Why Buy A Dog But Do The Barking Yourself?

Latin America Media Strategy and Planning, a session held Wed. afternoon at miami ad:tech, moderated by Bruno Almeida (Managing Director for US Media Consulting), kickstarted a barrage of great comments regarding the current state of online media buying/selling.

Panelists included Guilderme Gomide (CEO and Founder of Midia Digital), Juan David Pinzon (Founder and CEO of Ariadna), Denise Colella (VP International of Rich Media) and Ignacio Roizman (Managing Partner of Jumbo Exchange). They represented both the agency side as well as the publisher side, giving us an insight into the different perspectives each brings to the table when discussing current strategies/trends in online media.

As the technology expands, there is an ever-closing gap between what was traditionally seen as advertising networks and advertising exchanges. With advertising exchanges, it provides the agency with a way to more directly target their demographic rather than the typical advertising network approach of “blanketing” your brand messaging across large platforms. With companies like Google expanding the capabilities they offer with their content network systems, advertisers are increasingly moving towards targeting their select consumer groups rather than opting for larger, portal sites which, although give a larger reach, result in lower click-through-rates.

A question that was raised was what type of strategies are used when conceptualizing new media campaigns with the over-all consensus being the usage of not only historical data (previous analytics/campaign metrics), but also new user research data (typically from 3rd party research companies). Guilherme stated that a big goal of his is to have his agency better educate their clients to stay away from generic portals and aim for more specific advertising networks/segments.

An interesting thing that was brought up was that most “large-sized-agencies” sometimes tend to be lazy when it comes to online media buying. Sometimes it seems, to him, that the would rather spend all their budget on 3 large portal sites than 40 smaller marketing channels that were focused on the desired consumer. This type of attitude is why a lot of smaller brands, who don’t have the multi-million dollar budgets that many corporations can afford, tend to fair better in using online media to boost sales/conversions.

Juan David Pinzon agreed that it is up to the agency to educate the clients on what their various options are, as well as the benefit from specifically targeting their desired market rather than blanketing popular sites with their brand messaging. They need to understand that it is not just about traffic and click-throughs, but rather conversions/sales.

Denise then pointed out that clients who ask for CPM type media strategies need to understand that there are now better ways of reaching your target audience. Rather than looking for a needle in a haystack (thousands and thousands of impressions for only a few conversions), they should focus on finding marketing channels that, although might not bring in the same large number of traffic, would be a better match for the client’s goals. Ultimately this would bring in an increase in the conversion rate, making the ROI well worth it.

Ignacio then brought up a very interesting trend that I’ve seen before at agencies that I’ve worked at myself - Clients should trust their agency. By telling their agency what media outlets/sources that they would like to see in their media plan, they are taking away the creativity, research, and planning that the agency was hired for in the first place. “Why buy a dog but do the barking yourself?”

Following that clutch observation, Juan David added that today there is a very fine line between where media ends and creativity begins. The media planners need to understand their clients goals as well as continually research new methods of advertising so that they can present their client the best possible channels for them to market in. It is only then that the client will see the benefit in hiring an agency rather than doing it all in-house.