{"id":843547,"date":"2025-04-25T20:12:07","date_gmt":"2025-04-26T01:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/25\/media-buying-briefing-overheard-at-digidays-media-buying-summit\/"},"modified":"2025-04-25T20:12:07","modified_gmt":"2025-04-26T01:12:07","slug":"media-buying-briefing-overheard-at-digidays-media-buying-summit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/25\/media-buying-briefing-overheard-at-digidays-media-buying-summit\/","title":{"rendered":"Media Buying Briefing: Overheard at Digiday\u2019s Media Buying Summit"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is part of Digiday\u2019s coverage of its Digiday Media Buying Summit. More from the series \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n

It always helps to know you\u2019re not alone in the challenges that you face \u2014 professionally, personally or otherwise.\u00a0 Which is why, at Digiday\u2019s numerous summits over the course of the year, our Town Halls are immensely popular with attendees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So it was with the recent Digiday Media Buying Summit, held in Nashville March 12-14, where two Town Halls for agencies only \u2014 and held under Chatham House rules, which allow attendees to speak freely without being identified but allows Digiday to use their thoughts anonymously \u2014 offered an outlet for sharing challenges and suggestion solutions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Topics discussed hit a few pain points across the industry: programmatic\u2019s opportunity but logistical potholes, the challenges of generating new business with existing clients, and balancing commissions vs. fees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a sampling of their thoughts: \u00a0<\/p>\n

Programmatic<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\u201cEverything in media today is test and learn. One of the keys of our success is that our clients trust us to give us their sales data. So if you are able to see immediate results layering different programmatic partners with the client\u2019s data, then I think you\u2019re one step ahead of knowing what works and what doesn\u2019t. With so many [vendors] out there today, choose one that will go to bat with you and say, \u2018OK, if this doesn\u2019t work, what are we doing?\u2019 Don\u2019t just move on to the next one \u2014 try and figure it out, because at the first run, it\u2019s probably not always a hit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWith all of our DSP partners, a requirement to work with us is we need to see exactly how the CPM is calculated, what is rolling into this? How much are you paying for data? What\u2019s the fees that you\u2019re putting on that to truly get to the cost of the media. And then we can do a better apples to apples comparison across the DSPs. Now we want the data to also include where is this audience coming from? Where are the SSPs that we\u2019re working with? Where are the sites that it\u2019s coming from?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to look at it holistically. It\u2019s not just cost, it\u2019s inventory, it\u2019s reporting, transparency, all of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHold your vendors accountable as well. We work with different DSPs, and if they aren\u2019t coming to us consistently with new ideas or any kind of transparency, then they\u2019re out. We need that information, and we need them to be challenging us as well as we challenge them, because otherwise we\u2019re not going to see success.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCuration has become the new buzz word. You have to explain to clients that curation is really great, and you\u2019re going to get higher quality inventory, you\u2019re going to run site lists, and you\u2019re going to feel good that you\u2019ve heard of all these sites before, vs. your open auction list that\u2019s scary. (No matter how much brand safety you put on it, the list is still scary.) But my challenge is explaining that to clients. \u2018Yes, the CPMs are higher, but I want them to be higher. I want to be in these places that fit the brand better, that align with all the things for the brand, vs. just matching the audience and buying it as cheap as I can.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWork closely with your SSP partners, work closely with the publishers, [and] create the right PMPs. The SSPs are super important because they can help you really curate inventory across multiple elements \u2026 Consider the role of traffic quality to your site, to drive whatever sort of engagement [you\u2019re looking for]. That\u2019s challenging with some mediums. So maybe consider moving up the funnel with programmatic, thinking about awareness and looking at long tail measurement that might be effective down the road \u2014 vs. just trying to drive really [intentional] traffic where search and social might be better at doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s been successful is picking partners that are very, very transparent with their data. It\u2019s very helpful if these partners would give us access to their dashboards where we can look into audience insights.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried building it internally, and that went nowhere. So don\u2019t do that \u2014 it just requires a whole team, it\u2019s really complicated and it\u2019s not always impactful. When we\u2019ve been working with it with our clients, we\u2019ve tried to test a bunch of vendors, because it really depends on the model the client needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Generating new business<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d be surprised to learn how little your clients know about what your agency does. It\u2019s brutal. We work for some very large clients, and it is heartbreaking to me when I\u2019m having a conversation and they say, \u2018Wow, I didn\u2019t know you guys did that.\u2019 I want to put my head through the wall. Talk to your current clients about all the things that you do now. You don\u2019t want to make it a perpetual sales pitch, but there is wisdom to sharing what you do. They already trust you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d also be surprised at how little your clients care about competitiveness, meaning if you work for company A in a particular industry, they\u2019re not so bent out of shape if you want to go work with Company B or C.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the competitive side, a lot of brands see that as an advantage, because you understand their industry better. Sometimes it\u2019s about just really understanding who is a true competitor vs. who\u2019s like analogous to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMake sure that you have someone who can establish themselves as the subject matter expert that the client immediately trusts. I\u2019ve had instances where we\u2019ve taken over clients from other agencies, and then we talked to the agency and we realized they were actually really good. Why did the clients leave them? Then I realized it\u2019s because one, they didn\u2019t have an executive presence to kind of align with the CMO of the client. But they also really weren\u2019t able to communicate how successful they were. They were so focused on the tactical details that they couldn\u2019t win any new business.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the big challenges we\u2019ve had in winning new businesses as a small independent agency, is finding the right pricing. We\u2019ve seen media commissions continue to get driven down and down and down. So we\u2019re having a hard time finding that happy medium where it\u2019s profitable for us but still competitive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Commission and fees<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h2>\n

\u201cI helped stand up a digital marketing agency with a unique pricing model, where it started off with a retainer and everything else is an upsell. We were projecting a certain average per client with that model, and it actually turned out that our averages were way off. We were getting way more per client based on doing it just on a pure upsell scale. So we actually end up making more money. We just had a low entry fee \u2026 It actually increased our average customer value when we did it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are fee based, where we don\u2019t even take a commission on ad spend. It eliminates that whole conversation about commissions and percentages and things like that. We have a tough time responding to RFPs, though, when there\u2019s a demand for you to put in a commission. So we kind of shy away from that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe break everything down into projects and pods. Everything\u2019s given: team resourcing, hourly allocations, etc. And then we back into [status] reports with our clients to say, \u2018Look, you are getting exactly what you\u2019re paying for.\u2019 If we\u2019re over burning, then we\u2019re having the conversation about the upselling. But as a smaller agency, that\u2019s how we got away from the commission model, because it was getting smaller and smaller and smaller. With the fee base, it also helps if there\u2019s any kind of cancelations and things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Color by numbers<\/h2>\n

As March Madness gets underway \u2014 let\u2019s hear it for the initial upsets like McNeese beating Clemson in the first round \u2014 the big marketplace focus right now is on college sports. Big Chalk, a consumer data\/research company with clients such as Kellanova and Dollar Tree, among others, released the first part of an annual College Sports Perception Survey. Some takeaways:<\/p>\n