MEDIA AGENCY

Media Agency is a company that advises on how and where to advertise and on how to ​present a ​positive ​picture of themselves to the ​public. (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/media-agency)

A media agency gives brand owners and advertisers suggestions and expert advice on a brand's position, messaging and creative communications. Media advertising agencies work independently and separately from a client in order to provide the best possible expert advice on a client's promotional needs. A media agency will also plan a media campaign as well as buy the media space on behalf of a client.

(http://www.mediacommanchester.com/en/faq-page/mediacom/what-is-a-media-advertising-agency.aspx)

Functions of media agency

Advertising agency is an independent service-rendering organization. It delivers various services and performs many functions for its clients, who are advertisers. It is mainly involved in activities like planning, preparing and placing of ads in media. It also performs non-advertising functions for them. It offers them advisory and creative services. It does so to make a profit.

Following image depicts the major functions of advertising agency.

1. Attracting clients

Advertising agency needs clients (advertisers). Without them, it cannot survive.

Ad agency always tries to attract clients usually by giving ads in trade journals. It also seeks their attention by offering them various services. It offers expert, cheap and quick services. It maintains good relations with them. It tries to give them full satisfaction. It strives harder to attain their goodwill and customer-loyalty.

2. Research function

Advertising agency gathers information related to the client's product.

It collects following information about a product under its research function:

·         Features, quality, advantages and limitations of a product

·         Present and future market possibilities

·         Competition in the market

·         Situation in the market

·         Distribution methods

·         Buyers' preferences

Ad agency analyses (studies) all this collected information properly and draws conclusions for its research. It helps in planning an advertising campaign, selecting proper media and creation function.

3. Advertising planning

Advertising agency plans the entire ad campaign of its client.

Advertising planning is a primary function of an ad agency. It is done when its research function is completed. That is, after analyzing the client's product, its competitors, market conditions, etc. It is done by experts who use their professional experience to make a result-oriented advertising-plan.

After making the advertising plan, it is shown to the client. If the client likes and approves it, then the plan is executed (put into action).

4. Creative function

Advertising agency put the advertising-plan into action under its creative function.

Creation of ads is the most important function of an ad agency. Generally, it involves activities like:

·         Copy writing,

·         Drawing photographs,

·         Making illustrations, layouts, an effective ad message, etc.

These jobs are done by experts like copy writers, artists, designers, etc. These people are highly skilled and creative. They make an advertisement more appealing. Attractive ads help to increase the sales of the product.

The ad agency must always use fresh ideas for creating ads. It must neither use old tactics nor copy the ad-campaign of other products.

5. Media selection

Media selection is a highly specialized function of an ad agency. It must select the most suitable media for its client's ad. It must choose media, which has a potential to give best results for the lowest cost. It must select more than one media for the ad. For example, an advertisement can be put on television, the Internet, newspapers, magazines, etc.

After selecting the media, the ad agency must maintain goods contacts with the media.

6. Advertising budget

Advertising agency helps an advertiser to prepare his ad budget. It helps him to use his budget economically and make the best use of it.

Without a proper advertising budget, there is a risk of client's funds getting wasted or lost. If an advertiser suffers a loss, he may not bring new projects. As a result, there is a possibility of losing a potential client that can bring more business to an ad agency.

7. Coordination

Advertising agency brings a good coordination between the advertiser, itself, media and distributors. This is a very important function. If coordination is proper, it will increase the sales of the product.

8. Sales promotion

Advertising agency performs sales promotion. It helps an advertiser to introduce sales promotion measures for the dealers and consumers. This helps to increase the sales of the product.

9. Marketing research

Advertising agency helps its clients to solve their marketing problems. It does so by conducting a marketing research for them.

10. Non-advertising functions

Advertising agency also performs many non-advertising functions:

·         It fixes the prices of the product,

·         It determines the discounts,

·         It designs the product,

·         It also designs its package, trademarks, labels, etc.

These non-advertising services help an advertiser to increase its sales.

11. Public relations

Advertising agency does the public relations (PR) work for its clients. It increases the goodwill between its clients and other parties like consumers, employees, middlemen, shareholders, etc. It also maintains good relations between the client and media owner.

(http://kalyan-city.blogspot.fi/2013/08/eleven-major-functions-of-advertising.html)

Types of advertising agencies

Full service agencies

The full service agencies carry out research, create, plan, produce advertisements and select media. Other services offered by the full service agencies include sales training, sales promotion, strategic market planning, event management, package design, trade shows and public relations.

Creative agencies

Creative agencies job is to create the actual advertisements only. The creative agencies create interesting and imaginative advertising themes and also produce original and innovative advertisements. A client that contracts a creative agency will also have to contract another advertising agency to carry out other administrative functions relating to advertising.

Business-to-Business agencies

Business-to-Business (B2B) advertising agencies specialize in advertising products to a business, as opposed to consumer, audience. B2B agencies understand the complex decision-making processes in business marketing and utilize media that enable advertisers to build relationships with prospects and customers over a period of time. B2B agencies may offer further specialization in sectors such as technology or industrial products.

