Digital Media Planning & Buying 101: Build Your Media Buying Strategy

Do you know what’s better than one screen? You can probably guess: two screens. Today’s average media consumer certainly thinks so, anyway. “Second-screening” is a trend that continues to rise as more people scroll through their mobile devices while watching TV. Per data from global consumer research agency GWI, 86% of media consumers participate in this multi-tasking behavior. For marketers and advertisers, trying to capture a split attention span is an added challenge amidst an already crowded digital landscape.

The solution? Don’t just meet consumers where they are—meet them where they are most likely to be engaged. Digital media buying is a modern advertising solution to get directly in front of your desired audience by targeting their behavior to show up in the websites, streaming platforms and apps they’re already giving their full focus to. But before your business dives head-first into a media buying strategy, master the basics of media planning and buying 101 to elevate your brand awareness efforts and capture the focus of your audience once and for all.

What Is Digital Media Buying & Planning?

Digital media buying and planning is how marketers identify and implement strategic ad placements, including ad format, audience and duration to achieve the best possible return on investment. A media buy can include website display ads, video pop-ups within apps, interactive spots on streaming platforms and more. Put simply, digital media buying is placing a digital ad anywhere outside of your own marketing platforms with the intention of increasing brand awareness. Gaining recognition for your brand is media buying 101!

Let’s take a sports clothing and equipment store for example. When primetime football season is in full swing, maybe they want to connect with a younger millennial and Gen Z crowd that spends the majority of their TV time—60% per Nielsen’s latest ratings—watching sports on streaming platforms like YouTube TV or Hulu over traditional cable networks. An interactive ad triggered by pausing the screen would create the perfect opportunity for viewers to click through or scan a QR code to get to the retailer’s landing page and buy merchandise from their favorite team. This sports retailer knows their active audience is highly tuned into everything the sport entails, from streaming games live to using apps to draft fantasy teams and websites to stay informed on their favorite players. While football is top of mind, this retailer might consider a media buy consisting of video ads on streaming platforms as well as banner display ads promoting their NFL apparel on the apps and websites fans visit most.

The possibilities are nearly limitless for forward-thinking companies looking to expand their advertising portfolio. But with so many options available, it can be hard to know what will work best for your business. Not every digital media buying strategy will be the same from business to business, but there are several core media planning and buying best practices you can confidently move forward with to maximize your impact and make the most of your ad budget.

6 Tips For Digital Media Buying & Planning Success

Stay ahead of constantly changing technology and the growing prevalence of digital media with innovative digital ad placements across strategic media buy campaigns designed to draw more eyes to your business. Follow these proven media buying and planning best practices to get your business in front of your target audience, where they’re primed to take action.

1. Don’t Rush The Media Buying & Planning Process

Digital media isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so develop a deliberate, carefully thought-out approach before diving head first into the media planning and buying process. Your goals should inform your media buying strategy, so be clear what you hope to get out of a media buy before you begin work with a media vendor. Ideally, you should give the digital media agencies and vendors you work with at least one month of lead time to prepare ads and target audiences before the campaign goes live. In this time, you can work with your agency to curate compelling creatives to represent your campaign and leverage data to build a highly relevant audience. Planning ahead also ensures other assets, like your landing page, are optimized for your desired conversions.

2. Be Open To New, Creative Ad Types In Your Media Buying Strategy

Media buying isn’t the time to stick to a cookie-cutter approach and limit the possibilities available for your business. Instead, take advantage of a variety of ad formats including text ads, image ads, video ads, audio ads, interactive pop-up ads and more cutting-edge solutions as they emerge. Eye-catching (or attention-grabbing) ad placements outside of the norm often yield higher engagement than the same old ad types consumers are used to overlooking on their screens. Every ad type meets a different goal depending on what you hope to achieve with your campaigns, so select the media types that will allow you to be most successful in reaching your goals. Remember, the more you diversify your digital media portfolio, the more opportunities you have to refine your ads and audiences based on what’s working well to continue to optimize campaigns for the most success.

3. Always Include Your Logo For Memorable Digital Media Buys

If your brand logo isn’t highly visible across all of your ad placements, you’re doing your business a disservice. Far-reaching media buys are meant to connect a wider audience with your business. Without your logo there to ignite brand recognition or inspire customer loyalty, there’s nothing linking your message to your brand. Save space in all of your ad creatives to feature your logo clearly and confidently.

4. Remember That In Media Buying, There’s No Such Thing As Too Much Information

The vast amount of information media buys are built around can be overwhelming. How do you know what’s relevant versus what’s wasting time? Good news—you don’t have to decide for yourself! When working with a digital media buying partner, any data can provide a valuable background for buyers to strategize the most effective ad placements and targeting. Don’t hold back from sharing what you know about your audience, such as key demographics, seasonal trends, what customers have to say about your brand and any other interesting data points. The value of a media buy lies in the details, so keep communication open and the audience insights coming.

