Media buying is a very important element for any business or individual who wants to effectively target consumers. Mastering media buying ensures that your ads reach the largest possible segment of potential customers.
However, media buying, or the process of purchasing advertising space, has many aspects you need to know before embarking on it, such as its nature, importance, and the steps to implement it effectively. We will discuss all of this and more in this article.
What is media buying?
Media buying is simply the process of purchasing various advertising media for the purpose of promoting products, goods, services, or even ideas to the public.
This can be done through any form of media, whether traditional, such as television, magazines, and newspapers, or digital, such as websites, blogs, and all other forms of advertising.
Many brand owners tend to use it because it is largely guaranteed to reach an audience already interested in the field in which they sell, in addition to generally achieving effective and rapid results.
Media buying is divided into two main types:
1. Direct media buying: This method relies on direct communication between you and the party you'll be advertising with, negotiating with them all the details of the ad placement.
This method is used in traditional media such as newspapers, radio, and magazines.
2. Programmatic media buying: This type, as its name suggests, relies on digital means for registration, payment, and other details, similar to the paid ads we see on Google and social media. This type is the focus of this article.
The difference between these two methods can be summarized in the following points:
Control: Direct media gives you greater control over your ads, while programmatic media relies heavily on automation.
Ease: Programmatic media is characterized by its speed and ease of implementation, unlike direct media, which goes through many stages.
Cost: Direct media costs are often fixed, while programmatic media relies on offers and auctions. The price of both varies depending on who you're advertising with.
Reach: Programmatic media enables you to target specific audiences much more effectively than direct media, which is displayed to its audience indiscriminately.
Editing: Direct media ads are significantly more difficult to edit than programmatic media, which can be modified with the click of a button.
Reporting: Programmatic media enables you to obtain detailed reports on your ads, unlike direct media, which does not provide any such information.
The Importance of Media Buying
If you want to become a media buyer or learn about media buying for any reason, you must first understand its importance to businesses:
1. Targeting the Right Audience: Buying ad space digitally enables you to target a specific group of users who are more willing to pay and complete the purchase. Therefore, you should consider this in whatever you sell.
2. Getting the Best Deal: Media buying is primarily based on achieving the equation of increasing profits in the least possible time and at the lowest possible cost.
This is achieved by gathering information, researching, and comparing to reach the best possible deal.
3. Providing diverse advertising options: Regardless of the location or site where you display your ad, you have significant control over every detail, including its format, method, duration, and content.
4. Increasing profits: Like any other marketing method, media buying helps you increase your profits, reach a larger audience, and spread awareness of your brand in general, much more easily than any other marketing method.
5. Traceability: Media buying, whether on websites or other platforms, allows you to collect a wealth of data about the customers who view your ad, enabling you to develop your advertising campaign in the future.
Steps to Benefit from Media Buying
To carry out a media buying process, you will need to go through a few steps to ensure you are fully aware of all the details and achieve the best possible results.
These steps are:
1. Gather Information
The first step in any marketing effort is to gather the necessary information to build your marketing strategy.
Its success depends primarily on the quality and effectiveness of the information you collect.
The most important pieces of information are:
A. Target audience: The segment you're targeting plays a significant role in determining how you conduct your media buying. Once you've identified the characteristics of that segment, whether age, geography, or purchasing, you'll be able to determine exactly what they want.
Based on this data, you'll be able to deduce the interests of that segment, the sites they're most likely to visit, and the types of content and ads that will work best for them.
It's also helpful to use a marketing funnel, which is a set of stages that reflect a customer's awareness of the product, their willingness to purchase, and how to target them at each stage.
B. Competitors: Successful competitors' ads are a goldmine for effective information with largely guaranteed results, as their implementers have largely succeeded because of their approach.
The key elements you can learn from competitors are the types and platforms they use to advertise.
This is in addition to knowing who the primary customer segment is that they are targeting and how they are targeting them in their marketing content.
This is certainly in addition to the costs and advertising intensity they allocate to each platform to generate sufficient profits to sustain them across all platforms.
C. Previous Experiences: In addition to competitors and the target audience, the brand's previous experiences should be taken into account when gathering information.
2. Set Your Goals
Before you begin any step, you'll need to have a specific marketing goal or set of goals to build upon. These goals must certainly have specific specifications to enable them to be achieved.
