You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. Conversations on how nonprofit attractions
are increasing attendance and sharing their missions through marketing. Your hosts are
Ryan Dick and Jenny Williams of Attend Media.
Jenny, today’s topic is establishing buying guidelines for your media plan. I know what
a media plan is, but what are buying guidelines?
Yeah, so buying guidelines are more known in the traditional buying space, a TV and
radio, but essentially it’s a checklist or some direction that you would provide to
the TV or radio buyer for what they’re going to negotiate. If you’ve got specific
serenostation mix or a day part mix, those are the types of things that they need to know
to negotiate the best buyer for you.
So the media planner is putting together the master’s strategy of how the dollars will
be spent and then they hand that plan over to the buyer and it’s the buyer’s job to execute
the buy.
Right. And they need a little bit more detail than TV these weeks, 25/24.
Got it. I will get into all that, but I think where this is coming from, like this topic
is five, ten years ago, this idea of, oh, it doesn’t matter where your ads run because
we can layer on targeting this third party data targeting that can follow and reach your
audience wherever they are. So, you know, oh, you want to reach sports fans. The old way is
well, we have to buy sports content, ESPN.com, for example. And then the new way is, well,
it doesn’t matter where they are on the internet. We can find them because we know they’re sports
fans because of this third party data. So once again, it doesn’t matter where your ads
run, your ads will run where your audience is. And I think another thing we’ve been talking
about is kind of what’s old is new and we may be seeing a pendulum shift back to more
contextual plays. There’s been a lot of change in the space, especially in the digital targeting
space on, you know, evolving around privacy and cookie deprecation. So this is more about
knowing exactly what you’re buying and how important that is, especially because more of these
traditional mediums are becoming available to be bought programmatically.
Right. Yes. It’s moving into our channels like TV, radio, out of home, even if it’s streaming
TV, streaming radio, like to the, to the listener, to the viewer, right? It’s on their TV set.
It’s through there, you know, they might be using a different kind of way of getting it,
but there’s still TV and radio, right? So. And this sounds like super obvious, you know, but
you can’t buy TV programmatically, like you were buying display ads programmatically 5, 10 years ago.
We got to start really paying attention to where these, these ads are going. Yeah. I think the,
this idea of knowing what you’re buying as we get into some of these more,
maybe premium higher cost channels or what we kind of refer to as our empat,
fill channels, right? Channels where we really kind of know where the, it’s placement first, right? We
want to know, we know that ads running where we bought it. And it tends to be, it’s something that
can help elevate our brand as well too. I can’t elevate my brand in, you know, sites unheard of, right?
Like, that’s just really hard to do. I might be able to get a conversion on sites unheard of,
but I can’t really elevate my brand that way. So this idea of, don’t worry about where you run,
as we start getting into some of these more premium channels, I think is just, it’s a mistake.
I think that advertisers can make, but it also sounds great and seems so easy of like,
just worry about the audience. And there’s a blend, right? Yes. Definitely. There is still some good
targeting available that we can utilize to reach our audience, but we need to be picky about where
it runs as well too. Yeah, especially with these impactful efforts, right? Yeah.
Okay, so let’s walk through like an example. Maybe where some of the planners are leaving in some
hole, some guesswork for the buyers to go figure out. And I think what we’re going to say is,
traditional TV, if we’re working with a traditional, or, you know, a planner that’s very experienced
in traditional TV, they’re going to provide all the buying guidelines. It’s going to be perfect,
but maybe this planner isn’t so versed in like connected TV. And the line item or the
the guy on the plan is adults 25 54. Good luck. So Mimi can kind of unpack that a little bit.
What would you see as good buying guidelines for like a traditional TV and then a connected TV plan?
Yeah. So for traditional, you know, all of your planning search with research, right? So
where’s your audience spending their time? And that’s going to include everything from what that
station mix looks like. And I, you know, should we be looking at ABC, NBC, CBS to a day part mix?
Are they, is my audience more likely to watch prime or more likely to watch morning news? And so
you’re going to do research to get that ideal day part mix to get, you know, how many stations
you’re going to work with and you’re going to work with your buyer on a lot of this, right? You’re
not, it’s usually not a planer is out there doing it all in the round and then the buyer comes in.
