thinking about advertising until the last minute, so now she should be in a rush, too.

Mabel agrees that yes, it’s exciting to be opening a new store and launching another ad campaign, thinking surely he could have found a more palatable name than Lumps for his inventory of nightcrawlers and leaches.

But Mabel, naturally, is multitasking, searching the internet to see what radio stations broadcast in Larry’s new market, which local newspapers and magazines are popular. She bookmarks her search results so she can come back later and determine which, of the advertising options available, will reach the reach the target audience of males, 25-64, and bring them to the store on Grand Opening night.

Four minutes left.

A new email announces itself with an anticlimactic little bzzzt as Mabel hangs up the phone a bit too loudly. It’s the updated radio proposal from the radio rep that she needs to pitch to the other client in 2 minutes. Mabel strategically files notes from the phone conversation on top of piles of notes from other Urgent Projects so she can tend to that email.

Ever the optimist, Mabel has often thought of one day having all the media planning information she collects—electronic, printed, verbal, self-service—managed within a central location, an electronic media plan that updates and recalculates based on negotiations and communications with media sellers.

For now, Mabel jots down the radio schedule updates on the inside of the client file, adding two little stars and a date next to it along, making a mental note to update the master electronic file for the media plan later on.

She returns to her desk after the meeting and opens her laptop, but instead of pulling up the bookmarked radio stations and print outlets for the Larry’s Lumps and Lures Grand Opening campaign, Mabel starts a different search.

This time, she’s searching for a better source of information for multi-channel media planning and buying, and the tools to help keep track of all that data and communications.

Avenue Right’s web-based media buying software is a flexible and affordable solution that tackles these problems with a new and unique approach to media buying—automation.

In the time it takes to adjust that media plan to reflect the new radio proposal, recalculate budget allocation and delivery measurements, and update the campaign calendar for Client A, Mabel could search an entire marketplace for the most relevant media outlets, build a multi-channel consideration set, get contacts, and send proposal requests for Larry’s New Business campaign if she used Avenue Right.

Less time on administrative tasks, more time for strategy and planning.

Avenue Right lets media buyers like Mabel plan, buy, reconcile, and report on all their local advertising—across media channels—from a single login. Media buyers save time, agencies save resources, and advertisers save money.

Discover the nue way to buy media. Mabel did, and she’s even getting a lunch break today, knowing Avenue Right is collecting, organizing, and managing the media planning information and communications for her. (But, being Mabel, she subscribes to the RSS feed for her Avenue Right account so she’s updated each time there’s a response to an RFP.)

Learn more about local media buying automation--request a demo of Avenue Right’s web-based media buying software today!

What Media Buyers Measure

Jessie Johnson — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 20:13:00 GMT

Avariety of concepts and formulas are used in the planning and buying process for different advertising media. These calculations and figures are signals that point to the best media buy based on budget, audience, and goals.

At its most basic level, all this media math points to three key concepts in advertising and marketing:

Audience
Delivery
Cost

AUDIENCE

Thanks to advances in media and technology, it’s easier than ever to reach a target audience with relevant advertising content (think niche cable programming, local websites and blogs, community magazines). It’s why a fragmented advertising marketplace presents more of an opportunity than a challenge, if managed efficiently.

Successful advertising campaigns reach the right audience at the right time, with the right message. This requires media buyers to consider the demographics (age, gender), psychographics (education and income), and behavioral indicators (purchase history, lifestyle) of that audience.

Understanding your target audience allows you to present a message that appeals directly to those consumers, delivered in a media channel with which they’re engaged, and in a language they speak.

Size. Measurements such as ratings points, impressions, and subscribers provide insight into audience size for a media outlet being considered for a campaign.

Audience size provides a way to quantify how many people are reached with the advertising message, but it’s an inconsequential data point if those ads aren’t reaching a targeted audience.

Behavior. Behavioral indicators like media consumption patterns, purchase history, and lifestyle data on home or automobile ownership within a target geography help media buyers further narrow the list of media channels and outlets considered for a campaign. These factors highlight the advertising opportunities that are a best fit based on factors such as product price point, distribution channels, and marketplace competition.

DELIVERY

Delivery can refer to both the audience that is delivered, and the way in which the advertising message is delivered to that audience.