One of the most important pieces of advice when setting goals in general is to use SMART goals, which are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
Don't set a random goal, such as increasing sales. Instead, make it a 25% increase in sales within three months so you can accurately measure your success.
3. Launch Your Advertising Campaign
We've now reached the most important step in media buying: completing the campaign, defining its details, and then launching it. This step is the most complex of all the above.
You'll need to do the following:
a) Set a budget: Media buying is primarily a matter of spending. The higher your budget, the more people your ad will reach.
However, even if your budget isn't high, you can still achieve good results by doing some research, negotiating, and allocating your budget across different platforms based on their importance.
b) Create content: Content is paramount in determining your success in media buying.
Content is what makes users click on your ad or ignore it entirely.
You should also consider the quality of your ad and its suitability for your target audience, whether age, culture, or even their level of product awareness.
c) Choose a platform: To reach ad space owners, there are several methods and platforms that enable you to find and communicate with them.
These platforms differ in their operating methods, including those where you communicate directly with advertisers, those where the process is programmatic, those where bidding is similar, and others.
The most prominent media buying platforms currently available are:
Google Display & Video 360: This is an integrated advertising system that enables media buying specialists to manage all aspects of advertising campaigns and buy media across multiple channels.
Amazon DSP: This platform allows advertising to be bought both on and off Amazon, leveraging Amazon's vast data on its users to determine truly effective ad placements.
Adobe Advertising Cloud: This is one of the most prominent advertising tools that enables you to plan campaigns effectively, buy ads, and provide a superior advertising experience.
Facebook Ads Manager: This tool enables advertisers to reach a broad Facebook audience, offers powerful targeting options, and gives you the ability to optimize your ads.
Google Ad Exchange: This is a marketplace that connects advertisers with publishers through automated bidding.
Through it, you can access a very large advertising inventory and audience base, but you won't be able to start without taking a few steps first.
d) Evaluating the Options: There's not much to say about this step. Depending on the offers you find, your budget, and the reach you want to achieve, you'll need to evaluate the options available to you and choose the most suitable one.
e) Launching the Campaign: If you've already reached this step, all you have to do is launch the campaign, wait for the results and profits, and see the effectiveness of everything you've done before. Then, evaluate those results and develop your campaign later, as we'll explain in the next point.
4. Tracking Results
The final step in media buying is measuring and tracking the results, and learning the details of the advertising space you've purchased so you can make positive adjustments in future campaigns.
While tracking these results, there are some key points to consider, such as key performance indicators (KPIs). The most important and important metrics are the number of potential customers attracted and introduced to your brand.
In addition to the sales made and the positive financial returns your campaign generated, and finally, the impressions and views those ads generated overall, and the percentage of purchases they resulted in.
Of course, if you're not satisfied with the results, you'll need to see what you can improve, whether it's the ad content, the display location, a low budget, poor planning, or any other reason.
Tips for Getting Started in Media Buying
To become a professional media buyer, in addition to all the information we've mentioned, you'll need to learn some additional information to get started in media buying in the best possible way.
The most important of these are:
1. Have a Marketing Background
Advertising spaces and everything related to them are at the heart of the marketing process. Therefore, to undertake this process, you'll need to learn about marketing in general and understand what's on the minds of different types of consumers at each stage of the buying process to target them effectively through media buying.
2. Learn about the different advertising platforms
Whichever platform you decide to display your ad on, you'll certainly need to thoroughly study it and understand all its aspects, including traffic, age group, typical fees charged for the service, and other details that influence the process.
3. Negotiate Effectively
If you're communicating with a website owner or any other marketing channel specializing in media buying in any way that doesn't automatically determine the price, it doesn't hurt to negotiate a little to get the best possible deal.
4. Avoid Fraud
Following on from the previous point, it's possible that even after you've perfected all the details of your campaign, it could still fail due to fraud, manipulation of the details, or failure to implement them at all.
Therefore, work with trusted people and pay attention to the details, especially if you're not doing this process digitally.
Conclusion
Media Buying is an indispensable field for any business owner, as it's an excellent gateway for displaying ads, targeting customers, and being present on various platforms in general.
Whether you want to become a professional media buyer or simply want to learn more about media buying to apply to your business, this article will be a starting point for you.