I mean, maybe in some, some cases that could happen, but in this space in this industry, there’s,
you’re kind of working together with your buyer. So, so those directions get handed over to that
buyer and then what the buyer is going to do is say, okay, these become a little bit more of like
guardrails or if there’s specifics of what you can’t buy, right? That’s also included in a buy
guideline. And that’s important because now that buyer can go in with some flexibility to say,
hey, based off of the research, yes, you wanted 80% prime and 20% more than news,
but based off the cost for these day parts and the target audience, we can actually get a more
efficient buy if we rotate in a few of these other day parts too, right? So, there’s still going to be
some flexibility in what’s bought. It’s, it’s usually not, you know, the buy kind of list is, I mean,
you can only buy this exactly what I said. But it helps provide them some, some information so that
they can come back to you with a recommendation for the best, you know, best station mix, best day part
mix, best way to execute that by to reach your audience. Okay. And then in connected TV, maybe
what are some of the holes that you see? So day part mix is not a thing, right? That’s not going to
come into play here. But they’re the quality of the inventory is, right? So there’s a few things that
we like to look at in terms of defining that quality and a lot of that’s going to come with the,
the publishers. So it’s not always necessarily a, I need to run 20% on Hulu, right? But I’m going to say
I want to run on publishers like Hulu, like Paramount, like, you know, whatever. And a lot of this will
come from your research of where they’re spending their time, which, you know, how many, you know,
these publishers are actually subscribing to streaming publishers, they’re subscribing to.
But you need to indicate what it is you want to buy here, not just the target audience,
because a lot of inventory and connected TV will end up running in placements and publishers
you’d never heard of. And that’s not always the worst thing. But if I’m considering this an
impactful channel, if I’m considering this a premium channel of I’m, if I’m paying three, four,
or five times the CPM as I am on broadcast, I want to know where it’s running. And there is plenty
of good inventory out there. But I think one of the traps that people will fall into is just saying,
I want to buy premium inventory. Well, what is premium inventory? Like if I’m working with a vendor
and I say I want premium, give me your, the publisher list that you define as premium. And now I might give
gold, I might give guidelines in that by detail of saying only buy these. Like you can’t actually buy
outside of these, right? I’m going to dictate the amount that needs to go on each publisher, but only by
these. I would say, you know, okay, so let me jump in real quick. And obviously there’s some of the
larger attractions out there that are buying connected TV through their own self-serve platforms,
you know, in their in-house marketing team, which is awesome. Like if you go back to one of the first
things, we started this podcast with like for episode number one was the importance of owning your
own platform, whether you have the manpower to to run it hands on keyboard yourself, or you have
an outside agency or freelancer do that for you, but just kind of stating like another reason why
just the look under the hood and find out what’s realistic. I say all that to set up is I think another
trap that some folks get into, especially if they’re working with an outside vendor. Hey, here’s my money,
what do you think we should do with it? These vendors might underestimate the true cost to get into
quote unquote premium publishers. So they might try to sell you on a low CPM. And you’re thinking,
okay, great for my $25 CPM, I can get into Hulu, but when their reality is like no,
wait, you’re not even close, couple that with you got to keep in mind, we’re all local attractions.
We’re running this on a local market. And that limits the amount of inventory that’s available,
which drives up the price. Yeah, well, just a little tip it on Hulu, if you don’t see like a dedicated
line on them on that, you know, I owe if you’re working with another vendor for Hulu, it’s not going
to be on your buy probably. So maybe it may be a little sprinkling of impressions here and there,
but you’re not getting a large amount of that inventory there. And this is what we’re talking about.
Providing those buying guidelines, being realistic with CPMs. Yeah.
I’d say another thing, would you talk about it like once again, working with a connected TV vendor,
you know, no one’s going to that rep is not going to say, “Oh, we can’t take all that money.
They’re going to take your money.” Yeah, this is actually one of the trickiest things about
connected TV is budget allocation. Because there’s not a lot of great planning tools out there
in terms of kind of understanding what the full streaming audience, like unique audiences, right?
So unlike TV where broadcasts, I can go in and say, you know, I want to reach 50% of this target
audience at a three time frequency. And I can say, “Well, I need X budget to do that.” A little bit
harder to do in connected TV just because you can’t buy everything across the board, right? So
and even in some of these self-serve platforms like Hulu, it’s all impression-based. Like, “Oh,
you have enough inventory, or you have enough budget to run plenty of impressions, right?”
But what is not telling me is that like, well, my budget’s also going to get me like a 10X
frequency on this audience. So there are some platforms that do have some better capabilities in terms
of identifying a unique audience, but it’s still not going to be helistically across the board.
So it can be tough to set that budget. And I would always say, you know, take a look at the actual
reports because they will tell you unique reach and frequencies. So if you’ve overestimated a
budget there, you can make make some shifts once the campaign starts running.
You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. Conversations on how non-profit
attractions are increasing attendance and sharing their mission through marketing.