Plenty of research has been published that explores increased brand recognition and recall among people exposed multiple times to an ad distributed in multiple media channels.

Multichannel advertising presents the opportunity to use one medium to drive traffic to another for a more effective campaign. The reason this multichannel approach works is best explained through the concepts of reach and frequency.

To make any advertising work well, it’s important to understand the relevancy of a media channel and its content to the target audience.

Reach refers to the total number of people “in the audience” for your advertisement.
Frequency refers to the number of times an individual is exposed to your ad.
Relevancy is exactly what it implies—how relevant your ad is to an individual, at the time and in the context that she or he is exposed to it.

Effective reach and frequency varies depending on a number of factors, such as

The price and type of product or service being advertised,
Whether the message is passive or intrusive,
The stage of the buying cycle a consumer is in when they are reached for the first time (granted, different for a restaurant advertiser and an automotive advertiser), and
Whether it’s a campaign to raise brand awareness or a call to action to generate direct sales.

COST

This concept explains itself fairly well. Budget allocation is a major factor in any media plan, just as the decision to spend a portion of the marketing budget on advertising was a strategic decision. Every dollar counts, and should be accounted for.

The advertiser must spend enough money to attain effective reach and frequency, allocated across media channels. However, without measuring consistently across media channels, it’s difficult to analyze post-sales data to see which ads performed and bring that insight to the next media plan.

Advertising may be packaged and sold using the following measurements:

Did you happen to notice the common denominator for measurement across media channels?

Learn how to use CPM as the common denominator in your media buying, and check out some sample formulas for converting traditional media measurements to CPM. Download the complimentary white paper, CPM: The Common Denominator in Media Buying.

Finding the Common Denominator in MultiChannel Media Buys

Jessie Johnson — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 20:18:00 GMT

Irina Intern is moving to the Big City and needs to make some decisions on transportation, specifically for the daily commute to the office. Each option has its pros and cons, but it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison.

She’s considering the following options:

Riding the city bus,
Driving her car,
Trading her car for a motorcycle, or
Carpooling with a roommate who also works downtown.

The experience of the ride itself creates a number of different factors to use for comparison, among them convenience, storage, cost (gas/parking), maintenance, practicality, and the coolness factor.

Each one has its own parameters and dependencies on other factors; for example, the matters of cost and storage can be outweighed if convenience is most important.

Carpooling results in too much loss of control over her own schedule, so that option is ruled out right away. To compare her remaining options consistently, Irina uses Average Daily Cost as the common denominator in her analysis, which she calculates by estimated monthly cost / hours spent in transit. She comes up with something like this:

Bus: $200 / 40 = $5
Car: $300 / 30 = $10
Motorcycle: $225 / 28 = $8

It appears, then, that riding the city bus is the most cost-effective means of transportation for Irina Intern.

The Common Denominator in Media Buying: CPM

Just as Irina used Daily Cost as the common denominator to simplify her decision-making, CPM (Cost Per Thousand) is a consistent measurement that can be used to compare advertising across traditional and online media channels.

A Simple Media Planning Template

Jessie Johnson — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 13:47:00 GMT

Sometimes making the best business decisions can be the result of good organizational skills.

For most SMBs, the advertising plan can be drawn out quite simply, based on three key concepts in media buying—audience, delivery, and cost. The information contained in the advertising RFPs, at minimum, should outline the campaign criteria and media scheduling preferences.

This allows the media sales representative to respond with all the information the buyer needs to evaluate the proposal (read more about automating the RFP process). The media outlet can provide data on audience size during the RFP process (requesting a station’s ratings, for example, or subscriber numbers).

Before that RFP process can even begin, though, the media buyer needs to put together a media plan that outlines the target audience, campaign objectives, budget, media allocation and rationale, and schedule.

That Media Planning Template might look something like this:

Target Audience

Age
Gender
Location
Income
Education

Campaign Budget

Campaign Run Dates

It's also helpful to create a table showing where the advertising budget is allocated and why, as in the chart below.

