Ad Agencies -Should You Be a Ad Media Buyers?

Ad Agencies have always emphasized that their primary function is to generate revenue for their clients. While this is still the case, it is also important to recognize that in today’s Internet, clients have become increasingly more savvy regarding online marketing – They are aware that search engine optimization is just one piece of the puzzle. For this reason, many ad agencies have returned to their original function of selling to businesses. At the same time that media becomes a more crucial part of the process, so does search engine optimization. This is increasingly important to agencies not only because it is where they get their money, but also because it is where many of their clients do their ad agencies. This has led to a situation where some agency CEOs are asking the question – should they be more of a media buyers agency or should they be selling to businesses? There is no right answer here, but the reality is that until the search engines like Google come up with a solution to the sandbox effect, which would require that all submissions be reviewed to eliminate junk, there will be an increased focus on media buy information. Still just as important as the relative value of the media, is how the purchased media is used. This is something that is becoming increasingly important to Vampire in the bloodlines of Wall Street, but also something that is often overlooked by agencies. There is a great deal of attention paid to the media buyouts that occur on the Web, often to a larger degree than one would expect from traditional media buyouts. This is likely to change as the effects of the sandbox effect fade, but for now some agencies are beginning to turn this attention to the potential of the social networks to sell products. There is also an underestimated public demand for e-commerce of media. There is a public demand for media that is entertaining or interesting in nature; that does not fit the specific product being sold. Much of the available media is geared to the often rather broad and unsuitable channels of TV, magazine, and newspaper. To sell e-commerce, it may be TV time! TV time! Now that the Review Engine has made it impossible for general editors to review TV and cable programming, it may be time to open the TV archives and throw out the window any reviews of media that don’t jive with the product being sold. You can check: https://prestonmartelly.com/  

The hidden review engine

One of the most interesting studies of their use was done by the New York Times Company on its purchase of Overture’s pay-per-click listings. The interesting thing is that the purchase of the Overture listings did not arranging to any noticeable degree. The placement of the site at number 1 was done by the Times Company with the help of a program that gave the highest score possible using the Overture search criteria. If you were to do a similar search for the Times Company, the placement of number 1 on the Overture search page would have been number 3. To put it simply, the Times Company didn’t constructing a pay-per-click ad and getting a high score on the Overture search engine. Keep in mind that the Times Company is paying a hefty sum of money to secure the top spot on the Overture. It is likely that a similar publicity would have generated a high score on that search engine as well. It is difficult to translate a high scoring on Overture into financial gain and profitability on the financial site, but that is exactly what the Times Company has done. What does this tell you about your own site and the value of search engine optimization? It is fairly obvious that the Times Company’s strategy was to secure as high a score as possible using the Overture engine. Search engine scores of between zero and five are considered scores of good and that is what the Times Company has achieved. What it tells you is that your site should be optimized to gain a similar score. We should aim for a five to seven. Anything less is “sub-par.” Ideally, we would aim for a maximum of nine, although in practice, most sites will score between four and six. One of the most important factors that will affect your site’s score is the design and content of your page. Each page should be optimized to take full advantage of the site’s main keywords. Each page should contain, at a minimum, one hundred and fifty words of text, including the header at least two times. The text should be original and not plagiarized. There should be one link per page. The link should incorporate the target keywords. If you use pictures, make sure that you have used an original caption with each picture. If you use text, then make sure that it is original. Other ways of getting an optimized page is to use the ALT tag and the image description. Make sure that you include the target keywords for each page. These are just a few of the things that you should avoid to get a high page ranking.

What Do Agencies Charge?

What an agency charges for its services shouldn’t be one of life great mysteries, nor should it be a question people are uncomfortable talking about. In the old days (think Mad Men), Ad Agencies mainly existed to help clients develop creative ad campaigns for television, print, and radio. They made money based on the ‘ad spend’ where the agency would purchase the media on behalf of the client and received a 10%-20% commission on the media spend itself. So if a client spent $2,000,000 per year on ‘media’, the agency would see a 15% cut ($300,000 in this case) and provide the creative as a part of the service. While the models and commissions varied slightly, it was a fairly simple formula.

agencies provide a multitude of specialized services that don’t always include media. Often clients will use specialized media agencies for the purchasing of ads, and a creative company for the development of the campaign or other brand assets now. This has spawned a shift in fee structure for many agencies to focus more on time and materials, and less on media. As the industry gravitates to providing niche services vs. full service, this has become more and more commonplace.

With all of that being said, many agencies (usually larger ones) will continue to work on a media basis for clients that have large advertising budgets. But what about clients that don’t invest in Outbound advertising and use agency services for collateral, website, signage, inbound marketing, and other non-media based projects?

Creative agencies will typically charge in 2 different ways:

Source: everbrave.ca

How Do You Set Your Budget?

