Media planning and buying, once an art, seems to have become paper pushing to me. I find that in recent years media plans have become expected and predicable. In fact, I question how much value is actually added by today’s media planners and buyers from what they receive from the media properties. However, I don’t think this is their fault.

The need for efficiency and thus the downward pressure on media commissions and fees over the years has really taken a toll. I believe the need to squeeze budgets has forced the media planning process down to lower and lower (and thus cheaper and less experienced) levels. So more junior staff are making the strategic decisions and more senior people can’t afford to spend the necessary time to really innovate in media buying.

Podcasting and the growth in user-generated content, has the possibility to re-invigorate the discipline. The number of hyper-niche podcasts and blogs is legion. There is no way that under current financial arrangements that media planners can keep on top of it all. Moreover, dealing with some of these independent podcasters, demands more time and more flexibility on the part of the media planners and buyers, but the rewards of some highly influential and targetted audiences are too good to ignore.

In general, I believe that a podcast media buy should rightly justify a higher commission, due to the rapidly expanding and changing environment that a podcast buyer must operate in. So perhaps the mass buys that have become so bland at 10% commission can be loss-leaders for a higher profit (and hopefully higher ROI for the advertiser) 14-15% commission on Web 2.0 media buys.

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Posted in Advertising Issues Media Online Podcast by dwalker No Comments Yet