Media Channel	Allocation	Description	Rationale	Target CPM
Broadcast TV
Local Cable TV
Radio
Local Online
Print
OOH

Planning Data by Media Channel

Television	Daypart	Rate/Ad	Rating	Imp (000s)	CPP	CPM
Radio	Daypart	Rate/Ad	Rating	Cume Persons	CPP	CPM
Online - Display	Location	Cost/Placement	Ad Size	Monthly Impressions	Total Cost	CPM
Online - Search	Total Impressions	# of Clicks	Click Rate (%)	Avg. Cost per Click (CPC)	Total Cost	CPM
Print	Location	Per Column Inch Rate	Ad Size	# of Issues	Circulation	CPM

A variety of mathematical calculations and formulas are used in the planning and buying process for different advertising media. These calculations and figures are signals that point to the best media buy based on budget, audience, and goals.

The common measurement for audience and cost, across media channels, is CPM (Cost per Thousand people reached). Its formula is simple:

cost/audience x 1,000=CPM

These categories and their estimations provide a high-level representation of audience, cost, and delivery in the media planning process.

Join the conversation about local advertising, media buying, and the technology that helps us get it all done. Sign up for adve.nu, an online community at the intersection of traditional and online media, sponsored by Avenue Right. It's free to join, so sign up now!

10 Questions that Help Define a Target Audience

Jessie Johnson — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 14:42:00 GMT

Understanding the target audience allows you (or your copywriter) to craft a message that will appeal directly to these consumers, delivered through the media they use and in a language they speak.

A good place to start is by creating a profile of the target audience. This provides a basis for the media buying decisions in your consumer advertising campaign.

Consider the consumer base for your product or service—the target market. What are the common demographic, psychographic, and geographic characteristics? Use that information to draw up a profile that includes, at minimum

Gender (75% male, 25% female, for example)
Age (age 25-54)
Education (some college), and
Location (within a 50-mile radius of Anytown metropolitan area).

This simplified profile will not only help you research advertising opportunities, but also provide key information to media outlets during the RFP process.

The degree to which the audience of a media property matches your campaign criteria is a good indicator of whether placement on that station or in that issue or on that website will really reach your target audience with any kind of impact.

10 Questions that Help Media Buyers Define a Target Audience

Here are ten basic questions that can help marketers and media buyers segment and target their audience:

Who buys your product?	What media do they use most often?
Are they predominately female or male?	What's the general attitude toward the product or service?
From what age group?	Education level?
What are their spending habits?	What are their product needs?
What's their geographic location? Local? Regional?	Lifestyle indicators (home, automobile ownership, for example)?

Once this audience has been defined, it’s time to think about delivering the advertising message.

Broad, general messages don’t resonate like they used to. The message needs to speak specifically to this target audience, the people who buy your product or call for your services.

Which audience characteristics matter most in your media buying? Join the conversation by becoming a member of adve.nu, an online advertising community at the intersection of traditional and online media. Sponsored by Avenue Right, it's free to join the adve.nu community, so sign up now!

Transparency in the Business of Media Buying

Jessie Johnson — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 14:17:00 GMT

Since its first use in the 15th century, the commonly held meaning of the word “transparent” has been to have the properties of transmitting light or being see-through in nature and, later, to be easily understood.

Its etymology rings true in business, too. Here the word transparency refers to an open environment characterized by visibility of information among key stakeholders involved in a business process or practice.

Web-based communication, business processes, and applications have made transparency in business easier than ever before.

This challenges the isolation and protection of information that was once used to conduct business to one party’s advantage, and ultimately creates more trust in business environments, such as online marketplaces.

After all, if a company isn’t forthcoming about its products, practices, and policies, there are always blogs and online communities that provide that information directly from consumer to consumer.

With the internet being used not only as another medium on which to advertise, but also a means of connecting buyer and seller, where does the traditional media buying process fit in?
Media buying, by nature, is a non-trusting environment.

Clients want to know exactly how much agencies are paying for their media buys, how much their competitors are paying, and how much of their media billings are going toward the agency’s administrative processes for planning and placing that media.

This uncertainty stems from that fact that, as Jim Edwards points out in a BNET article , “prices are on display for everyone to see, and everyone knows who’s paying what” for nearly every other commodity out there—from the products that line the shelves of grocery stores to the stock market to the products on sites like Amazon.com.

Exchange Information, Not Inventory

The world has grown accustomed to the real-time transfer of knowledge attainable through the internet—open, timely information and convenience has become our expectation.

