Strategic Leverage
Media buying is set up to favor the sellers in every way these days. What large media agencies claim as “leverage” is actually the exact opposite. It is a hindrance to extracting real value for their clients. How else can you explain audience CPM’s increasing while individual media property audiences are shrinking? Typical media agencies are ill suited for getting client’s real value from media buys. Buyers at large agencies are siloed into “centers of excellence”, meaning some buyers only buy Cable, some only buy Prime, some only buy Syndication, etc. While this might give them some knowledge of a media market there’s an entire ecosystem occurring over their heads and they know nothing of it. It comes from media company consolidation. And only savvy, de-siloed media agencies can capitalize on it.
Take a look at any large media company, like Disney shown below. They operate in Network, cable and local TV, radio, online, print and on-site. They also have partial ownership in Hulu and other properties.
Now think about how companies like CBS own national and local TV, online properties, radio stations, outdoor properties. Every major media company owns multiple properties, and we’re not just talking about online extensions. They own different brands in different media. The sellers control the process and the outcome. Agencies claim to have leverage but the volume of inventory they need to clear forces them to buy every vendor. That’s not clout. That is captivity. And to make it worse, buyers are never held to a standard of sales results and the process is labor intensive.
Strategic Advantage
There’s a better way. OCD Media is better suited to deal with today’s complex media market.
Why? We have Strategic Leverage. Senior people who establish the strategies stay close to the end product. We identify media companies and deploy programs because we don’t have siloed buying departments arguing budget allocations. There are no fiefdoms to feed and no “centers of power” fighting for survival internally. We operate fully as a team who collaborate and enjoy seeing how all the pieces work together.
This strategy of creating media schedules focused on the consumer, selecting vehicles regardless of the media form that deliver these individuals cannot be accomplished at an agency where the buyers are siloed. Individual strategists and buyers need to work together across all media focused on the clients’ customer profiles. Therefore all elements of the buy are complementary, working together to achieve your ultimate goal, selling your product to these consumers.