Media Buying - 2006/02/16 22:43How do you know you are getting a good deal when buying radio, TV, outdoor, or print advertising?
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Support
Visitor
Re:Media Buying - 2006/02/16 22:54Media Planning is not only necessary but very helpful to make sure you are not leaving any gaps or being overcharged. Just buying something because there is a sale or a rep tells you to will probably not get a huge return on your investment.
Here's the inside scoop regarding agencies and media buyers:
Ad agencies typically get a 15% discount off from the advertising from the media vendors for the cost of placement. If you went direct to the media vendors you would pay a "direct" rate that is typically 15% above what they charge agencies. If your media buying agency is only charging you the cost of the media (again, they get the 15% from the vendors) then you are getting a great deal.
For professional, strategic media buying from an agency you would typically pay the cost of the media (that rate includes the 15% paid by the vendors to the agency) and an hourly media buyer rate. In our market that rate depends on the experience of the buyer but ranges from 65.00-125.00 per hour to build and buy a media schedule.
Usually the time put into a buy is tracked by the quarter hour. So, in short it is customary to expect to pay an hourly rate for media planning and placement and the agency will get their 15% on top of that from the vendors.
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Lost in Florida
Visitor
Re:Media Buying - 2006/03/23 15:54Can anyone suggest the best way to buy radio (i.e. using a broker or ad agency) for a small retail seafood business? I'm assisting a friend on this one and have no experience with radio whatsoever. We are wondering...
--can you go direct to the station to buy time (to save money)? --do small firms get some sort of price break even if their "buy" is only a handful of spots? --would working with a large ad agency provide more clout in terms of getting the time of day desired? --is there anyone you have worked with on radio buys?
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T.R.
Visitor
Re:Media Buying - 2006/03/23 15:56You can work directly with radio stations. Small advertisers will generally pay "rate card" rates, but you may be able to negotiate if you have the budget to be a semi-regular advertiser and the station thinks they can get more business from you. Or if you are in a competitive market.
It also depends on the size of market, to an extent -- if you're buying on the number 1 station in Chicago, you'll be a very small fish (pun intended); if you're buying time for Paducah, Kentucky, you may be able to negotiate more because the station wants to hook you, so to speak..
With radio, you buy the "daypart." So a 3-7pm slot costs more than a 7-12pm slot. And you can buy multiple dayparts, i.e., 10 spots during morning time, 10 during middle of day, and 5 during evening drive time.
But the spots can run anytime in that window; most stations try to rotate them so one client doesn't get all the best runs. Agencies don't have much, if any, influence on that. You can also buy exclusive sponsorships, such as a spot around the 5:30pm traffic report, but you pay a premium for these sponsorships.
Off-hand, you may do just as well on your own then with a broker or agency. I did media buying for a small-town agency years ago; we sometimes got cheaper rates because we worked with the sales reps regularly, but mostly it was a per-client deal. The more the client was going to be spending on the station, the bigger the per spot discount.
In fact, standard rate cards usually include different rates based on the number of spots you're going to buy.
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George, NY
Visitor
Re:Media Buying - 2006/03/23 15:58Here are some thoughts (from a former radio salesperson).
1. Go directly to the radio station. Ad agencies, although they are wonderful, typically get a "commission" from the radio station in the form of a wholesale cost to them. The agency makes their money on the time-buy commission and the creative. You'll get nearly the same price for the air time, but you'll also pay for the creative, and it doesn't sound like you can afford that right now.
2. Have the radio station do the creative. One of their personalities can "cut" the commercial.
3. See if they have group-merchant blocks, for example, the State Street merchants, or the South Bay merchants. They might sell a block of time to the merchants, build one commercial for each merchant, and then rotate those commercials during the air-time block.
4. If they do not, have your friend talk with four or nine other merchants in the area and then approach the radio stations as a group. Have the group buy the block of time (say 3 thirty-second commercials each day) and rotate the merchant commercials within the block. If you had five merchants, at the end of a week the group would have purchased 21 thirty-second slots, but each merchant would only pay for about four.
5. Obviously the better times (morning and afternoon drive) cost more than midday and certainly grave-yard. Work a deal with the radio station to scatter the times through early morning through late night at a flat rate.
Most radio stations in the larger and small markets we work with have commissionable rates, so there is no difference in cost if we bought ourselves (and our individual locations used to do this). We use an ad agency as they also can evaluate the various options, have the ratings information and since they work with other clients, actually have more clout than we do because they are placing buys for more than one company.
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Scott Woodward
Visitor
Re:Media Buying - 2006/03/23 15:59Price breaks tend to come on quantity buys or "remnant" time, that is, times that are hard to sell anyway and unless it's ideal time for your business, likely a waste of your media dollars. Getting your desired day part is mostly a matter of are you willing to pay the higher spot price and whether there is availability. We put orders in generally 30 days ahead of when we want the schedule running. And last year with the election, did so in August to be sure we got the air time we wanted.
What is likely to be more helpful for you will be to plan out your expense across the year so you may possibly be able to benefit from a quantity price (I would favor a broker or other person knowledgeable about the radio in your market to help). You need to be able to achieve a level of reach and frequency that will result in your message getting through (these days at least 7-9 times before your message is heard). If you're just planning to run a "handful" of spots, unless they are highly targeted to your market, you may be better off using direct mail to get directly into the hands of your target than chancing whether they'll be in the mood for seafood when your spot runs.
Another thing to consider is what could you sponsor for your budget that directly reaches your target audience? We have a couple of locations in small markets with tiny media budgets so we sponsor the Senior Birthdays each week which allows us a :30 commercial and the promos in a placement where we know we have the ear of area residents 70+. I'm also thinking of the organization for which I wanted to generate promotion of our pancake feed, at 34th anniversary, had to come up with something original so we invited the media for a pancake eating contest. What about delivering lunch to them and then seeing about working out a trade--the restaurant provides gift certificates they can give away to listeners on-air in exchange for spots and the promotion that goes along with these types of things? Sometimes they want a purchase of some sort of schedule to go with it, but it could be a good added value for you to get the additional frequency your direct media budget can't buy.
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