Buyers struggle with buying process

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Balihoo, an on-demand media buying and planning platform that provides software-PLUS-services to media professionals across all mediums, announced the results of its media planning and buying workflow survey.


Conducted in April, the survey polled media planners and buyers’ attitudes regarding their day-to-day workflow. Questions ranged from the importance of different data sources to the process of developing and issuing RFP’s to the post-RFP activities of generating insertion orders and flowcharting. 

“Media planners and buyers are faced with an ever-growing landscape of advertising options,” explained Pete Gombert, Balihoo CEO. “However the survey results demonstrate that the software and processes currently utilized are forcing well-paid planners and buyers to waste valuable time cutting and pasting Excel and Word documents together.”

Gombert continued, “By using more sophisticated tools for building consideration sets and issuing and analyzing RFP’s, media professionals are able to streamline their workflow, allowing them to shift more efforts from administrative work to high-value strategic services which benefits both the agency and the advertiser.”

Survey results highlights include:
Data is important. Those surveyed agreed that building a robust consideration set was the first step in making an intelligent advertising purchase. Ranked as “very important” data points were: a “comprehensive list of media properties” (77%), “publisher-supplied data” (75%) and “audience measurement data” (73%).

Aggregating data is painful. Respondents are relatively satisfied when it comes to issuing RFPs. It’s aggregating and comparing what comes in from ad sales reps that makes their jobs a pain, as 80% noted that they are either “not at all satisfied” or only “somewhat satisfied” with this step in the process.

Although unhappy with the process, few use an RFP tool. The vast majority of respondents (80%) are not using a software tool as part of their RFP process. Many of those surveyed are using Excel, though they don’t classify it as a “software tool.”

Open to change. Media planners and buyers are still optimistic and ready to embrace new tools that can help them perform their jobs more effectively. Specifically, 61% are “definitely willing” to try a solution that combines a comprehensive, searchable database of advertising opportunities with built-in RFP functionality.

Lisa Weinstein, Managing Director, Mindshare Chicago and member of Balihoo’s Senior Advisory Council, added, “At Mindshare, we think it’s critical that we continue to look to drive more efficiency into the media buying process – using better tools and data to create more effective media plans that increases the return on advertising dollar for our clients. While it’s important for agencies to make smart investments in media planning and buying tools, we should also push media owners to provide intelligent platforms for evaluating, and purchasing, their advertising inventory.”