Media Advertising and Media Buying for Atlanta Businesses

Media is the part of advertising that decides where a message appears and when. The message itself, whether a radio script, a television commercial, a billboard or an online ad, is the creative work. Media work answers a different set of questions: which audience to reach, through which channels, at what times, with how much repetition and at what cost. A strong message placed in front of the wrong people accomplishes little, and a weak message placed perfectly does not repair itself. In a market the size of Atlanta, every channel offers many outlets, so choosing among them is most of the job.

The work falls into three connected jobs. Planning chooses the audience, the channels and the weight of the schedule. Buying turns the plan into purchases: negotiating rates, choosing positions and times, and confirming that what was bought actually ran. Analysis looks at what people did afterward and feeds that back into the next round of decisions. Kirk Donovan Enterprises offers media work that spans strategy, buying, consulting and analysis, along with digital advertising services, and the sections below explain how each part works.

Every sound media plan begins with two questions that have nothing to do with channels. Who exactly needs to hear from you, and what should they do afterward? A restaurant that wants people through the door this weekend, a contractor who needs calls from homeowners and a retailer announcing a sale each have a different audience, a different response and a different clock.

From there the plan looks at how that audience spends its day. Where do they commute, what do they watch, what do they search for on a phone, and which feeds do they scroll? A media plan is a set of educated guesses about people's habits, and a good planner treats it that way: the guesses are written down, tested against evidence and revised when the evidence disagrees. Reaching people is only half of the task. The plan also has to make the response easy once they are reached, with a clear business name, a simple web address and a phone line that gets answered.

Each channel does a different job, and a plan gets stronger when those jobs are chosen deliberately instead of by habit. Our article on how to get the most out of your media advertising covers choosing channels and using them well.

Radio

Radio reaches people while they drive, work or do something else, which makes it a medium of repetition and reminders. Stations are chosen by format and audience, and schedules are built around times of day. Formats, dayparts and spot lengths are covered on the radio advertising page.

Television

Television pairs picture with sound and motion, so it can demonstrate a product, tell a story and let customers see and hear the people behind a business. Today that includes local broadcast, cable and streaming placements, each with its own targeting and buying rules. The television advertising page shows how those options differ.

Outdoor

Outdoor advertising works along roads and transit routes, where location defines the audience and a message has seconds to land. It suits directions, reminders and simple branding, and it usually does its strongest work beside other media. Formats, placement and design for a glance are explained under outdoor advertising.

Local online placements

Listings, maps, reviews and area-targeted ads catch people at the moment they look for a business nearby. That part of the plan is covered under local advertising, while the broader digital channels are collected under interactive and digital advertising.

Buying is where plans meet price lists. Radio and television stations, outdoor companies and digital platforms each sell their time or space differently, and nearly every traditional medium has room to negotiate. A published rate is a starting point. What an outlet will accept varies with demand, the time of year, how much you commit to and how flexible you are about exactly when your message runs.

A few terms are worth knowing before any contract is signed. Reach is how many different people are exposed to a message, and frequency is how many times each one is exposed. A fixed budget forces a choice between the two, and spreading it across too many outlets often leaves nobody hearing the message often enough to remember it. Flighting concentrates spending into bursts around the periods that matter, while continuity spreads it evenly through the calendar. A make-good is the replacement a seller owes when a scheduled placement does not run as promised, and a careful buyer asks for proof of performance as routine.

Sellers earn their living by filling their own inventory, so their recommendations lean toward what they have available. Buying well means comparing options across outlets, knowing what to ask for and keeping the purpose of the plan in front of every conversation. More articles on buying and placement are collected under media and outdoor advertising on the blog.

Every proposal from a seller tells a story about an audience, and the story deserves questions. Look at who the audience is, not only how large it is. A smaller audience that resembles your customers can outperform a larger one that does not. Look at when the schedule runs, how the placements are spread across the period and what happens if something fails to run as sold. Ask where the audience estimates come from and how recent they are, because habits change faster than printed rate cards.

It also helps to ask what a seller would change if the budget were smaller. A specific answer suggests someone has thought about your plan, while an answer that simply repeats the package describes inventory. Written proposals make this easier, since every promise can be compared across outlets and checked after the schedule has run.

A media plan improves only as fast as the feedback it receives. Audience estimates and impressions describe the chance that someone saw or heard a message. They do not describe what anyone did. Analysis closes that gap by tying the schedule to responses such as calls, visits, form submissions, name searches and mentions from new customers.

The tools are usually simple. Give a campaign its own web page or phone line, invite customers to mention a phrase, and ask every new customer how they heard about you, and each one produces evidence. Lining up when responses arrive against when placements ran shows which deserve more budget and which deserve less. Web analytics add detail about what visitors do after they arrive, and marketing analytics explains that side in more depth.

Honest analysis also admits its limits. Seasonal swings, a competitor's sale or the weather can move response, and some media earn their keep by making a name familiar, which pays off later. The goal is not a perfect number but a better decision each time money is assigned.

People seldom respond to broadcast or outdoor advertising by calling right away. More often they pick up a phone, search for the business, look at the listing and the reviews, and then decide. Traditional media creates the interest, and digital channels such as search, maps, social platforms and email receive the people it creates. Planning the two separately leaves gaps. A broadcast schedule that sends listeners to a website that is slow on a phone is money partly wasted.

Mason Donovan grew up around the advertising and marketing business, and as a child of the digital era he has a firm grasp of how traditional media leads people to digital. That relationship, from the schedule on the air to the destination online, is the one this section describes, and a plan has to account for both ends of it.

• Choosing by habit. Repeating last year's plan because it is familiar, instead of asking where the customers are now.
• Spreading too thin. Buying a little of everything so that no channel runs often enough to be noticed.
• Judging too early or too late. Cutting a schedule after one slow week, or letting one run for months without looking at the evidence.
• Ignoring the follow-through. Sending people to a website, phone line or location that is not ready for them.
• Mismatching message and medium. Using radio to deliver a message that needs a picture, or a billboard to deliver a paragraph.
• Chasing every new platform. Adding channels faster than anyone can measure them.
• Forgetting the calendar. Running the heaviest schedule when customers are least ready to buy.

A few plain questions, answered in writing, make every later media decision easier.

• Which customers do you need to reach, and where do they spend their time?
• What should they do once the message has reached them?
• Where will that action happen: in a store, on the website or on the phone?
• How will you tell a response that came from this campaign from one that did not?
• How long can the plan run before you judge it, and what will you look at on that day?
• Who will answer the calls, messages and form submissions, and how quickly?

The firm keeps its office in Covington, Georgia, and serves Atlanta-area businesses. Working through these questions is a sensible first step whether a media plan will be built in-house or with outside help.