August 14, 2023

 There are many benefits to partnering with a media agency to handle the strategy, buying, and placement of your media campaigns. Whether you’re about to start onboarding with your first media agency partner, choosing a replacement for your current media agency, or just want to deepen your understanding of an existing media agency partnership, there are a variety of factors that will affect the success of your campaigns.

So, what are some questions you should ask your media agency?

What Metrics Will You Track to Measure Results?

In the not-so-distant past, the only way to measure the effectiveness of a media campaign was by counting Impressions, the number of times your ad was viewed. With the rise of digital media came the tracking of Clicks, CTR, and even Pageviews. But now these are largely considered ‘vanity metrics’, and not particularly useful when evaluating campaign performance. The metrics or KPIs that you will need to track depends on your individual business or campaign needs. When looking to drive web traffic, Pageviews are nearly irrelevant compared to your Bounce Rate, Time on Page, Unique Users, Direct Traffic Lift, Conversions, and so on. Your agency should be able to explain which metrics are important for your specific campaign needs, and why.

How Do You Prevent Fraud and Protect My Brand Safety?

One reason that Impressions and Clicks have lost their value is that bots and spam traffic can be easily used to artificially inflate these metrics without providing any actual value to your campaign performance. A good media agency will demonstrate how careful placement will engage and attract actual potential customers, and not just generate fake traffic to drive up those vanity metrics. Placement on these bot-friendly or even malicious websites can not only waste your media budget but also expose your or your client’s brand to harm, by allowing it to appear next to controversial or spammy content. A large and rising amount of ad spend waste and brand safety danger is the result of lazy programmatic buying, which leads us to…

What Are Your Programmatic Media Buying Capabilities?

Programmatic is now the leading edge of digital marketing, and its continually expanding capabilities mean it’s only getting more useful. But your campaign performance will vary significantly depending on the skill and attentiveness of the programmatic buyer you partner with. Using a lazy programmatic buyer not only lowers your placement capabilities and the quality of ad inventory available, but increases the risk of having your ads shown on pages and alongside content that does not align with your or your client’s values and image. Ask your media agency about how they do their programmatic buying, and especially if they have a direct seat on a DSP, which grants them direct access to ad inventory and the ability to bid on placements in real time.

Will You Optimize and Adjust My Campaign as it Runs?

Modern ad buying technology makes modifying a media campaign easier than ever, and this should be a mandatory feature of any relationship you have with a media agency. At Mosaic Media, we monitor all aspects of our clients’ media campaigns in real time as they run, automatically optimizing and adjusting some elements. For larger changes, we reach out to the client to suggest more significant adjustments to exploit new opportunities as we discover them.

Where Are My Ads Running?

Along with the actual performance of the ads in your campaign, most media agencies should offer some kind of real time dashboard that you can access during your campaign to see the general areas where your ads are appearing. While they may not be able to list every individual placement, you should be able to view real time information on which audiences are being shown your ads and on which platforms they are appearing.

Partnering with a media agency to handle the strategy and placement of your (or your client’s) media campaigns can sometimes feel like a daunting task. But with these general questions in mind, you should be able to establish a strong foundation to your partnership with years of successful results to look forward to. Please reach out to us if we can provide any assistance or additional information on the benefits of a media agency partnership!