As such, media buyers and sellers need the ability to connect and exchange information before they exchange inventory—for both on- and offline media, in an environment that’s transparent, non-biased, and media agnostic.

Media buyers can’t be pushed into a process both prescribed and limited by the technology they use, or the media channel they're buying.

Web-based media buying software simply opens the channels of communication to facilitate information collection and analysis, process management, and execution.

Learn more about web-based media buying software and how it creates a transparent, unbiased online marketplace for local advertising. Get a demo of Avenue Right, or read more about local media buying automation.

How to Target an Audience using Media Buying Automation

Jessie Johnson — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 15:49:00 GMT

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 relatively easy to plan and buy advertising.

Today there are be hundreds of media outlets in the average US market, competing for both audience attention and advertising dollars.

For most advertisers, their target audience is no longer exposed to these 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% of the time, listening to the radio 18%, 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 media channel, 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 planning and managing multichannel advertising campaigns efficiently, keeping up with market changes while eliminating time- and labor-intensive tasks.

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, online, OOH and alternative.

It’s not an ad network or exchange, but rather a media-agnostic, web-based media buying platform. Avenue Right allows its users to deliver a targeted multichannel advertising campaign without spending too much time on manual business processes and transactional communications like 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 automated advertising RFP tools, multi-channel consideration sets, media schedule builders and templates, cross-media budgeting tools, and campaign reporting.

To manage it all, there are campaign calendars, dashboards, contact management, and a customizable File Cabinet.

Avenue Right does not pre-purchase inventory or take commission on transactions, so the platform and any advertising recommendations provided remain free of bias.

Learn more about Avenue Right and local media buying automation. Contact us, request a product demo, or connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.

Ready to jump into the conversation on how advertising is changing as a result of changing media consumption patterns and news technologies? Join the adve.nu community, sponsored by Avenue Right. It's free to join, so sign up now!

On Building Faster Horses

Brian Gramer — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 12:22:00 GMT

Customer feedback can be good and it can be bad. Customers are human beings, after all. They have different biases, experiences, backgrounds, and education. They’re different in age and gender, and they play different roles in different companies. Marketing, sales, admin, IT, and business owners all provide a unique perspective. Even the mood of a person at the time they are providing feedback can change that feedback.

When doing something truly innovative, be careful not to take too much customer feedback. They may lead you astray, and most of the time, in circles.

A market opportunity represents itself because technology, a process, or a way of doing something better can help a company become more efficient or make more money. The problem is most people already believe they are doing something the right way and they don’t believe or want to believe that there may be a better way.

This is the most difficult part of bringing new products to market—change management. It’s getting people who do a job every day to change or to do something different. For example, Facebook has 500 million users, but there are still 7.5 billion people in the world that haven’t figured out the value of Facebook and/or are unwilling to learn.

I met those same people in the late 1980s and early 1990s when it came to the personal computer and software. In 1990 my grandma bought me a typewriter that had electronic keys for college, but it was still a typewriter. What if Steve Jobs had asked my grandma in a focus group to describe exactly what she needed for her grandson? She would have described a typewriter, not a computer. Remember what Steve Jobs had to say about that?

“How can I possibly ask someone what a graphics-based computer ought to be when they have no idea what a graphics-based computer is? No one has ever seen one before.” –Steve Jobs

Imagine what a rancher or farmer would have told Henry Ford when Henry suggested they could transfer goods in greater quantity, more often, and with less effort using the automobile. People who sold horses would create objections like, “Where are you going to get the gas?” “There are no roads to drive cars on.” “What are you going to do when the tires wear out or go flat?”

Henry Ford’s view on that kind of feedback and its underlying sense of fear and uncertainty has become a mantra for the modern entrepreneurial community:

“If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” -Henry Ford

Advertising and marketing people are good at what they do, but they don’t tend to be as forward thinking as we think they are, and they definitely don’t know how to build innovative technology products. The fact is that most products being developed today are just better mouse traps, or better versions of the same process or view point.

Bringing innovation to business processes, utilizing technology to automate the collection of data and different processes saves time and money, but it requires people to bite the bullet and make the change.

Avenue Right wants people to make a paradigm shift, get off the horse and onto the information super highway. Traditional media buyers and sellers need to change because the internet is much more efficient, making all commodities—advertising included—easier to buy, and more measurable. Get off the horse…and buy a car.

