Inside the minds of digital ad buyers.

Decades of experience has radio relatively well prepared for walking into the office of traditional ad buyers. But in the age of digital there’s an entirely new breed of buyers across the table. “We are held to efficiency standards across the board,” Universal McCann SVP of digital media Jason Cole told last week’s Borrell Local Online Advertising conference. Universal McCann buys a lot of digital auto ads, and while the client wants results from everything they buy, it’s even more important online. As a result, buyers push as hard as they can to drive down CPMs in order to buy more ad inventory and compete for attention. 

But The Martin Agency group planning director Matt Williams, who buys for big radio clients such as Geico, says a deeper engagement with the consumer is even more important than price. “The power of an idea, no matter where it comes from, has gained so much traction in the last five years because of how we can bring that idea to life with different media and different channels of engagement,” he explains. “So CPMs could be out of line from an efficiency standpoint — but that’s okay — I’ll listen to that proposal a lot faster.” 

The internet is also shaking up the notion of what “local” advertising means. Finnegan says his clients define it by whether it makes cash registers ring. They also want a lot more data from sellers. William says, “I want the data upfront to plan, but I also want the data as the campaign rolls out to optimize on the back end.” 

To make the sale, Geomentum CEO Sean Finnegan says traditional sellers need to get better at researching the client, and spend less time talking about their company’s website content and audience size. “If you come in with a solution with how we’re going to achieve our goals and creativity how our brands will execute on your site — you give us vision and excitement and we work with you to enhance that — and larger budgets flow from that,” he says.