Specialized agencies

A Specialized agency offers its services within a certain industry such as real estate, financial, medical and education or a particular function e.g. public relations, research, marketing and internet. Specialized agencies therefore concentrate on specific areas only.

In-house agencies

In-house agencies are owned by the advertisers. The In-house agencies are formed and supervised by the company. They perform all functions relating to advertising the company’s product as in the case of full service agencies. Most companies establish the in-house agencies in order to cut the cost of advertising. A company may use its in house agency only or may contract an external agency to work together with its in house agency.

Interactive agencies

Interactive agencies are a bit unique from others because of the services that they offer. They offer services such as web development and web design, internet advertising-commerce consulting and search engine marketing. Interactive agencies became very popular before the other advertising agencies fully adopted the use of internet.

Media buying agencies

A media buying agency is a company that buys television and radio time and then resells the time to other advertising agencies and advertisers. Media buying agencies also assist the advertisers to plan the media strategies. Media buying agencies normally buy a lot of space and time from the various media stations thus they are given huge amounts of discounts that enable them sell the television and radio time at low prices to the small advertising agencies and clients.

Social media agencies

Social media agencies do product promotion of the clients’ products on the different social media platforms such as social networking sites, discussion forums, blogs, microblogs and Q&A sites. The two main services offered by social media agencies to clients are online reputation management and social media marketing.

Recruitment agencies

Recruitment advertising agencies advertise job vacancies at different levels. Some specialize in senior management positions or temporary staff, others may focus on sectors such as jobs in accountancy or information technology.

Healthcare communication agencies

Health care communication agencies offer marketing and strategic communications services for life science and healthcare industries.

(http://typeslist.com/types-of-advertising-agencies/)

(http://smallbusiness.chron.com/different-types-advertising-agencies-22929.html)

Pros and cons of using a media agency

Advantages

·         Expertise: Part of an ad agency’s success is tied to how well they keep up with business trends and how effectively they can leverage them for their clients. It’s their business to know what works best in the marketplace.

·         Collective Knowledge: Staff is immersed in the best practices of pay-per-click advertising and is usually fully certified in search, display, and analytics. Agencies are also able to dedicate more time and resources to an account. The ability of an agency to always put fresh eyes on an account is something that can’t be done with limited in-house staff.

·         Cost: In many instances, hiring an agency is cheaper than increasing headcount within an organization. Agencies often charge a percentage of advertising spend or a flat monthly fee.

·         Access to Additional Resources: Agencies tend to build strong relationships with the large advertising platforms. Agencies can consult their Google or Bing teams for advice on how to handle key aspects of an account. Agencies often gain access to insights that are simply not shared directly with advertisers.

·         Perspective: An agency typically works with more than one type of business. Having a wider variety of experiences gives them a large pool of strategies and resources to draw from. An agency helps you avoid getting tunnel vision from focusing only on your company or industry.

·         Objectivity Emotions and personalities: play less of a role in agency recommendations. This also makes it easier for you to be objective in evaluating the agency’s work. 

·         Less burnout: Agency professionals who work on several different accounts benefit from variety to keep them fresh. Brainstorming with colleagues and periodically changing team members can jump start new ideas, too.

·         Scalability: If needed, an agency can pull in extra people to work on large projects or a last-minute crisis.

Disadvantages

·         Cost: Yes, working with an advertising agency can be also expensive. You may have to limit your relationship to services you can’t do efficiently on your own or employ an agency in an advisory capacity to help you devise long term strategies.

·         Communication: There will be a lot more work needed on the client’s part to communicate their needs and wants. There will also be a learning curve while the agency gets up to speed on the ins and outs of your paid search account. Be prepared to put in this work and never assume an agency understands completely what’s expected of them.

·         Understanding of Your Business: Agencies will not have the intimate knowledge of your business model. They are working without access to proprietary data unless the organization provides access to it and trains them how to interpret the data. This is something that in-house managers do not have to worry about.

·         Competition: If you’re a relatively small fish in the agency’s pond, you may not get the “A” team assigned to your business.

·         Availability: Since agencies have other clients, they may not be able to address your needs as quickly as you’d like. Even getting people together for a simple assignment can take some scheduling.

(http://www.usbankconnect.com/article/house-advertising-pros-cons,

http://www.ppchero.com/whos-managing-your-ppc-pros-and-cons-of-in-house-and-agency/)

Budgeting when using a media agency

There are a wide range of agency costing and budgeting options for marketers to consider when outsourcing their marketing activities. The fees model used will vary by both type of agency and client engagement as you seek to agree what is a practical, mutually beneficial remuneration mix.

Here are the costing options used most often by agencies:

Option 1. Blended rate with time estimates model

A blended rate covers all the specialists in the agency, regardless of role or seniority and will be one rate (e.g. €800 per day). Useful if you are trying to keep things simple whilst estimating. And some clients will prefer this approach.