Optimum Scheduling for Radio Advertising: Frequency is Key

admin user — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 16:02:00 GMT

The following is a guest blog post from Bob Gramer, founder of media buying and advertising consulting company Multiple Media Consultants.

When playing the numbers games in media analysis, there are two things we are always concerned about…reach and frequency.

The goal is to reach as many target potential customers with enough frequency to make sure the message is received and understood. With radio, frequency becomes even more important since we are working with only the sense of hearing in a limited span of time.

Those with limited budgets may have to sacrifice some reach in order to optimize their schedules with adequate frequency. Media gurus and consultants do not always agree on what the optimum number is when talking about frequency in radio. Most will agree that somewhere between a 3 and 5 weekly frequency will produce the best results. That is not to say that you will run 3 to 5 ads per week. It means that you will run enough ads during the week (within a given daypart) to reach a determined number of potential listeners and average of 3 (up to 5) times each.

Given budget limitations, it may be better to reduce the number of stations and/or day-parts in order to get an adequate frequency. In a small to medium sized market, your optimum schedule may be to spend $ 2,000.00, reach 15% of your demographic target, with a 3.5 frequency. If you had $ 5,000.00 to spend, your goal would be to add a station or two, maintain a 3 to 4 frequency, and increase your reach to 25-30%. This would be optimum for the budget you have to work with.

Sophisticated media buyers have the tools to provide this information to their clients. Retailers and buyers placing their own schedules may have more difficulty in determining reach and frequency.

Here is a formula to help determine how many ads it takes (within a daypart) to accomplish a frequency goal:

1. Daypart Quarter Hour (divided by) Daypart cume = X
2. Desired frequency (divided by) X = number of ads to schedule within the daypart.

While this formula does not consider duplication, reach, effective reach, or cost efficiency, it does give you a rudimentary way to make sure you have an adequate frequency to optimize your radio buy from the frequency perspective.

*Average Quarter Hour (AQH): Number of target listeners in a 15-minute segment of the broadcast daypart.
**Weekly Cumulative Audience (cume): total potential number of target listeners on a station…within the broadcast daypart.
Daypart, quarter-hour, and cume numbers can be provided by your local media rep.

The Myth of Gross and Net Rates in Media Buying

Brian Gramer — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 14:35:00 GMT

By definition, the Gross Rate is what an agency charges the client for their advertising media. The Net Rate is what the agency pays for the media.

Historically, the difference between the gross and net rate in media buying has been agency revenue. Putting it simply, if the gross rate from media outlet A is $100, and the client pays an agency commission of 10%, the net rate would be $90.

As an agency I would owe the media outlet $90 when my client pays me $100, and I would keep $10.

Gross and net rates are simple, right? There’s nothing mystical about them. The question is, could a small business that buys their own media request a net rate? Do media outlets increase the price of their inventory to make up for the margin that agencies try to make?

Just like retail clothing sales, do inventory prices change week–to-week, or month-to-month, for the same inventory? Do agencies actually know if their rates are the best? After all, in order for the net and gross rate ROI to work, they would need to ensure they’re getting the same or better rate that the media outlet is selling directly in the market or to another agency.

The fact is the same rate can be grossed up or netted down or otherwise changed, at any time. This is why the whole pitch about an agency not charging for their media buying services is being questioned and agencies who continue to use that selling point may be discredited in the future.

Media outlets can and do sell the same rates, in many cases, whether gross or net directly to businesses. In this case an agency is grossing a rate up to the buying, so there is a charge.

How Agencies Make Money or Don’t

An agency has to get its money from someone, while the media outlets are going to maximize the revenue they generate from the inventory that’s available to sell. Therefore, a media outlet will mark the “gross” rate up as much as they need to in order to ensure they are getting the maximum amount of revenue for the inventory they are selling.

The fact is that agency clients are paying a fee, a commission, or something in exchange for knowledge and advice. Low rates can be good, but more importantly, having the right media mix, message, and placement is worth more.

Agencies that say they charge nothing for these services discredit the industry and their agency. It is worth something. So tell your clients you take a small percentage of the buy to represent their interests in the ever-complicated world of media buying, not that you charge them nothing.