5. Track, Track & Track Some More To Inform Future Media Buying & Planning Efforts

One of the main takeaways for your media planning and buying 101 strategy should be the importance of monitoring ad performance and data. Pixels, trackable URLs and media buys should go hand-in-hand to paint a picture for your business of where leads are coming from and missed opportunities. For example, leverage trackable URLs with unique tracking parameters attached to each creative so you can see which creative is contributing to the most engagement on your site.

Pixels, or short strings of computer code used for tracking, can be placed on your website and ads to retarget users based on certain behaviors. Maybe a user clicked on your business’ ad but failed to convert when they reached your landing page. A pixel can help you retarget them with a related ad at a later date to stay top of mind and nudge them back to your website. Using analytics tools like Google Analytics 4, media buys offer businesses a unique opportunity to track ad performance with specific data not available from traditional platforms like television or radio. The world is truly your oyster, especially with the right digital media partner by your side to continue optimizing ads and delivering above-and-beyond results.

6. Work With A Trusted Digital Media Buying Partner

The complexities of media buys are best navigated with a digital media buying partner serving as an extension of your team to create strategic campaigns for increased brand reach. Digital media experts are tuned into trends everyday to steer your business toward new ad formats and technology and provide consistent reporting to update you on ad performance. Before you begin working with a strategic media planning and buying partner, ask about their fee structure to determine if a portion of the media buy spend is marked up to cover agency fees.

At Blue Compass, we aim to provide a clear digital direction for our clients, so the last thing we want to do is leave you in the lurch. We communicate the ad spend cost as well as the internal hours required for us to implement your strategy upfront, no markups or hidden fees. Our experts monitor performance, implement advanced tracking parameters and optimize campaigns as needed to give your business the best ROI possible.

How To Get Started With A Media Buying Strategy

Even with best practices in mind, buying media isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. There is no perfect formula to help every business reach the right people at the right time. When building a media buying strategy for your business, you have to rely on your own blueprint of what you know about your customers: who they are, where they are, what they care about, etc. Consider what steps you can take to help your digital media buy land with your audience, including:

1. Know Your Audience: Before you move on to the details like ad format, creative and spend, make sure you know the ins and outs of your audience’s digital habits by pinpointing key demographics and commonalities in your customer data. Insights like audience age, gender, geography, job, income, interests and more should inform your strategy.
2. Identify Platforms To Target: Based on what you know about your audience, decide which platforms will pack the biggest punch for an impactful media buy. Common placements include streaming services, mobile apps, websites and more. 



3. Determine Ad Schedule: With your business goals in mind, set a schedule for various ads within a campaign and decide how long you want the campaign to stay active. Plan for most campaigns to run for at least three months so you’re able to make an impression on your audience.
4. Set Your Budget: Don’t go into a media buy without being aware of the cost of a successful campaign. Because these campaigns are typically multi-platform, long-running and specified for various targets, they can be costly if you’re not sure what to plan for. An ideal minimum budget is $10,000 to craft the creatives, secure the channels and book a media buying agency to plan and execute campaigns with you. Businesses are often asked to pay at least a portion of the cost upfront, so make sure you know what to expect from day one.
5. Maximize Potential: Take advantage of low-hanging fruit with a remarketing digital media buying strategy aimed at retargeting recent website visitors who visited your site but didn’t convert. By setting your ads up to find a familiar audience in a new way, you can stay top-of-mind for when the time is right.
6. Design Ad Creatives: Whether you’re looking to hook app users with an interactive pop-up ad, snag eyes with an attention-grabbing web banner, draw them in with a captivating video—or all of the above—your ad creatives need to tell your story. Craft a compelling call to action to drive your message home and move users along in their journey.
7. Analyze & Optimize: Once your ads are out in the world, your job isn’t necessarily done. The best media buy strategies incorporate monitoring ad performance, looking at key metrics like click-through rates, conversions and impressions. If you notice a particular creative is performing well, you should consider optimizing all of your ads with a similar creative. Or maybe your video ads prove to be the most impactful, in which case you could dedicate more of your ad spend to the video instead of underperforming ads.
8. Partner With A Professional Agency: Media buying agencies specialize in creating compelling campaigns and strategizing effective media placements so you don’t have to worry about having everything figured out on your own. A professional agency has the connections and resources to help you put your digital media buying strategy in place, aligning media buy best practices with your campaign goals to maximize your success.

Looking To Master Digital Media Buying? Let’s Talk!

Modern media buys are uniquely positioned to drive traffic to your website and track ad performance with active user data, not the potentially passive viewing behaviors of those “second-screening” or otherwise turned away from their televisions. A digital media strategic partnership with Blue Compass is centered around your business goals and the tried-and-true best practices we’ve developed to help you reach them. When you invest in a media buy with Blue Compass, you invest in a partnership that prioritizes your ongoing business growth and puts your priorities first. For more media buying 101 tips or to get started, call us at (515) 868-0010 or contact us online to tap into the full potential of your brand with a compelling, powerful and focused media buy today.

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