When it comes to media buying, it's a jungle out there. The increasingly fragmented media landscape is fraught with both enormous challenges and unique opportunities for ad buyers. As in the animal kingdom, the difference between living to see another day and being eaten alive may come down to how well you can see.
Fragmentation has resulted in a media world that's more multifaceted and complex than ever before. At the same time, savvy buyers have an unprecedented ability to target potential customers with highly customized—and effective—messaging. The key is to know where to look. And there are lots of places to look these days.
Media buyers face a disjointed and confusing world of online, broadcast, print, sponsorships, video games, billboards, taxi tops and even bathroom stalls. The choices are practically endless. At the same time, the technology that media buyers use hasn't evolved as quickly as the media environment in which they now find themselves. The limitations inherent to the status quo of the ad buying world are on a collision course with progress. The choice is a stark one: either evolve or perish.
The Waning Days of the 'Silo Mentality'
Intense media fragmentation combined with a lack of sophisticated tools have led media buyers to specialize in specific media. Becoming experts in their individual niches was necessary to deal with the volumes of information. Those days are over.
Advertisers demand integrated campaigns that focus on reaching specific target audiences, regardless of medium. As this concept of "media agnosticism" sweeps the landscape, I believe we're seeing the end of the siloed approach to media planning and buying.
Not only is the silo mentality obsolete, it's actually harmful. Specialization results in turf wars instead of collaboration. Integration is what's required now, and that means knowing and having access to information across multiple channels.
To make matters worse, the silo mentality creates an administrative nightmare. Media agencies grapple with a massive shortage of talented people to fill entry-level and midlevel positions. This talent shortage is the result of high staff turnover as entry-level people tend to jump ship for other agencies (or sales positions in publishing firms) at double the salary within a year or two of being hired. In this context, a siloed media structure leads to an institutional memory vacuum. Important information is almost certain to fall through the cracks if an employee leaves his or her job.
