I don’t know how many of you have ever worked as a media buyer out there, but I have. I bought quite a few dollars of advertising, mostly print - some nontraditional, over a few years for a major international company in New York City. One major rule about buying advertising was placement. (Well, outside of cost, of course)
In fact, the fax order sheet that I used even had specific placement requests (read: rules) on our advertising. Right side only, first 1/4 of the publication, not in the middle of a “well” of ads, and no opposite pages to competitors. I don’t know how many times I rattled that off to people. They all knew it was coming, and generally it worked out.
One thing I was continually getting calls about was so-called “discounted” advertising. Now let’s be realistic. If you’re buying $50,000 full page ads in the New York Times, and someone comes up to you and offers you “bulk” space in the same publication at a lesser price, there has got to be something with it, right? [ed: note, all prices hypothetical]
Some agree, some don’t. I don’t necessarily think that advertising follows the same rules that public relations does - “any news is good news”, so to say. Just because I’m at the back of your book with the left hand page next to the classified-type stuff doesn’t mean I’m getting anywhere. Put it next to the crossword puzzle and then maybe we’ll talk - you catch my drift. If you goal is just to make big buys and get your name out there, then discounted advertising works. Absolutely - advertising is advertising. But, at least IMHO, prominence is worth the money you pay for it.
You’re probably asking why I’m all over this topic - well, after reading this post by Steve Hall over at Adrants, I figured I’d comment. The post centers around MediaBuys, which is an online “discount club” for advertisers. It doesn’t have the same look and feel of traditional “well” buying ad companies. Not for nothing, but bulk buyers make money - they’re in business to do so and if someone offers you the Daily News at rate “x”, when rate “x” is 2/3 the open rate, you’re probably going to do it most of the time. What’s interesting is that MediaBuys seems to be not quite an auction site for ad space, but more of a trading space, where Media can be somewhat commoditized based on the purchasing power of multiple buyers for a given publication or publication company.
This could be a really big deal, especially if it shrugs off the hesitancy some media buyers might have about the opportunity.
1 response so far ↓
1 Chick Ciccarelli // Apr 10, 2004 at 10:00 am
Hi,
I just came across your blog regarding MediaBuys, so forgive me for the late post to your comments.
Just so you know, MediaBuys is indeed a membership based media buying club. For what we term “Campaign Buys” (consumer), our company contracts with media outlets representing multiple, cross medium inventory and uses our membership base to gain better deals.
Example: If you are one agency, with one client representing one target audience, and a small market coverage within a tight budget, your negotiating ability is certainly not as great as it is when you are 200 members representing 1200 corporations with multiple targets, national markets and a collective, larger budget. Strength in numbers–plain and simple.
Much of our media is already pre-purchased in bulk on behalf of the membership. The discounts a member receives on a campaign varies depending on what we have in inventory or what we can negotiate at the time a Estimate Request comes in from a member.
With our “Single Buys” (B2B outlets), media sources place their SRDS rate cards into our database and then offer discounts based on the number of members buying at the same time during a “buying session”. This program is very simple as well–the more members buying at the same time for one media source, the better the deal. However, is absolutely not an auction. Not a media planning tool. Not a desktop application. Just a discount buying club that opertaes in an online capacity. We are all about saving money when purchasing media.
We do not offer remnant space, and often cannot help buyers with direct response, because these areas are typically about as discounted as the are going to get already.
Mwembership does not cost a dime. The only thing we require is that our members are qualified media buyers with real clients and real budgets. We have live media reps and technical support, experienced senior level media buyers negotiating the deals and a terrific Rewards Program not found anywhere else within our industry.
MediaBuys was originally created to help our B2B ad agency client base in making selections quickly from our online media sources posted, to save time and money. It has grown into what it is now because the membership has grown over the past couple of years and we have been striving to meet the demands of our members.
We’re glad its been catching on. We invite all media buyers to visit mediabuys.com to sign up for a free membership.
Sincerely,
Chick Ciccarelli, MediaBuys Founder