What Is Media Buying?
Media buying involves much more than selecting a media placement and paying for the space for a defined period. Instead, this professional service ensures brands make informed decisions about where and how to feature their promotions and generate the best possible exposure at the lowest cost per interaction.
Great marketing campaigns positioned on the wrong platforms or publications inevitably have limited success because they aren't displayed to the right target audience. They might also be shown sporadically without generating sustained brand awareness and recognition.
Skilled media buying can augment the outcomes of a marketing campaign by ensuring your messaging is clear, distributed to strategically selected platforms or outlets, and produces the results you expect while minimising your cost per impression or engagement.
Media Buying and Planning Strategy Meeting.
Professional Media Buying Explained
Media buying relates specifically to paid marketing, regardless of whether you need digital or physical advertising space or a blend of varied formats, positions and locations. Our media planning team has several key targets:
Securing premium ad space relevant to your brand
Circulating promotions for the optimal amount of time
Reducing ad spend to maximise the returns achieved
We provide media buying services across all platforms, including print, radio, TV, and digital channels, website placements, social media paid ads, and streaming services. One Day works closely with brands to identify their core customer and which outlets that audience will use most often.
An experienced media buyer starts by identifying the client or brand's marketing goals and aspirations. Then, the buyer compares potential advertising solutions and negotiates to ensure our clients achieve the lowest possible pricing for the placements that make the most sense.
However, the trick is to ensure you select an online or in-person media placement that appears for the right time period and for the correct duration per exposure to foster a sense of brand familiarity and extract as many engagements or impressions as possible.
Media buyers also monitor and track performance to verify that each ad meets those campaign goals and delivers the expected returns.
How Are Media Buying and Planning Different?
Although media buying and planning work hand in hand, they are two slightly different parts of one comprehensive campaign strategy:
Media planning involves initial planning and research, evaluating the target audience, market conditions, budgetary constraints, and overarching goals. This task looks at varied channels, platforms, and placements to identify those that viewers are most likely to engage with and, therefore, the ideal combination of ad space, duration, and cost.
Media buyers then step in to move the plan forward, connecting with media sites, public transport networks, billboard advertising partners, retail centres, and any other digital, broadcast, print, or out-of-home promotional venue that matches the parameters in place.
Experienced media buyers can also provide alternative or customised services, such as programmed media buying, which uses algorithmic and digital bidding to secure high-demand advertising space.
Direct media buying involves rate negotiation with specifically selected advertisers or locations, and manual media buying is where the buyer bids or negotiates with the preferred channel.
What Is Media Buying Essential to a Successful Marketing Campaign?
Every marketing campaign, project, or advert is unique. As we've explained, media buying is more complex and nuanced than purchasing a digital ad space or billboard at a pre-set price.
Capable media buyers can make a quantifiable impact on a campaign's outcomes and the brand's return on investment.
Reducing the Upfront Cost of Advertising Allocations
Media buyers work within expansive networks and can use their knowledge and contacts to improve the value of a high-profile advertising location. They use in-depth insights into factors such as industry standards, the cost per lead, or the types of brand exposure on offer.
Bands working with talented media buyers often pay a fraction of the cost of those purchasing advertising real estate upfront and have the added benefit of knowing that the placements recommended are those most relevant to their campaign targets.
Expert Recommendations on Media Placements
No two promotional displays, panels or digital features are identical, and a media buying team provides tailored guidance to ensure you know what each placement will cost and whether it is objectively worth it from the brand’s perspective.
For example, a high-cost placement may be less suitable if the proximity of other campaigns will dampen the impact, and an affordable OOH display might be more valuable than it appears if the campaign coincides with an event or occasion that will contribute to a dramatic uplift in viewer footfall.
Can Brands Manage Their Own Media Buying?
It’s rarely advisable for a company to take media buying in-house, primarily because the capacity, expertise, and negotiating power an agency brings to the table directly reduces advertising costs or gives brand clients first access to premium placements that are rarely available to individual buyers.
For example, a media buying strategy that requires several optimal displays in central London, around the tube, next to iconic landmarks, along visitor attractions, and in areas like Oxford Street is incredibly expensive to buy as a standalone service and often has long waiting lists.
In contrast, a reputable media buying team may have preferential access, reserved slots, or first choice of advertising placements and economies of scale that contribute to lower advertising costs and higher returns for the business.
Another factor to consider is that investing in a promotional display or placement without the underlying market research or ability to track responses may mean you have limited oversight of the results you achieve or pick a less visible location for your target audience.
Media buyers and planners conduct deep-dive research on your behalf and use advanced media management platforms to monitor outcomes, trace visitor numbers and conversions, and provide advice as your campaign matures to ensure you take advantage of tracked data to make tweaks along the way.
Learn More About Professional Media Buying Services From One Day
Please contact the One Day media agency team at your convenience if you’d like to discuss your media buying requirements, need tips on how to maximise the returns you achieve with your next campaign, or want to evaluate the comparable costs of your ideal promotional format and location.
Our expert media buyers have years of experience and create bespoke campaign plans to ensure you have defined targets, pricing and expectations and maximise exposure to your ideal customer demographics.