Every business person knows about wholesale and retail prices, and your clients are no different. They also know an agency has to charge for their services to say in business. Don’t talk down to them or they may not be your client for long.

Tell them what rate you pay the media outlet and what the client pays you. Don’t confuse the issue with the discussion of net and gross rates.

Photo Credit: Andrew Magill via Flickr

How Far is Too Far in Advance for Media Planning?

Brian Gramer — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 19:46:00 GMT

I have the luxury of meeting with all sizes and types of agencies in markets of different sizes. It's interesting to gain their perspective on a concept that sometimes doesn’t get as much attention as it should:

How far in advance should media be scheduled for the client in order to maximize return and minimize risk?

Some agencies plan and schedule media buys a year at a time, some by quarter, some do spot buys or buy at the last second. Is one way better than the other? Some of the arguments for buying far in advance are as follows:

Get a better rate by negotiating an annual contract with media outlets and buying early.
Benefits the agency because it is easier to manage a buy for a client one time and maybe slightly tweak the buy than to place buys several times throughout the year.
Easier to control client budget and not get trapped into buying more and more (the set it and forget it approach).
Can spend more time on developing and testing campaign creative. It’s easier to test the success of an offer if the creative, not the media mix, is the only thing changing throughout the year.

Conversely, here’s what I hear from people that believe in buying more short-term:

Get better rates sometimes by waiting for slow times or getting access to inventory that could not be sold. DR (Direct Response) buyers are perfect example.
Better for the agency because they only get paid if the advertising runs. Short-term buys generally are not cancelled, and they run, so we have a better understanding of the work we need to do and the money we will make for the work.
Geographic markets change daily, and industry markets change daily. Advertising is fluid and requires constant tweaking and adaptation to take advantage of the local market and industry changes.

I’m not sure there’s one right answer, but given the advancements in automation technology, and given our ability to buy offline media more easily with this technology, I would lean towards not placing buys too far in advance.

Local events, industries, and general market conditions change very rapidly, and all of these things can play a part in inventory availability, audience delivery, and rates.

What's your process? Do you buy media months in advance, or closer to when the campaign runs?

20 Advertising & Media Blogs You Should Read

Jessie Johnson — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 20:28:00 GMT

There are a lot of good blogs out there covering different aspects of advertising, from creative to media planning and placement. Here’s a list of our favorites.

Visit adve.nu

General Advertising & Marketing Awesomeness

Adages - insights on advertising and marketing
Ad Majorem - perspectives on a changing industry from an agency exec
iMedia Blog - interactive media and marketing

Visit adve.nu

Creative

Ads of the World - creative from all over the world (a mediabistro site)
the mad ad man - art, culture, and creative
BRANDING = m3 - a "textblook" for advertising students to provide insight into creative process
i believe in adv - creative from a variety of media channels

Interactive Advertising

adotas - all about interactive advertising
ClickZ - Media Buying - online media planning and buying
iab - the Interactve Advertising Bureau's blog
lostremote - tv and social media

Psychology and Advertising

PsyBlog - how our minds work, with insights into creative process and why advertising works
Neuromarketing - the science of the brain and the art of sales and marketing

Local Media

Local Media Watch - advisory firm BIA/Kelsey's blog covers advertising in traditional and online media channels
Borrell Associates Blog - local online advertising research

Ad Industry

Ad Contrarian - the title speaks for itself
Ad Freak - all things advertising
BNET - Ad News - the business of advertising
Clients From Hell - stories from designers with interesting clients
Small Agency Diary - news, commentary, and advice for small ad agencies

Join the Advertising Community adve.nu

Launched in January of this year, adve.nu is an online advertising community at the intersection of traditional and online media. Membership is free and open to advertising professionals of any experience level. Sponsored by Avenue Right, adve.nu is the place where beginners can learn from the experts. Learn more and sign up at http://adve.nu

And of course, another blog we're particularly fond of is this one. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe for this Media Buying Automation blog.

Traditional Media Outlets Need to Embrace Transparency...Fast!

Brian Gramer — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:52:00 GMT

Think back to the early 1980's and early 1990's, shopping for cars. Remember the feeling you had when you walked on the car lot knowing that the car dealer and salesperson were equipped with more information than you?

You wanted to run the minute the salesperson starting talking price, and the car salesperson was told that if you left the lot, they would lose the deal.

