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ONLINE MEDIA BUYING:

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EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW TO SUCCESSFULLYBUY ONLINE MEDIA

You witness the results of online media buying every day, no matter where you are on the web. Every digital ad or video ad that you see has been negotiated by at least one media buyer, if not more. But what is media buying exactly and what does an online media buyer actually do?

We’ve created this brief guide just to answer those irksome questions that have been bugging you and we hope you’ll discover everything you’ve ever wanted to know about media buying

There are hundreds of websites such as Alexa.com, Compete.com, and Google Ad Planner, which allow you to do demographic research, enabling you to find out what’s being seen on the web by real people and what the web demographics are. Now, that you have the demographics of what may seem like the entire universe, your first step is to narrow it down and figure out who it is that you should be targeting.

Before you begin the process of online media buying you must first identify who your target audience is.

ONLINE MEDIA BUYING:

Identify your ideal buyer persona

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Online Media Buying: Everything you need to know to successfully buy online media

WHAT IS IT EXACTLY AND HOW DO YOU DO IT?

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You can do this through using a software such as AdClarity which enables you to not only discover your competitor’s website demographics, but also lets you see who your competitors are targeting; specifically, what publishers they are using, what their final creatives looks like, who your complimentary companies are (companies that are not direct competitors but share the same target audience), and through all this, define your target audience and maybe even discover a new target audience that you may not have known previously existed.

So what do you need to know about your ideal customer? Well, first, we would recommend creating an overall profile and persona for them. According to Ramos, “a profile describes the overall characteristics of the target audience while personas are more like illustrations of virtual users; they are created based on data collected from user research on real users. More importantly, however, personas represent behavior patterns and motivations.”

Ramos couldn’t have put that more perfectly; a user profile is a list of characteristics whereas a persona is a fictional character that you create to represent the types of people your ad wants to target.

Age GenderLocationLanguageCulture IncomeComputer skillEducationEthnicityHas children

When looking at creating a user profile, try including the following characteristics:


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When creating a persona, think about the goals, behaviors and desires of your customers. That will help you understand and get a feel for them, making the process that much easier. Adding a human face to your customers gives for a better understanding of who they are. Check out below for an example of a buyer persona:

By researching your potential audience and creating these profiles and personas, you are able to understand the consumer behavior of those that you are targeting.

By looking at your complimentary companies that we mentioned earlier, you can take the next step in online media buying and uncover the publishers these complimentary companies are using, and through that, discover new target audiences that share the same values as your original ones. Bam! Additional audiences makes for further reach and higher impression rate.

Mark is a 31-year-old Marketing Manager at a small Startup company which deals with mobile games. Mark is well educated and got an advertising degree after working for a few years out of college. He is living with his girlfriend of 4 years and loves music. Mark uses his iPhone, tablet, or laptop to access the web and usually takes a few hours to research important purchases, but is known to be an early “adapter” for new digital gadgets.


Mark, 31

MarketingManager

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What are the desired results you are looking for in a specific time frame? An objective is comprised of several goals, so your one objective can be broken down into dozens of narrow goals:

Are you looking to create brand awareness? Is there some kind of strong call-to-action that the ad is running? Are you trying to generate new leads? Are you attempting to establish yourself as a thought-leader?

The objectives are the hardest yet most important thing to measure, so make sure to prioritize your goals and set parameters so you will know if your objective is being reached or not.

Next, let’s set your objectives

Okay, so you know who your target audience is, you’ve identified and created your buyer persona, declared your objectives and done your research. Now you must create your strategy.

According to Lake (2014)1 , your plan should contain the following:

Where will you buy media? Are there specific outlets you are interested in?

What is your budget and where can you allocate that budget, so that you can achieve the objectives you have identified? What components should your media plan contain?

