What is Media Buying?

Media Buying refers to the placement of your advertising in any kind of media from TV and radio to outdoor and the internet – the list goes on. Planning your media so that you can achieve your marketing objectives is a crucial step on your way to business success. It’s a fact that most companies’ media spend accounts for most of their advertising budget. Thus applying this money to best effect is absolutely crucial.

Why choose Avant Communication?

Avant Communication has helped many clients to attain optimum media usage. This is because we don’t merely buy media; we provide our clients with a complete media management solution. The Avant Media team is a group of tenacious negotiators with years of experience. Getting you the best media at the best price is our mission. We utilize sophisticated software and wide research sources to develop better targeted, more effective media plans. Whether it is regional or international media planning and buying, online media management or an exciting sponsorship opportunity you’re after, Avant Communication is dedicated to your media success. We want to see that your media plan makes every Dollar you spend work for you.

How should you develop your media plan?

The basics
Media planning is a highly specialized field. To begin planning an effective media strategy one has to understand the three interrelated media concepts:

a) Reach
b) Gross Rating Points
c) Frequency

a) Reach
Reach refers to the total number of people you would like to expose to your advertising. Reach is a percentage of the target audience your advertising will reach (the % sign is hardly ever used). Suppose your target audience is males between the ages of 18 and 25 and that there are 10 million men in your country. A reach of 25 would mean that 25 % or 2.5 million of your target market will come in contact with one or more of media vehicles contained in your media plan.

b) Gross Rating Points
Gross Rating Points is the total exposure one wants to purchase from a media outlet. Let’s use an example of a TV network. If a programme (Let’s call it Programme X) has a rating of 45, it means that 45 % of television households tuned in to the programme. If you choose to run an ad once during Programme X, that ad would be viewed in 45 % of households. If the commercial runs only once, the reach is equal to the rating of the programme, a GRP of 45. If your media plan calls for airing the ad twice during the programme, the GRP would be twice 45, which is 90.

If you require a GRP of 90 it doesn’t necessarily mean that you must advertise twice on Programme X. You could consider buying 6 spots on a few shows with a rating of 15 since 6 x 15 = 90). Or purchase 45 spots on niche-market satellite TV programmes, radio channels or magazines that each has a rating of 2.

c) Frequency
Let’s briefly revisit the concepts of GRP and reach: GRP constitutes total exposures. Reach on the other hand constitutes unique people exposed. As you can see, GRP double-counts people who are exposed to an ad multiple times.

Frequency brings the concept of reach and GRP together. To understand the relationship between GRP and reach, let’s imagine that Programme X is a popular sports match and that you’d like to put two spots on the programme – one before half-time and another during the second half of the match. You will remember we said earlier this sample schedule represents a GRP of 90. What will the reach be? This would come down to the number of people that tune in to each half of the game. A 1/3 of the households who follow the game might tune out at halftime, while a 1/3 of the households who wish to watch the game might only tune in during the second half. As you can see, 45 % of households follow the game during both the first and second half, but it’s not the same people for both halves. If we do our calculation we’ll see that the reach for the first commercial is 45. A third of the viewers (45 % * 1/3 = 15 %) then tune out before they see the second commercial that airs in the second half of the game. In other words only 30 % of the target follows both halves of the game and are exposed to the commercial twice. Of course this 30 % are not counted towards the reach when they view the second spot. After halftime a new 15 % of households start watching the game. They are added to the reach because they weren’t exposed to the ad that aired in the first half. If we do the math now the total reach for this two-ad media plan is 45 + 15 = 60.

Frequency measures repetition and to calculate it you can use the following formula: Frequency = Gross rating points / Reach Using the Programme X example – if the GRPs equals 90 and the reach is 56, then the frequency will be 1.5 (90 / 60 = 1.5). This means that on average viewers of Programme X had one and a half opportunities to see the commercial.

Starting your media plan

Your media plan will call for a unique combination of reach and frequency based on your media objectives. If you simply want to expose people to your brand and want to create brand awareness you might decide on a high reach. If you however think that consumers will only act after multiple exposures to your campaign, you might decide on a higher frequency. This is especially necessary if you want to generate leads, sales and customer loyalty and also if you want to teach consumers about the features of a product. It could take several impressions.

Setting the parameters

The Avant Media specialists will work with you to achieve the best media plan. When it comes to placing media for your company there are at least two crucial things that need to be taken into consideration. 1. What are the objectives of your campaign? You will need to clearly define what your goals are. You might for instance want to increase your branding in the market, increase sales or make the public aware of a new offer.

2. Just who is it aimed at? Clearly you will need to know fully the target audience you are aiming at, as you do not want to be placing your ad in a newspaper when it is for young teenagers. Here you can also provide statistics relating to the lifestyles and demographics.

3. What is your budget? If you look back at the formula for calculating frequency, you’ll see that you can change it around to determine GRPs. Multiply reach and frequency to obtain GRPs. A media plan that requires a wide reach combined with a high frequency would also need high GRPs (i.e. many ad exposures to huge number of people). To achieve high GRPs is costly however and your budget may not allow for it. So it’s always best to set your budget first. You can then roughly calculate the GRPs you can afford. Accordingly you can do one of two things. You cut down on reach to sustain frequency. Or you can drop the frequency to one so that you can extend reach.

Buy your media effectively

Once all the important parameters have been set the team of media experts at Avant Communication gets to work. We have a well rounded knowledge of the various types of media and the ways of evaluating which is the best to use. Whether it is TV, radio, newspaper, bus shelters or even new media like the internet and the gaming industry we will help to provide you with the best possible advertising space for your business. We are as concerned about reaching your target audience as you are.

Media Post Buy Analysis

We will also help you with a media post buy analysis. This is vital in that you can assess the efficacy of your media plan and tweak it if necessary. It is an opportunity for you to evaluate just how your advertising has done in relation to your objectives and how much you have paid for it.

Through the post buy analysis you can better understand whether the advertising campaigns you are using is reaching the target audience and whether your advertising message is effective.

You may well discover through this type of analysis that at the time your advert was being aired on TV or radio the audience listening or viewing was much higher or lower than you would have expected. You can also verify that your campaign was aired at the agreed time according to the instructions provided. If there are any discrepancies the media companies can provide you with a breakdown in order that you may recover any monies that you are owed. Every ad Dollar deserves effective spending. Avant Communication is dedicated to your advertising success.