Why would they lose the deal? Because you would learn when you went to the next dealer that everything the dealer before told you was BS--price, leasing terms, financing terms, etc. And if you left the second dealer and went to a third, you would find that the second dealer was full of BS, too. Ultimately most cars were purchased from the last dealer that the buyer talked to, and the buyer still left with a sick feeling in their stomach.

What happens today? According JD Powers and Associates, the average consumer shops eight different websites for information before they visit a car lot. The buyer today has much more information than in the past, and as a result, the buyer feels more comfortable when purchasing and talking to a car salesperson.

No longer do people buy from the last lot they visit. The paradigm has shifted.

So would car dealers say the internet has been bad for their business? A vast majority would say it has not, especially the ones that have learned to adapt. In fact, many car dealers are more profitable than they ever have been, customer loyalty is higher, trust is higher, and margins are higher.

The dealers who did not or have not adapted would say the opposite.

The fact is, trusting business environments are more efficient; as a result, they produce more profit margin for the businesses and less cost for the buyers. "The Speed of Trust" by Stephen McCovey Jr. highlights the economic benefits of transparent/trusting business environments, and these benefits extend to both buyers and sellers.

So, why is the traditional advertising industry having such a hard time becoming transparent?

I want to buy some air/space to promote my business. What can you give me, how many people will I reach, and what will it cost me? Is this the same price you give everyone else? If not, why?

Seems like advertising outlets would want to spread this information everywhere and compete on their merits. They better start figuring out how to compete in transparent business environments or they are going to continue to lose market share to the internet in years to come.

Traditional media is still valuable. Americans still spend enormous amounts of time consuming traditional media like broadcast and cable TV, radio, newspaper, magazines, and OOH.

The problem with traditional media is not their audience loss. It’s the fact that it is so inefficient to buy--laden with middlemen and misinformation--much like the car dealers of the 1980's.

The internet is the equivalent of the new car dealers of today, completely transparent and open, and ready to steal business from old school media outlets and ad salespeople.

Learn more about what Avenue Right's doing to bring transparency to the advertising industry to help both buyers and sellers. Read about media buying automation, or see how it works in a 30-minute demo.

3 Bs for Creating a Killer Advertising RFP

Jessie Johnson — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 15:19:00 GMT

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 talk 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 Bs

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 media seller prepare a proposal tailored to the goals and parameters of the advertising campaign.

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.
Target audience (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?
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

The questions on an RFP don’t need to be cryptic and complex. A large 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.

Learn more about Avenue Right’s web-based media buying software and how it streamlines local media planning, information analysis, and scheduling.

Trust Your Gut to Find Your Audience

Jessie Johnson — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 15:33:00 GMT

“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” Peter F. Drucker

For just about every acronym in media buying, there’s a calculation or formula that—when combined with other calculations and formulas—can tell you exactly where to place your advertising dollars.

But the decisions need not be so complicated.

Local advertising through a mix of traditional and online media channels remains the best way to reach your target consumers with a great deal of relevancy.

No amount of data or magical mathematical formulas can provide a fail-proof media plan any more than the decisions we can make based on content relevance and gut feel.

Without any audience data or qualitative analysis, we already know the best media outlet in Anytown, USA, to reach young college students with a promotion for an upcoming rock concert wouldn’t be the AM station’s morning talk radio show, or even the local country station even though it may reach a portion of that demographic based purely on age.

The most important components of planning a media buy are reach, frequency, and above all, relevancy.

Relevancy Is Not a Number

Relevancy in media buying is exactly what it is in other uses of the term—how relevant your ad is to an individual at the time and in the context that he or she is exposed to it.

While a campaign calendar can illustrate the frequency of advertisements, and statistics can quantify overall reach, relevancy is a function of gut feeling that results from both personal/professional experience and a little research, such as existing customer and prospect data.

Qualitative data like programming and editorial content of a publication or station can help determine the degree of relevancy an advertising opportunity holds.

For a solid local advertising campaign that reaches your target consumers through the media they use, put content relevancy first, and use CPM to measure audience reach and frequency consistently across media channels.

Find out how you can use technology to quickly gather and analyze only the information that matters to your advertising campaign planning. Learn more about Avenue Right’s web-based media buying automation software.