The Online Radio Daze: Identifying the Media Exchange Methods for Your Online/Offline Station
2) What is your schedule?
How many weeks out do you need to plan? Can you plan and negotiate your buys in advance? Or do you need to be able to adjust your ads and schedules at the last-minute? Some services, like Bid4Spots (and possibly Google Audio, when it launches), specialize in last-minute airtime only. Others handle scheduled buys for the longer term.
The last-minute advantage: value (read: more affordable spots). But make sure any last-minute provider can guarantee that your spots will run in your desired dayparts. The long-term/scheduled buy advantage: the ability to plan and control an entire campaign over several weeks or months. You pay more for the spots, but gain long-term control over the schedule.
3) What method of transaction do you prefer?
Negotiated/set rates, forward auction, reverse auction, bid/accept pricing — these are some of your options.
Long-term media buys typically involve negotiated rates, while last-minute airtime often is sold at auction. A forward auction is the traditional model — a seller puts inventory up for auction and multiple buyers compete to bid the price up. In a reverse auction, an advertiser announces his or her intention to buy media, and multiple sellers (the radio stations) compete to bid the price down.
Bid4Spots uses a reverse auction model to sell last-minute airtime only. SWMX sells remnant inventory through its Web-based tool using a bid/accept pricing model — in which advertisers offer rates which are then either accepted or rejected by broadcasters. Separate from its online tool, the company also negotiates long-term buys with specific stations.
4) How important is station specificity? How important is rate disclosure?
In a long-term, negotiated buy, these aren’t factors — the buyer obviously is negotiating with a specific station and ends up with a set rate. The different auction models for last-minute airtime, however, vary in their approaches.
Radio stations often don’t want to discount their unsold inventory because they’re worried about undercutting themselves and devaluing their own product. The media exchanges address the stations’ concerns in various ways — and sometimes that means that the buyer trades some control for deep discounts. If you want airtime on a specific radio station, you’ll need to negotiate the buy in advance. But if any station will do as long as it meets your requirements — say, an audience of women ages 25-54 who listen to country music, and a budget that doesn’t exceed your pre-designated CPM — then last-minute auctions will meet your needs.
5) What is your desired footprint? National, regional or local?
This is one of the more straightforward questions — you probably know your desired reach. Every media exchange is constantly expanding or adjusting their respective rosters of participating radio stations, so check the company’s latest stats to make sure your markets are adequately represented. Confirm that those stations are active participants — not merely passive registered users.
Once you’ve determined some priorities, choosing an online media buying tool gets much easier. If you want the ability to select specific stations and to negotiate your rates, you’ll need to plan in advance and either work directly with the station sales reps or with a company like SWMX. If you want the lowest rates possible, and the ability to designate station format and demographics — but don’t need to select the specific station — then you can buy last-minute with a solution like Bid4Spots.
Media buying and selling is changing fast, but with well-defined advertising goals you’re sure to keep ahead of the game.
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