Know your saleshouses & combine according to your goals
As mentioned before, there are many saleshouses. But what differentiates them from each other? On the one side there are saleshouses like DPG, Ads & Data, IPM and more. On the other side there are GumGum, Ask Locala, Theads,...
The first ones are the saleshouses with their own inventory. They actually have their own platforms where they make place for advertisers to put their ads. They work as intermediaries between the advertiser and the publisher. For example: DPG owns media channels like HLN, De Morgen, Immoweb,... When an advertiser wants to buy some inventory on these channels, they go through the saleshouse of DPG.
The second group, they don’t own their proper network. They partner up with other networks. A plus side with these saleshouses is that you can have plural placements coming from different big saleshouses (DPG placements and Ads&Data placements together), whilst for DPG or Ads&Data, it’s solely their own network. On the other hand, these placements most of the time get the left over spots that the big saleshouses couldn’t sell themselves.
Another difference between the many saleshouses is their inventory itself. Some are more French related and some are more Dutch related. For instance, if you have a big Dutch campaign coming up, you could do best by looking at Ads&Data or DPG. For French campaigns, on the other hand, RMB or IPM have better inventory. For a full view on the Belgian media landscape, you can take a look at image 1 beneath (important to mention that this media-landscape changes and varies from time to time due to new collaborations or take-overs,...).
Ask their expertise, don’t just decide yourself
As mentioned in the previous part, there are many saleshouses. When making your mediaplan, you don’t have to focus solely on one of them. Best practice is to give a small briefing to all of the saleshouses. You can send out an e-mail or give a call to all of them. This way you can ask for their expertise. They know their inventory themselves way better than you do. They also often have new innovative formats that are not yet findable on their website. This way they can give you the best combination of formats and deals for your objective.
Educate yourself beforehand on the formats and possibilities
Before going into a call with them, make sure to check out their offer. When you are in a call with or mailing the saleshouses, it is always better to know a bit what they are talking about. There are so many options in terms of formats and placements, that it might be easy to get lost in a call like this. When this happens you either: lose a lot of time asking what they are talking about and searching it during the call or you end up just saying yes to something and not perfectly knowing what you agreed on. Doing your research beforehand makes it so you can ask more targeted questions and have a better and more clear outcome, suiting your wants and needs. Their websites most of the time already contain a lot of information about their offer (prices, tech specs, buying methods,...), be sure to go through it in preparation of a meeting..
Be critical, they also want to sell
As mentioned before, the saleshouses try to sell their inventory to you. Which makes them really good salespersons. In general, they will always try their hardest and best to help you with your needs and get you the best solution and format as possible. But be critical. This is another point why doing your research beforehand is very important. Know what you are talking about. Know what you want. Know what they are offering. Make sure you compare the different offers from the different saleshouses. Be sure that the formats they propose, really align with your objectives.
Think upfront about possibilities for the reporting
This is an important and crucial point (especially for direct deals). After a campaign has run with the saleshouses, they normally send you a small report about the campaign. There are some standard metrics that they report on. Impressions, clicks, CTR,... However, it’s most of the time very limited. Before making a deal with the saleshouses, be sure to ask them about the reports. Ask them what they can measure. Here are some tips about what you can ask beforehand for the report:
First, if you have an awareness campaign, ask them if you can have viewability metrics. Just knowing your impressions is too little information, reach or viewability or brand lift are important results here.
Second, it’s also very important to ask for demographic details. Which ages did you reach? What interests did your topic relate to the most?
Last, saleshouses often have best practices and recommendations to give you, especially after a campaign. Ask their vision on the campaign, ask for benchmarks, ask what would work for a next time. And also take those tips to other saleshouses. This way you can keep optimizing your campaigns.
Use the best fitting deal
Once you made a decision with the saleshouse on what the best campaign is for your objectives, it is time to make a deal. There are many deals possible. The key to taking the right one is a trade-off between more control on your side or more efficiency on your side.
First of all you can take the easiest deal, direct insertion order. This way you really decide on a budget, a set rate (CPM, CPC,...) and a set inventory. The set-up happens on the saleshouse side. You just have to get them the creatives. This is efficient and gives you time for other things. However, you lose some control with this process. If you are more bent on the control, you can go for programmatic deals (see the different options in image 2). For this, you need a demand side platform like DV360 or Xandr to set up the campaign yourself. Afterwards, you have some control. For instance: when taking a programmatic guaranteed deal, you still have the fixed rate, fixed inventory, but you can see the results yourself in the platform. Next, there is the PMP, here you will have no fixed inventory (from the saleshouse you make the deal with = invite-only-auction) and you have no fixed rate. You really enter an auction of this saleshouse according to your deal. This gives you way more control over how to allocate and handle your budgets. As mentioned, there are many deals possible. Which you can all find in the summary below. It is important to know what is most important to you. Is it important to really have a full delivery of clicks or impressions, you should go for guaranteed deals or direct deals. If you want some control in terms of resulting rates and budget allocations, there are the auction deals that would work better. This is also something that can be discussed with the saleshouse themselves.
Conclusion
Following these 6 tips is a great starting point to begin creating a strong mediaplan consisting of qualitative placements. It’s important to reach out to several saleshouses with the same briefing. Listen to their expertise and recommendations. You can afterwards even compare offers and formats to see what fits best with your (or your cliënts) visions. After choosing your formats, it is important to pick the correct kind of deal, and make sure that reporting is already agreed upon beforehand, so that you don’t run into any surprises when the campaign ends.
Hanne Van Loock
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