Demystifying the Agency Media Buying Process

How to Pitch Digital Placed-based Advertising Opportunities to 
Agencies
and Brands Without Getting Lost In The Shuffle

NEW YORK, NY—October 31, 2011—"It seems like something is going right here,” said Susan Danaher, President of the Digital Place-based Advertising Association (DPAA) at their 4th Annual Digital Media Summit: Context Matters, held in New York on October 19th. “On the heals of a blisteringly hot 25% growth rate in 2010, we just reported a 16% growth rate for the first half of 2011, which is 5 times greater than the national average for all other media.”

Indeed, digital place-based advertising has shown great resilience, despite adverse economic conditions, outperforming all other categories of the US advertising industry. Looking at the growth rates one might conclude that digital place-based media has finally hit its stride, however, it’s not all-smooth sailing from here. The reality is the industry is still experiencing growing pains stemming from misperceptions and old school thinking from both the brand and agency sides.

The DPAA is talking to advertising agencies about how digital placed-based media is included in their planning systems. "Somewhere along the line we were put into a digital out-of-home bucket, and this has clearly caused confusion,” said Ms. Danaher. “The truth is that digital placed-based media deserves its own conceptual bucket, as long as the buckets are defined the way they are now, or we need to redefine the buckets."

Ms. Danaher says that the definition matters as the industry continues to evolve, but that it is also up to the advertising industry to figure it out. "For example, TV as it's defined now in many planning systems is limited to in home viewing—but why?” asks Ms. Danaher. “Much of the viewing isn't done in the home, yet the industry slavishly abides by the old definition. By my way of thinking the TV bucket should include any full motion content that’s being viewed on a screen, whether it’s found in the home, or away from home."

When you consider the current state of planning systems, it’s really not that surprising that television continues to draw the lion’s share of advertising dollars, and if you factor in spending on mobile and Internet-based advertising, it leaves digital place-based media fighting for a piece of the pie.

Read the entire story including a panel discussion that included Bill Koenigsberg, President, CEO & Founder of Horizon Media; David Payne, CEO of Kinetic Americas; Steve Farella, CEO of Targetcast on ScreenMedia Daily