Media Services in Advertising
Broadly, media services is responsible for the planning and buying of print, broadcast, out-of-home (billboards) and interactive media in the most effective and efficient way possible. Media planners are the strategists - they determine when and where it's most advantageous to buy advertising space for any given campaign. Buyers actually negotiate for, and purchase, the media space.
But that's hardly the whole story. These media specialists are also key members of the advertising branding team. They must find environments that extend and reinforce the brand image of their clients - and buy space for advertising those brands. Armed with consumer research, both proprietary and purchased, media professionals not only know the target audience's media habits - the programs they watch and listen to, the magazines and newspapers they read - they also know what influences consumers to make purchasing decisions. Purchase decision influencers are people who have a lot of influence over the purchase but aren't the "target market." For example, while men may purchase suits, women have significant influence over which suits their male partners and companions buy.
The result of their research and work is the media plan for the advertising campaign. Major media outlets will then compete to get on the plan (that is, to secure a portion of the client's ad budget for their magazine or television network or newspaper). The plan itself contains recommendations on where the client should spend their media budget to achieve the campaign's goals in the most efficient way. The plan outlines how many people the media recommendation reaches, how many times the commercial or print ad will run, and the total audience impressions the plan will attract.
Once the plan is approved, media vehicles like television stations, newspapers and magazines that weren't included in the plan fight to get included. So, in the midst of a buy, buyers not only have to contend with the job of purchasing media, they also have to entertain presentations from disappointed media sales reps. Media buyers, especially, frequently socialize with sales representatives from media organizations on a regular basis.
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Professional characteristics
Media people are:
Analytical and detail oriented. Media is very much about numbers, but numbers are not the whole story. Media planners must use syndicated research and judgment to select media that delivers the appropriate demographics and psychographics. But being a good media planner also requires common sense. Planners and buyers are given budgets of millions, even hundreds of millions of dollars. It's their job to analyze the numbers - ratings, share, circulation - of potential media buys, and then look beyond the numbers. A commercial for denture adhesives aimed at an older target audience, wouldn't make sense on Friends, even though Friends may deliver a fairly large older audience.
Salespeople. Every recommendation, every plan, must be sold internally and to the client. And you need to be attuned to what the client really wants. Sometimes the client wants to run his ad in his favorite magazine, logic be damned. But let's say that, based on the quantitative analysis the media planners have done (Are the magazine demographics appropriate for the client's product? Is the price to advertise in the magazine reasonable, or is it expensive? If you advertise in this magazine, do you have to cut another that might be more appropriate for the product?), it's been determined that this particular magazine doesn't really belong on the plan. So you need to be a skilled salesperson to convince the client that their favorite magazine just won't work.
Organized. When you control the expenditure of millions of dollars of someone else's money, you had better be organized and able to account for every dollar.
Good negotiators, This talent is especially important for media buyers. Buyers regard rate card prices - the official cost of a media unit - as just the first step of negotiation. Media is a true supply and demand marketplace and prices continually fluctuate.
Salaries and hours
Salaries range from $20,000 per year for an assistant to several hundred thousand dollars a year for a media director. The salaries: executive vice presedent and media director ($300K+), media director ($250K), associate media director ($125K-$150K), supervisor ($80K-$90K), buyers/planners ($60K-$80K), assistants ($25K-$30K).
A typical workweek of 50 hours is not uncommon, and can reach 60-70+ when timing is factored in (hours lengthen just before a media plan is due) along with the social events that occur after working hours. Granted, those events can be enjoyable (tickets to sporting events, dinner and the theater with the advertising sales reps), but they make for a long workweek nonetheless.
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