Defining your media buying strategy


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Additionally, Lake believes that the strategy must adhere to the following outline:

Executive Summary (What is the summary of the strategy)Objectives and How Will You Achieve ThemIdentify your Overall objectivesWhat publications or media outlets have you chosen based on the previous steps?What's your budget?How much will you spend with each outlet and why?What objective do you hope to achieve with each outlet?

Now that you have your target audience, objectives, and defined strategy, you’re ready to buy!

There are two ways you can go about purchasing your inventory: directly or through an ad network.

A direct buy occurs when the media buyer directly negotiates and corresponds with the website owner.

An ad network buy requires going through an ad network to make your purchase. An ad network connects media buyers to the websites they wish to host the advertisements on. Ad networks collect tons of ad space from publishers and match it to the advertiser or media buyer’s demand.

So which type of buy should you do? We’re here to help you decide! Take a look at the table below to see the pros and cons of each type of buy.

What type of online media buydo you plan on doing?


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Have complete control over $ to start buying

Time and resources are wasted trying to contact website owner

Set up quickly

Higher risk; less control over your ads

Able to see where your campaigns are and aren’t working and optimize

Need to monitor a lot of websites

Quick website testing

Higher $ minimums to start buying

Can use competitive intelligence to gain insights on the ecosystem

Need to pay for an ad server to deliver ads to site

Change ads and content quickly

Lack of transparency about where your ads are running

Pick and choose your campaigns based on relevant audiences

Scaling is harder and more manual process

Work with a rep to optimize your media buy (paid service)

Reliance on rep to do their job correctly and be available

Build relationships with direct websites for future buys and additional online marketing activities

Time consuming to locate direct buy sources

Large amount of inventory on hand from various publishers

Don’t know if the traffic source they choose for you is targeting your audience

Direct Buy Ad NetworkPros Cons Pros Cons


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Figured out how you’re going to buy your media? Good. Now it’s time to get to work. Your first step is to contact the website owner or the ad network you have chosen to work with. If you have chosen to use an ad network, your work is pretty much put on hold until they do the contacting, negotiating and buying. But if you choose to do the direct media buy its time for you to negotiate. So now you need to understand how much you are going to pay and what you are going to be paying for.

Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM)- A model based on how much you pay per thousand impressions on one webpage. So if you have a $2 CPM, you will pay $2 every time your ad is shown 1,0002 times.

Cost per Click (CPC)- CPC is when you pay every time your ad is clicked, rather than by number of impressions. If you have a CPC of $1, you will pay $1 every time someone clicks your ad.3

Cost per Action (CPA)- CPA is a payment model in which you pay only when a visitor performs a certain action, such as a sale, registration, or filling out a form.

Launch it!

Basic pricing structure

When you decide on which ad you are running and where you’re running it, you will be given an insertion order to fill out- this is the contract you need in order to run your campaign. Don’t ever run or place an ad without this signed insertion order.

Insertion Order


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1 http://marketing.about.com/od/plantutorialsandsamples/a/mediabuying.htm2 CPM is the most common method for pricing web ads. However, an advertisement's success cannot be measured

by Click through rates (CTR) alone, because an ad that is viewed but not clicked on may still have an impact.

(Investopedia, 2014)3 Cost per click is often used when advertisers have a set daily budget. When the advertiser's budget is hit, the ad is

removed from the rotation for the remainder of the period. (Investopedia, 2014)4 http://blog.ubmcanon.com/bid/310696/Digital-Media-Buying-101-What-you-need-to-know

According to UBM5 , an insertion order identifies:

Okay, so now that you’ve read this guide do you feel a little more confident in your media buying skills? It’s okay! We’ve all got to start somewhere. Remember to research, research, research so you can get the best bang for your buck when it comes to online media buying.

Ready? Go buy!

Conclusion


Campaign NameWebsiteBuyerAd to be run or who will provide themAd sizesThe beginning and end datesFee structureEstimated total cost per billing periodAny discountsMeasurement requirements

This business report was produced by AdClarity, the leading digital media buying solution. We invite you to learn more and start your free trial

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