Usable Clicks

Media Buyers It’s Your Turn

With many documented cases of publishers reporting drops in ad revenue, now is the time for media buyers to shine. If you still have a job, and still have a client who is in the need of online media, now is your chance to be a hero. And by hero, I actually mean you have the chance to capitalize on the misfortunes of publishers.

For the past few years publishers have been holding the premium price tag over even the most simple of media buys. I know this very well from both sides, as a publisher of a health and fitness destination and as a media buyer on-behalf of clients. The premiums were easy to understand; with good inventory scarce and the digital ad boom well under way, it was the best way to crank up the revenue. All conversations with top tier publishers typically included a “custom” or “big idea” opportunity. It should be obvious that, although you only buy what you want, certain types of desirable inventory was locked away for big budget only media buys. This locked out advertisers who were solely interested in a specific audience within prospective sites.

I am here to announce, and should have months ago, that those days by and large are dead – for now. Media planners all over the internet should be gobbling up severely discounted rates wherever they can. In a regular market planners have the power to dramatically alter any campaign by executing on-target partnerships and inventory buys with publishers, but in this environment they have the power to be a marketing super hero! PlannerMan to the rescue!

For the planners who are rushing between that client lunch and tonight’s show, let’s try to make this brief. By being aggressive, using your head and employing a few tools you can not only land those big award winning custom sponsorships, but you can easily increase the exposure and performance of your campaign. There are of course those who continue to keep inflated rate cards and ridiculous minimums. Don’t worry about them, we can make up for their shortcomings in no time. Below are a few ways to get started:

Do whatever you can to convince your client, boss, agency, firm to let you use media exchanges. These rarely come with tickets to see Mama Mia but with publishers looking to be as efficient as possible with unsold inventory, backfilling onto exchanges and ad networks is more popular than ever. Investigate these for good cheap inventory – don’t forget to setup targeting!

• Adsdaq
• AdECN
• Right Media
• ADX
• Google Content Network & Site Targeting (via adwords)

Start using ad networks. Typically seen as a strictly direct response media buys, ad networks often can get your campaign premium ad placements for a fraction of the cost. You often have to settle for category level buys on semi-blind networks, but don’t be afraid. It’s an easy case to make when you have a metric to back out to or a reach goal to meet. Simply put – you can buy 2-3x the inventory by going this route. There are too many adnetworks to list here but luckily for us John Chow has done a good job of rounding them up.

Be Smarter, test more. Publishers are now much more likely to go softer on minimum buy thresholds. Which means, even with a small budget, you can test more sites than you previously had the ability to. When you pitch your next media plan, pitch 20 sites for $50k each instead of 10 for $100k. Make sure to include an aggressive optimization schedule to weed out the non-performers and you will have a highly tuned and cost effective campaign in no time. Don’t forget to negotiate in stringent frequency caps (especially important with direct response advertisers). With a rotation of decent creative and you will see significant performance gains.

Tools, Technology, Team Work. Although I’m sure your weekly team status is important, what I really want to talk about is using the right tools. Outside of the standard media planner toolkit there are many valuable resources that will elevate any campaign and solidify your value to your client’s marketing conversation. Once again there are too many to list in blog format but we, at usableclicks.com, have compiled a handy list of media tools, buzz tracking services and research sources just for you. Check them out and let us know what tools you think we should add.

In short, push harder and be open to other audience exposure opportunities whether its for a brilliant OUTSIDE THE BOX idea or just a run-of-the-mill media buy.

Read Mike’s previous entry, Product Strategies to Stem the Erosion of Ad Rates on how publishers can start to reverse the downward pressure on rates.