Reporting in media planning and media buying helps you to make informed decisions, optimize your campaigns, and demonstrate the ROI of your advertising efforts.
Bionic sponsors the debut of the Digiday podcast
Digiday launched a new podcast today that I think you'll find worth listening and subscribing. Why a podcast? You might be thinking that podcasts were obsolete ten years ago. As it turns out, podcasts are experiencing somewhat of a revival lately with popular shows like Serial and Men in Blazers (my favorite). Big time investors/futurists like Fred Wilson are taking notice. So, as part of their reporting, it makes sense for Digiday to cover podcasting. But they've taken it a step further by producing their own podcast. It's a natural extension to the work they already do. We at Bionic are honored to provide the financial support for its launch. I've long been a huge fan of Digiday's work. They cover the important issues in digital advertising and cut through the b.s. to bring clarity and honesty to confusing topics. I think this podcast will add a powerful new dimension to their journalism. I also think you'll agree that Ricardo [...]
Marketing Budget Winners and Losers 2010-2020 in One Simple Chart
Last week, I got a report via email from Jack Myers called, “2000-2020 Advertising & Marketing Spending Statistics: Exclusive MyersBizNet Data.” It’s a fantastic report containing a goldmine data on how marketing budgets have shifted 2000-2010 and how they are predicted to shift 2010-2020. Here are the key summary data from Jack's report: Although I am comfortable with numbers, I was having a tough time digesting all this data and answering the question “Which marketing channels are going to be the biggest winners?” and conversely, “who are going to be the biggest losers?” So, I put together a simple chart by doing the following: Copied the raw data into Excel Created a new column called Share Gain/Loss which is calculated by subtracting 2010 % Share from 2020 % Share. A positive number indicates that the channel gained market share and a negative number indicates that the channel lost market share. Created another new column called Amount Gained/Lost which is calculated [...]
4 Essential Questions to Ask When Choosing Your Media Buying Platform
Choosing your media buying platform is a critical decision that will make or break your media planning and buying operation. It’s a decision on a tool that you’ll be using for your daily work for years to come. It will give you a distinct competitive advantage if you make the right choice. Or it can bankrupt you if you make the wrong choice. Using Microsoft Excel for media planning and media buying drains your energy and prevents you from reaching your full potential. Excel’s inefficiency is infamous in professional media circles. But finding a media buying platform to replace Excel can be an extremely confusing and frustrating experience. It seems that everyone is offering a media buying platform these days. When you Google “media buying platform” (with the quotes to limit the search results), you get more than 20,000 results. This creates a long, confusing list of options. In reality, only a small fraction of those options actually provide a [...]
There’s a Column for That!
The latest release of Bionic’s media planning software lets you add custom columns and free-form notes to your media plans to support your agency’s workflow.
Agency Operating Systems are the New Battleground
With the inefficiencies in digital media buying today, your agency’s operating system is becoming a critical factor in winning new business, hiring the best talent, and operating profitably.
Complexity is the Digital Ad Agency’s Best Friend
I once heard Terence Kawaja remark that “complexity is the agency’s best friend.” It’s hard to argue with that. Early digital agencies were necessary because doing things like running e-mail campaigns, building websites, and buying banner ads were really complicated. You needed nerdy guys who knew how to write HTML and understood what “Atlas” did. Companies like Operative grew admirable services businesses that took advantage of the fact that trafficking banner ads really sucked, and large publishers couldn’t be bothered to build those capabilities internally. The early days were great times for digital agencies. They were solving real problems. Fast forward 13 years. Digital agencies are still thriving, mostly by unpacking other types of complexity. “Social media experts” were created to consult marketers on the new social marketing channel, “trading desks” launched to leverage the explosion of incomprehensible RTB systems, and terms like “paid, owned, and earned” were coined to complexify digital options. It’s hard being a marketer. So much [...]
Stealing Some of Microsoft’s Ad Tech Market Share
When you think of advertising technology in the display space, the first names you’re likely to think of are Google, PubMatic, Adobe, and AppNexus. But Microsoft? Not really top of mind, unless you are thinking of its disastrous aQuantive acquisition in 2007. Sure, every now and then MSFT will pick up the odd Rapt or Yammer, but is it really having a huge impact in the ad tech space? Even if you’re a regular AdExchanger reader, you’d be justified in thinking it’s not. But you’d be 100% wrong. Microsoft has been quietly running the inner ad-technology workings of digital display since the first banner ad was purchased in 1995. According to some recent research, the company’s ad-planning software boasts an amazing 76% market share among agency media planners. MediaVisor ranks a distant second with a measly 9.7 Almost nine in 10 planners who use Excel spend more than an hour a day using its software, while almost 35% use it for more than four hours per day. That [...]
The Elephant in the Room: Agency Compensation
Earlier this month, during the Agency-Only Day at the iMedia Agency Summit, I gave a presentation on agency automation and streamlining the media planning process. It’s a complicated and expensive process still done manually at most agencies.
One Obvious Way to Save Publishing
The publishing business is under siege by technology. The New York Times is blaming exchange-traded media for its most recent declines in online display ad revenue. Federated Media just gave up on direct sales in favor of exchange-traded media. Meanwhile, CNET just reported that “Google generated $20.8 billion in ad revenue in the first six months of 2012, while the whole U.S. print media industry — newspapers and magazines — made only $19.2 billion.” The trend is clear: publishers are losing and the advertising technology intermediaries are winning. Does this really have to be a win/lose situation? A key topic at publishers’ board meetings must be, “How do we wrestle back control and get the revenue and income we deserve?” Here’s an obvious idea: make it easier for people to buy advertising from you. Today’s process to buy a digital advertisement directly is a mess. It’s a manual 42-step process taking an average of 48 hours per insertion order and costing buyers more than $4k [...]
Building the Core of Your Agency
While it’s common for publishers to outsource their ad operations, it’s not yet common for agencies to outsource ad operations.