Your hosts are Ryan Dick and Jenny Williams of Attend Media. Attend Media is a media planning
and buying agency, specializing in zoos, aquariums, gardens, and museums. For more information,
please visit attend.media. Now back to Ryan and Jenny.
Okay, so we talked about the importance of providing as much details possible in the
planning stage to the buyer, whether the planner is the buyer or the planner sending a plan for an
outside vendor to go execute. And I kind of like using this like building a house analogy, you know,
you wouldn’t have the architect say, hmm, roof, $50,000. You know, and when it comes time to build the
builder is like, what the heck are you talking about? Yeah, what kind of roof? Right. What is this? All
right? I’ll build you the best roof I can for 50,000. I think that’s a good, you know, analogy to use
what is your situation? Yeah, absolutely. All right, so we touched on connected TV, but let’s move to
audio. What are some, you know, buying guidelines you would want to see in an audio plan?
Very similar to connect to TV really. And it’s that if you want, quote, unquote premium publishers,
and when I think of premium in this space, it’s, you know, Spotify, Pandora, you know, maybe I heart rate.
So if I’m, if I’m expecting my inventory to run there, I need to specify that on my plan, right? I
need to start in my buy guidelines, whether that is a percentage that you want to run across each
or is just saying, hey, you can run anything as long as it runs in these three, you know,
plot streaming audio platforms. So definitely understand that you’re only going to get in those
platforms if you specify to buy them. And whether that is you’re actually going and
and drying it, buying it directly through their self serve platforms or you’re buying it through
what we call kind of a PMP. This is like a, like a, like a deal that is available to run inventory
specifically in publisher inventory programmatically, right? So I can run, but you don’t have to run
a minimum, right? So I can run some inventory with a specific publisher without having to guarantee a
certain amount of inventory going to that publisher. So this is what we do even in the connected
TV space. This would be an example of how you can ensure you have some premium publishers without
having to guarantee a set amount of inventory running against. Yeah. So it, are you saying like a good
plan would say I’m, I’m making up these numbers, but hey, here’s the budget for audio and I want 20%
through a Spotify PMP, 20% through a Pandora PMP or not getting, getting in the weeds a little bit,
but it doesn’t have to be in PPP, they can be bought directly from the platforms. Those two publishers
have their own buying platforms, which is nice. Yeah. And the nice thing about this is when you start
to provide some of this direction, your buyer or campaign manager can come back to you and help set
a more realistic CPM for what you’re going to buy, right? So again, if I’m thinking, oh, streaming
audio, it’s a, you know, $18 CPM, but because you’re running it programmatically and because you’re
laying around a bunch of data, like that $18 CPM is now going to actually restrict you from getting
to run into, you know, Spotify and Pandora because these CPMs can be much higher when you’re running
at a programmatic platform. You know, some of the benefits about doing it that way are the fact that
you can kind of dedupe that audience across multiple platforms. So there are benefits, but there is
a cost associated with that. Okay. Let’s talk about online video. So online video, I mean, you know,
online video and I would say even online display, those are kind of like two of the areas where a lot
of that open exchange inventory is available. So this is really where a lot of our programmatic buys,
you know, started and we said, you know, we don’t care where it runs, right? Just try to find that
audience. I think just one call that I would say here is when you’re running programmatic video,
right, you’re, you’re not running YouTube. So you’re going to have to buy YouTube direct. So oftentimes,
when we’re looking at our online video plans, we’re doing some type of combination between YouTube
and and programmatic video. So again, if I’m thinking of buy guidelines, I’m going to tell my buyer,
I want to incorporate YouTube into this into my online video, right? I might work with them to
determine how much of that budget goes there. But if I don’t specify what YouTube, I’m not getting YouTube
because I have to buy that separately. Right. And just as a point of clarification, you’re saying,
okay, the there are going to be two line items on this online video plan YouTube and in your example,
and then the second line item, I think you call it programmatic video. I don’t know, I’m going to be
nitpicky on that. It’s maybe like open exchange video. It’s okay if this runs on 5,000 different websites,
as long as it meets this XYZ criteria. Right. And that XYZ criteria in this case is my audience.
Yeah. And then we have on our notes here, like retargeting. Usually this open exchange inventory is a
great place for your retargeting efforts. Yeah. I don’t want to dictate that if I have someone who’s
come to my site and maybe they they didn’t buy a ticket, right? I don’t want to dictate that I can
only serve them another ad if they go to ESPN.com, right? Like I’m good. Like we’ve called, we’ve,
you know, had some qualification for this user who’s come to our site that we want to continue putting
our message in front of, you know, we don’t want to put too many restrictions on where that’s going to
run. And this is exactly what we’re talking about when we say impactful and opportunistic. Yeah.
