To book activity with the media and negotiate the most competitive rate.

The buying team are then responsible for securing all the bookings with the media representatives and ensuring that all the recommendations and placement requirements are met. It is also the responsibility of the buying team to look at ways to leverage negotiations in order to save money for the advertiser, but not at the expense of compromising the strategy.

The steps that are taken to buy a campaign will vary from media to media with television taking a larger amount of time a search individual commercial spot needs to be selected for every market.

Television

The objective of a campaign may be to purchase 100 TARPS. The buyer then needs to buy a selection of programs to build the schedule as close as possible to this 100 TARPS. The following chart provides an example of how a television schedule is built and the selection must take into account things such as the program environment, compatibility to the product and strategy, the cost of the program, performance of the program, and the program’s ability to deliver against the communication objectives set.

The buyer then summarises all the bookings for each Network and then processes the bookings for confirmation. As television advertising has a restriction on advertising minutes per hour, they have a limited inventory of spots to sell. An agency may process a booking where the Network cannot confirm all placements. In this situation the buyer then needs to revisit the plan and identify alternative placement(s) options.

Print

Newspaper and magazine titles are usually selected at the implementation planning stages of the buyer usually assesses all titles in order to determine the best selection in order to meet the strategic requirements. The criteria for selection usually includes assessment against various elements including genre, cost efficiency, reach, appropriate content, frequency of publication etc.

Once selected the buyer will seek approval from the client and then follow the instructions given within the strategy and process the bookings with the media representative of each publication. The buyer may also be required to identify the best positioning within the title and negotiate for the placement of the ad to appear within their preferred environment. They will also at this stage try to leverage any value – added opportunities such as editorial.

Radio

The strategic planning process will identify the required genre, environment and reach and frequency objective of the radio schedule against a specific demographic and it is then the job of the buyer to select the preferred list of stations and number of spots to be bought and usually this information will include details on the number of spots per session / day. Again with client approval the buyer will then process the bookings to these instructions.