I just came across an article from HuffPo about Media Buying Agencies. For those of you who don't know, Media Buying Agencies are marketing service organizations that works with media to sell ad space to clients. This service used to be handled by the advertising agency, but in the 80's and 90's Media Buying Agencies such as OMD/PHD, Carat and Starcom/Mediavest emerged, doing the media buying job cheaper for most clients. While one will see many traditional Advertising Agencies giving some degree placement strategy as part of the overall strategic consulting package, the actual buying transactions themselves are done by Media Buying agencies. Media Buying services are pitched just like creative services, with good accounts bringing in millions. And for the videoblogger intent on working with advertisers to make the Meida Buying Agency is THE gatekeeper.
What's always struck me these past years is that the videoblogging community rarely discusses these agencies, focusing more on brands/clients themselves. In other words, I see many vloggers going to a brand manager for Acme Soap to go for ad dollars, failing to mention their Media Buying agency or Ad agency. What's even more alarming is that for-profit vloggers are not understanding that strategic planning for media is done up to a year or more in advance, and that plans that were less flexible due to ever-tightening client pending controls (e.g. purchasing department approvals) are air-tight now due to the economy. But the ignorance of content creators is just part of the problem. Media Buying companies should have been reaching out to us long ago. Instead of clinging for dear life to lucrative-but-dwindling 30 second broadcast ads and print media buys, Media Buying agencies should have set a rate structure and a buying system for online video. Anyone in online video should know the names of these agencies like they would any other big-name service, but it seems they don't care to know us, and we don't care to know them. I always wondered why, and I think I got my answer this morning: they're in a bubble. In my years doing ad agency work, I had come to the conclusion that businesses that do the business of communicating seem to have the worst internal and industry communications. Internally, most marketing services agencies are miry messes with many opportunities lost. such is the case with online video. This belief was underlined when I read Jack Meyers' HuffPo article ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-myers/media-industry-will-be-me_b_173377.html) this morning. Not only does Meyers state that Media Buying agencies are just now getting the concept of corporate responsibility and transparency, but Meyers also shows that many at a recent association gathering believe this economy, rife with systemic problems, will turn around in a matter of months. Here's the money quote from the article: This industry is in crisis, but it would be very difficult to perceive that reality if you attended industry gatherings in the past few weeks and listened to most of the rhetoric. Companies remain entrenched in the security that as bad as things might get in our business, the basic status quo will survive. Keep on keeping on, managers seem to believe, and all will be well. Once the economy turns around in the next few months, most executives seem to think, our business will turn around with it. But that assumption is as absurd as believing the real estate market will recover and return to normal in the next few months. WTF? I have been constantly amazed that there have been no representation from Media Buying agencies engaging with vloggers from the beginning, carving out a new revenue source for themselves and us. While there may be a few contrary examples, the fact that many of us don't know how Media Buying agencies fit into the strategic marketing process speaks to their failure to engage with us. They engage with the revenue streams that they know, and dismiss emerging mediums as being too cheap or out of their realm for them to deal with. Because of this, both agencies and content creaters are finding themselves financially crunched. Until we leverage our way into the strategic media planning process and create industry standards and best practices that include engagement with advertising and media buying agencies and their clients during their strategic planning process, we can expect the same crumbs from the few clients that can move small amounts of unplanned cash to "social media". In other words, until we get into their process, independent content creators can expect a laborious route to profitability from ad revenue. I'm not much of a for-profit vlogger (see the other group mails for the artistic online video non-profit I am trying to start), but I firmly believe that for-profit vloggers deserve more legitimacy than the mainstream media structures have allowed them. So the question to ask is: What are we going to do? The stakes are too high to not do something, as so many talented people are as broke as a joke due to this structural deficiency. -- Jeffrey Taylor 912 Cole St, #349 San Francisco, CA 94117 USA Mobile: +14157281264 Fax: +33177722734 http://twitter.com/jeffreytaylor http://organicconversations.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