100%. Yeah. 100%. And impactful in this case is going to be the YouTube, going to be, you know, a legit
spot on YouTube. And then our, you know, our opportunistic where we’re looking for people to
reasonably have a chance to convert that’s more of our retargeting play that is not placement first.
It’s not content first. It’s audience first. Yeah. I mean, I would probably argue that YouTube could
still fall into our opportunistic bucket. But if I think of like my connected TV, let’s go back to,
to that, right? That’s my impactful. I absolutely care where that’s running. Yes, I might know the
publisher for YouTube in terms of where that video is running for online video, but I can still run that for,
like, I still have more ability to run that in terms of like a one-to-one messaging and define
that audience further, even if I kind of know the platform. I mean, a salarious video, you know,
site in the world, right? So it’s, there’s a ton of imagery to kind of optimize and find that
audience on. All right. Let’s add that to the topic list for next episode. We need to, we need a
separate deep-diving talent video. Yeah, right. You do. You do. That’s what the audience really cares about.
Okay. Let’s move on to Adafoam. So I think this has been an interesting one, interesting channel,
because a lot of people who, you know, have been super excited about programmatic ad-it-home and
kind of disabilities to run your message across any digital ad-it-home screen. And when we say ad-it-home,
I feel like, like, nowadays it’s like open the door and whatever you see outside is ad-it-home, right?
It’s play-space advertising, so it’s more than just billboards. But, but this, the shift to buying
programmatic does the same thing that has done on their channels, right? It opens up the inventory
that we can run on. It opens up the digital screens that we can run across. And so it can be everything
from digital billboards to gas station TVs, to a digital screen in an elevator in a downtown
corporate office, right? It can be a digital screen out of bar by the jukebox by the bathrooms, right?
So understanding the inventory is important because again, you know, we’re grouping out of home
as an impactful channel. And I don’t know that I would consider inventory running in a bar
by the bathrooms behind the jukebox as being impactful inventory, right? And I’m not saying there’s
not a case to ever buy an inventory, but when we think of programmatic and screen agnostic,
I love the idea of this, right? Because it can really scale your media plan.
But we don’t always want to scale it to everywhere, right? Again, we’re, you know,
when we think about nonprofit attractions, I mean, do we want our mission-based messaging running in,
you know, in bars and, you know, places that are maybe not like perfect for our message?
Probably not. Now, yes, you can place audience targeting. So that’s going to help kind of
restrict it from being on screens. Maybe your audience is going is not going to be at, but I would
argue there’s plenty of parents at at bars. But I think this is important because, again, just
back to the whole purpose of this, evasives like you want to know what you’re buying in these
particular channels. Yes, you might get a good, you know, good percentage of your programmatic out
of home video writing on digital billboards, but you’re going to get a mix of a lot of them
that are inventory and you may or may not want that. So the buy guidelines I would provide
can be, I want 100% digital billboard inventory for my programmatic out of home buy, right? That’s
all I want to buy, where it could be, you know, I’m good with movie theater screens, airports, gas
stations, and billboards, right? So that direction needs to be included. And again, this is something
you’re going to work back and forth likely with your campaign manager on, but don’t put it as a
line I’m on your plan that you just hand to a digital out of home vendor or programmatic out of
home vendor and just say, here you go, all I care about is the audience. And I’ll add it again.
Oh, it’s a great CPM. We’re getting a great deal. Right. And I will say, you know, you’ll find, I think
this is probably once another kind of deep dive episode in this, in this topic, but what you will
find, so if you’re going into a local market and you’re trying to do maybe a programmatic out of
home buy and you just want billboard inventory, like you might be better off just going in and buying a
digital rotary with the, with that out of home vendor directly versus the programmatic execution of it.
So there’s, you know, pros and cons, you’ve got to kind of weigh the benefits, you know, versus the
price and the cost of it. I think a lot of times people think it’s cheaper to go programmatic, but
once we start getting into these more impactful channels, it’s really not cheaper oftentimes to
go programmatic. So it’s definitely something that’s changed from when we first started going into
light display and online video, it was cheaper to do that programmatically than go into a site
direct and pay a $10 or $15 CPM. But we’re not really seeing that nowadays anymore, especially as we’re
looking at the more impactful channels. What’s old is new. Yeah. Okay. We’ll round this out with, with
display, our favorite. Yeah. You know, kind of like the digital video, you know, retargeting, we don’t
want to control that, that particular site, we’re okay with it running and it’s been exchange inventory.
