Media Buyer
By David Fishman

Media buying is an art form. Truly I believe this. The best media buyers I know are those individuals who not only completely understand ALL the economics of a deal but also understand people and how to maintain relationships. These people are not only aggressive, but also embody a sense of trust, humility, and perhaps most important an arsenal of knowledge about how other people work. They understand the economics behind the product they are buying for, the media they are buying on, the affect it has on the global Internet economy and can discuss the same deal in multiple ways in order to “connect” with the person they are talking with in a way that completes the deal.

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A few weeks ago we discussed how the Internet advertising space has become an open book to any person who wants to read. This has in some ways helped our general media buyers and in other ways will hinder their ability to out-perform their competition because the market will lack almost any barrier to entry.

Today a media buyer can flip flop from organization to organization without a great deal of loss to either company or to media buyer. The media buying skill in our industry is transferable to other advertisers and to other publishers. This is a result of advertisers, networks, and media placement becoming more and more transparent. There is only one barrier to entry that can never be over-come, and that is the relationships formed and forged not only over time but also through performance.

The transparent business models, offer placement, design changes, consumer experience updates etc… mean that anyone who is willing to spend some late night time reviewing their competition will have the same information basis by which to woo a potential client or take a client from a different media buyer.

The way one separates from the pack is through trust and relationship management. The hardest and most difficult problem a media buyer faces is making promises they cannot keep. For example when planning an email drop for a publisher that does not happen when expected. We have all experienced this, and have all had to go back to our advertiser with our tail between our legs praying they have the patience for the very fickle difficult media partners we all work with. However, it is not enough to manage the relationship with the advertiser, often, one must spend equal if not often more time working on relationships with publishers.

The individual that understands people, and does their homework will be head and shoulders above the media-buying group and will ultimately find there way to having more clients and more publishers than they alone can manage. Which is not a bad problem. When this occurs the media buyer becomes the agency, the agency becomes the network, the network becomes the advertiser, and the advertiser becomes a publisher. While once again a new media buyer for within this “start-up” starts the cycle over again.

David Fishman
dfishman@ileadmedia.com