Interactive Media Buying Tips

As I sat on the IAB’s search committee meeting the other day, I started to think about all of the little things that REALLY need to be involved in an interactive media buy that seem to get overlooked. The bottom line I think is that agencies still don’t have enough bodies to do them all as interactive takes a lot more time and effort than a print or traditional campaign – so that being said, I thought I’d point out some of the top things that buyers should be looking to do, starting with incorporating search:

1.Incorporate Search into Everything (AND incorporate Marketing into Search). Agencies still are outsourcing their search to contractors, and although those contractors know how to do search engine architecture, they don’t often understand the basic marketing principles. This is where a traditional agency should be able to accelerate, as they’ve always known marketing – but just couldn’t wrap their arms around interactive. Yet what seems to happen is they follow what their search person tells them to do. Let go of your auto bid optimizers and start analyzing the data. Don’t silo search, and just as important – don’t silo marketing to everything but search.

2. Negotiate your media buy. Sorry sales reps, but right now – we’re pretty sure we have the upper hand. If a client has money to spend, just know that there are 100’s if not 1,000’s of websites that meet your demographic data. Negotiate your media buy to meet your clients objectives. And oh yeah…

3. Know your clients objectives! It’s great to negotiate and get a better deal, but make it a win-win relationship. Publisher reps and vendors want fair value just as much as your client does. Negotiate a deal that hits your client objective and satisfies your publisher. If you can find the sweet spot, then both client and publisher will be happy and continue to grow. In order for that to happen – the media buyer needs to know the publishers metrics, how the clients ads will respond, how they’ll convert and more. So educate yourself before you negotiate. If you don’t know how your clients ads will perform, then you probably need more coordinator experience before taking on a senior media buyer title (Don’t even get me started on agencies that throw around senior level titles so a client feels all warm and fuzzy. Your media buyer either gets it, or they don’t – and yes, it’s that black and white.)

4. Get Flexible. Ask for flexible terms on the media buy. I totally understand that if you cancel the buy outright, you’ll have to find more placements – but if that’s what it takes to meet the objectives, then put the elbow grease into it. We move media buys around several times within the websites before canceling them outright – but you need to have the flexibility from the publishers to make that work, and if it still doesn’t, you need to be able to move on. In the long run, you’ll save the publisher time and money as well – as they’re after the long term relationship just as much as you are.

If you can incorporate from a very high level these four items into your interactive media buy, then when you get into the details and the optimization standards and objectives, you’re going to have at least a leg to stand on.