But you know, make sure that you’ve got some brand, brand safety, you know, layers onto what you’re
running. Take a look at publisher list as well too. You know, you should have a campaign manager that’s
going in and weeding out, you know, bad placements. But, but there’s some ways to control inventory
here too a little bit more. So if you’re thinking about your display running and maybe, you know, a
larger, a larger banner ad or format or, you know, kind of some of those ads that stick to the bottom
of the page as you scroll like a lot of the, a lot of the inventory that’s available to run on that
is on more premium sites. So that’s one way of kind of one being able to elevate the brand a little
bit more with the type of placement that you’re running, but then to also ensure that your on some
maybe like safer sites or better sites kind of limit the inventory that you can actually run across.
Absolutely. Okay. So let’s kind of wrap this up with, you know, kind of some tips or some takeaways
on, you know, maybe making sure that we have proper buying guidelines. So what we think we’re buying is
actually what we are buying when it all hits the rubber meets the road. Yeah. Well, I mean, at the
the end of the day, it’s the job of the the media planner or the media plane really to establish
what these buy guidelines are, right? And I think you as the advertiser whether it’s your internal
team, whether it’s an agency, whoever you’re working with to do this, like you, I mean, ask these
questions like, what are we buying? And if the answer is especially in these impactful channels of
the answer is just an audience, I’d be a little, you know, I’d push a little bit and, and you know,
maybe as that that buys starts to to go into play, I would I would ask for the details, how are you
setting up this campaign? I want to see how this is being done. And I’ll add a point here and
and this sounds just so basic and so elementary, but we’ve seen it. We, you know, you do these audits and
you see these holes there. Well, if Ron campaigns over years thinking I was getting something that I
didn’t, yeah, you learned some tough lessons, right? But, you know, you, you’ve said it a few times,
throughout this episode is that planner being connected with that buyer or sometimes that role is
done by one person, but being realistic with your CPMs, once you know, I want to go by this particular
platform or this particular channel, being realistic with those CPMs, don’t just cram a plan down
the line because the CPMs look good. Right. Yeah. But the motivation of the planner is to put something
that looks great on paper and it’s only going to cost XYZ. You’re just kind of handcuffing the buyer.
Like I can’t buy that. Right. Yeah. It’s good to start seeing too, how much does this inventory
actually cost? Right. And you’re really saying that the gap is within these newer channels. So
right. Exactly. You also have on here more detail. In my experience, more details always needed.
Like there’s, I feel like you can’t, you can never provide too much unless you’re using all of that
to handcuff, right? Like you’re providing as much information as possible so that your buyer can come
back and put the best buy together as possible, whether that’s in traditional linear TV, whether
that’s in connected TV, whether that’s in display, online video, the more information you can
provide them, the better. And it’s not just about the audience. And then I like your last tip here,
reporting. Yeah. I mean, validate the buys being executed as planned by establishing a reporting
cadence. You know, maybe once that campaign kicks off after that first week, you’re getting some
feedback, maybe pulling some quick publisher reports as a deliver in the way that you talked about,
or maybe you’re using it to recognize like, hey, it’s not delivering the way we thought it was
going to. Let’s make some adjustments or we’re okay making these adjustments and maybe we,
you know, losing a publisher or two or a placement that we were hoping to get because the reality is
that inventory is actually much more expensive than it was when we planned this six months ago,
right? Like once it’s running, you know, now it’s what’s the cost of it today, not what was the
estimated cost, you know, six months ago in the planning? Yeah, I would say, you know, I’m envisioning,
you know, three, four week flight, a big push for an event, right? I would say, let’s say we’re
going to launch on Monday. We planned it six months ago. We were launching on Monday. I want to see
a report whether once again, it’s my in-house team or especially if it’s my agency, especially if
it’s a vendor, I want to see a report Wednesday or Thursday or whatever it may be to have that
alignment check before the short flight is over and I get an after-campaign report and it’s like,
“Wait, that’s not what we bought.” Yeah, and, you know, trust comes into play here too, right? So
do I need to see like every detailed report every three days? Yeah, I mean, if my, especially if
I have an internal team and my campaign manager has been doing this for a long time, like I’ve
established some trust here. But, you know, you’re running with a new vendor, right? Or you’re,
you know, especially if this is something where you’re bringing in partners to kind of help you
execute this. I would absolutely ask it, don’t feel bad about it and they’ll share it with you,
right? No one’s trying to hide anything. It’s just you want to know before the campaign ends that
it didn’t, you know, there’s something else happening with the delivery versus,
well, you say we can remember where we wanted to run and just reach just hit this CPM, right? That’s
what we want to be real careful about. Jenny, thanks. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the
Marketing Attractions podcast. If you have a suggestion for a topic or would like to be a guest on the show,
please visit our website at MarketingAttractionsPodcast.com.