When determining your budget allocation for projects, the cost of professional services can often be a determining factor for whether a project will proceed, or sit idle in the ‘nice-to-have’ column. Here are a few insights.

Have an honest conversation upfront with your agency about the budget you have available. Determine what exactly you need to accomplish, and what limitations you have. In most cases, this doesn’t result in your agency spending every dollar you have. It results in them maximizing your budget to make the absolute most of it. Having this conversation early on can also determine if your agency is the right fit based on budget, and spare both parties some time in preparing non starting proposals. In our firm, I always aim to set some expectations early on to avoid any unwanted surprises later in the project.

Develop your financial benchmarks for the project. If you have the completed project in hand, what are the expected business outcomes? More leads? Better brand awareness? High price position? Increased market share? Once you have a sense of what the financial value to your company is, you’ll be able to better measure the value of the investment. If your project has a definable ROI, share that information with your agency!

If your project has no definable financial outcome or ROI (for example; a corporate art installation in a lobby), then you are probably searching for pure talent rather than a business process. To match an agency to your needs, the criteria should be subjective, not financial.

It’s tricky to find a great financial match when shopping for an agency so use factors like fit, experience, creative approach, or business process to find agencies you want to work with. Have an early conversation to ensure financial fit and don’t be shy to share your budget expectations with your agency.

Here is a fun little chart to help you better understand what you might expect. You can have it fast, nice or cheap, pick 2!

We wrote a new blog that discusses this topic 7 years later, if you’re interested in learning more then click here Was this article helpful? Subscribe to receive more useful content like this.

Source: everbrave.ca

Getting Links But Not Rankings? The Secret of Ad Agencies

If you’ve been told to get links to your site to boost your search ranking, then you’ve heard some good advice. However, it’s very important you get the right kind of link for your site otherwise you’ll never get anywhere in the search engines. This tutorial will explain exactly how to get the best link to your site and what to do when your done getting them. The biggest problem I see is webmasters that are just getting links from places where the link is acquired automatically with no input from the webmaster. This happens mostly because of software that automates the process of getting links. When this is the case, you’ll often see that the link is from a low-level domain and has no SEO value. Therefore, unless you’re planning on doing a lot of cross-linking, it’s probably best to just get links from the best piece of real estate you can get. That being said, it’s also great when you can get it and it requires no real effort. Given below are some best ways to get natural links. 1. Network. It’s a fact that we live in a social age, and if you want to get the most out of that aspect of life, you have to get active in social media. This means you should join forums that are related to your niche, and participate in them. Do not deem yourself an expert though, or you’ll end up looking like one. No one likes a know it all, and more than a few people don’t even know how to run a Twitter campaign. Build up your social skills and you’ll end up with a following on Twitter – of course using the famous Horseshoe Twitter for qualifies. 2. Make some YouTube videos. It’s not enough to just make a video and put it online. You need to announce your video to everyone that sees it. When you make crazy videos everyone is going to know and then think about. It’s possible that a few people will share your video and help make your video popular, that’s a win-win-win situation. YouTube is not the only place to announce new video projects. There are many places where you can announce your new video projects to representatives of other media companies. I recommend emailing at least two online media representatives and describing your project so they can help market it. 3. Build your presence. When you’re ready to launch a new video project, you’ve got to be ready to work the project out withthought. You’ve got to design, build and fill in all the details. This doesn’t just mean coming up with a awesome idea, it includes figuring out what to tell people who will help you with your project. What do you want them to do? What do you need from them? Ultimately you want to hook them with your story, with your benefits and without a sales pitch. Below is an example of something you could say on your blog to get people to listen to your story: “Hey, I’m Brad… I’ve got a weird question wanted to ask you… Have you ever wondered why use search engines to rank so much better than normal descriptive words?…. If you… have a website that you think is really cool, why do you think people will know about it?…. Please answer my questions as honestly as possible, it’s important you find…” 4. Use links. Links don’t have to sit endearingly. In fact, they shouldn’t! Not only because links get you at#1 on Google but because they tell the search engines that other sites find it worth their while to link to you. You can get people to link to you in a variety of ways. You can comment on someone’s blog or at their forums, make a contest out of it or a guest post, or go to their forums and join in the conversation! If you have a contest, be sure to let people know about it so they go to your site to participate. Don’t be afraid to pitch in! I know, it sounds like work! But if you go to any of the social sites and advertise your content… more people than you could ever reach will find you! 5. Find blogs that interest you in any way. I own a couple of blogs. When I discover websites that are talking about movies, games, football, or anything else that interests me, I find it worth my while clicking through to their site to see what they’re talking about. That’s exactly why Google loves blogs. It’s because they provide a huge network of people that love talking about stuff. Find blogs that are popular, but that don’t have a lot of ads on them, and you’ve found a potential home for your video. 6. Promote your videos.