Option 2. Specialist rate with time estimates model

The rates for individuals vary dependent on both their contribution to profitability and also the level of seniority and / or experience they have in the industry. You will be paying more for experienced people yourself and will seek to pass that on to a client who needs that experienced input into a creative or technical solution etc.

Option 3. Fixed fee model

Sometimes a client fixes the budget as a and in this case the agency has to calculate (with its own charge out rates) how much time can realistically be spent at each stage of the process to arrive at a solution that will meet any KPIs or campaign objectives set. Fixed fees should ideally only be set in consultation: agencies and clients should work in partnership to transparently work out what is truly involved in delivering a solution.

Option 4. Value-based model

This is charging for the value of the strategy or creative thinking rather than the time taken to do that thinking itself. Value-­based remuneration is based on the assumption the client will gain a high ROI against the fee you charge.

(http://www.smartinsights.com/managing-digital-marketing/planning-budgeting/marketing-agency-costing-and-budgeting-models/)

Selecting the right media mix

A media mix is the combination of communication channels your business can use to meet its marketing objectives. Typically, these include newspapers, radio, television, billboards, websites, email, direct mail, the Internet and social media, such as Facebook or Twitter. Combining these channels in a media mix enables you to communicate in the most effective way with different types of customers and prospects at different stages of the purchase decision, according to Entrepreneur.

An effective media mix delivers the right marketing message to your customers and prospects at the lowest cost and with minimal waste. If you want to reach a consumer audience across the country, you might use a media mix that includes national newspapers, radio or television. If you wanted to reach a specific group of business decision-makers, such as technical directors, your mix might include specialist business magazines or exhibitions aimed at those directors. To reach a small number of key executives who influence a major purchasing decision, you might include personalized direct mail or an executive briefing session in your mix.

(http://smallbusiness.chron.com/media-mix-78802.html)

What is a media plan?

The media plan is a document describing objectives, strategy, tactics, resource allocation, and media schedule and media mix to be used in reaching a targeted . (http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/media-plan.html#ixzz3qp5BmlQg)

Concepts

The terms "earned, owned and paid media" have become very popular in the interactive marketing space today. In fact, taken together they can be applied as a simple way for interactive marketers to categorize and ultimately prioritize all of the media options they have today.

Therefore we just published research defining each type of media and providing interactive marketers with prescriptive advice on how to best apply them. Here's a summary of how we defined each type of online media and their roles:

Ultimately these types of media work best together but making the hard choices of what to include and what not to include is crucial - especially when budgets are tight. But if you simply start by categorizing your media and identifying the right roles based on your objectives, then you’re on the right path.

(http://blogs.forrester.com/interactive_marketing/2009/12/defining-earned-owned-and-paid-media.html)

Paid Media – Often thought of as “traditional” online advertising through display ads, pay per click search ads and sponsorships. The pro for paid media is it’s ability to be implemented pretty much on-demand, the ability to have some degree of control and also that it scales. The growing popularity of social advertising on sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (YouTube as well) adds another option for marketers to gain presence in channels where consumers and buyers are spending their time. The appearance of brand messages and content within paid media can work together with social sharing and organic search.

(http://www.toprankblog.com/2011/07/online-marketing-media-mix/)

Earned Media – The result of public & media relations efforts to gain coverage in publications – on and offline. Or essentially, brand presence within media without having to advertise. This definition also extends to brands that behave online in such a way that “customers empowered to publish” create content on the brand’s behalf inspiring buzz and word of mouth.

(http://www.toprankblog.com/2011/07/online-marketing-media-mix/)

Owned Media – Media, content and assets that the brand controls, like websites, blogs, newsletters and brand social media accounts. Brands are increasingly behaving like publishers with editorial staff managing content creation steams. “Content Marketing” is the hot topic when it comes to Owned Media and can facilitate brand information discovery through search and social channels. Content engages customers and fosters relationships throughout the customer lifecycle. Brand content to serve both broad and niche audiences is not immediately scalable, but can provide long term growth benefits without corresponding growth in costs. (http://www.toprankblog.com/2011/07/online-marketing-media-mix/)

Shared Media – Brand social web participation and interaction with consumers on content on sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that  results in content is “shared media” since it’s a result of a shared interaction. Because of the nature of social sharing and engagement on social media sites, Shared Media can propagate across an individual’s network to others, and so on and so on.  Paid and Owned Media can inspire Shared Media. Shared Media can inspire Earned Media.

(http://www.toprankblog.com/2011/07/online-marketing-media-mix/)

Intra media – Media decisions within a media class. It involves the selection of specific media vehicles. (http://www.marketing-comms.com/glossary_i.php)  

Intermedia – Refers to the media planners' decision of which medium to use between the media classes, i.e. the selection between TV, radio, cinema, press and posters (outdoor and transport). Some planners also include direct mail and the Internet as main media classes. Inter-media decisions are media decisions at the broadest level.

(http://www.marketing-comms.com/glossary_i.php)