Silo-Busting Media Strategy & Allocation in Three Key Steps

Broken media buying models can sink a brand’s advertising performance. Still, they can run rampant today, even among top brands. Serious problems arise when brands employ separate buyers for traditional media and digital media, who then battle for budget dollars. Failing to track and analyze performance consistently also causes media buying problems for brands, because this cripples an organization’s ability to pinpoint effectiveness from one channel to the next, make effective investment decisions and optimize ad buys.

Overcoming these challenges can help brands avoid wasting ad dollars and opportunities, but busting through the media buying silos rarely comes easy. It requires debunking old assumptions and viewing important aspects of advertising in new light. Still, the industry has progressed by leaps and bounds from a consolidated viewpoint. On the sell side, the industry has seen a wave of consolidation among top search engines, content networks and other media properties. The same is true on the buy side, where top advertising and media holding companies have acquired and linked specialty agencies to address a more singular viewpoint, break down silos and better integrate all media channels.

Just last week, for example, Dentsu acquired Innovation Interactive, the parent company of 360i, Search Ignite and Netmining. Last year, Publicis Groupe had acquired Razorfish and linked it with Digitas while in January it announced it would link agencies Zenith Optimedia, Moxie Interactive and Performics. In October, Interpublic announced plans to align Deutsch Inc. and Lowe Worldwide in a similar move. Many of the industry’s biggest advertising and media holding companies are removing silos to better integrate across channels.

Whether marketers choose an aligned agency media partner to bust down these silos and get smarter about media buys or attempt to make the transition themselves, three basic steps should define the path to more effective, better integrated media buying.

Step One: Let audience insights drive the media strategy

It sounds incredibly simple, but many marketers still struggle with this challenge. The preferences of the audience you seek should dictate the media buy. Television, radio, display and any other buys must be aimed through media the audience actually consumes. Advertisers must also ensure they have the right feedback loops in place; since many advertising channels merely spur interest. Today’s customers typically turn to search engines or branded Web sites to learn more, and marketers should be sure to use these channels to capture interest and demand generated through complementary channels; thus extending a consistent experience.

Step Two: Centralize media buying and level the playing field

Putting responsibility and decision making for all media channels in the same hands goes a long way toward ensuring balance and objectivity. The right approach can ensure that performance data from multiple channels gets integrated and results in apples to apples comparisons across channels. Pricing and compensation models should also reflect a consistent approach. Many marketers, for example, have largely done away with percent of media spend compensation models. These outdated models fail to align a media buyer’s compensation with their actual performance on behalf of the brand and tend to encourage less accountable offline buys.

Step Three: Harness technology to make it happen

The right attitude and approach alone won’t get the job done. Media buyers need to take a good look at their media buying and results tracking technology. Just like many broken models still exist, so too do many inferior media buying and tracking applications.

Marketers should invest in an effective application that provides all the functionality needed to compare ad buys across channels and even across and within product lines. Saving a few bucks by transitioning to or sticking with inferior tools that provide inadequate functionality may be tempting, but it won’t take long for the efficiency of an integrated media buying program to more than cover the costs of infrastructure changes including staff and technology. Plus, the new found efficiencies will most likely pay off with a snowball effect with ad buys getting increasingly effective as time goes by.

Michael Kahn ([email protected] is senior vice president of marketing at Performics and a monthly contributor to Chief Marketer.