Work History: Media Buyer

Posted: November 17th, 2009 | Author: miconian | Filed under: Media And Advertising, Work | Tags: , , , , , , | Comments

This post is part of a series in which I talk about my professional experience for the benefit of potential employers. See the end for related posts.

Media departments in large advertising agencies are known for being highly bureaucratic and rigorously organized. You’re got media coordinators, media supervisors, junior media planners, senior media planners, media directors, and media buyers. My experience working in media was much different.

Amazon, notorious for not investing heavily in advertising, had hired a tiny agency, Fly Communications, to design and build a series of banner ads to promote their new brands, including Grocery, Unbox, Endless, and Kindle. Amazon asked Fly to also handle the implementation of those ads. Fly had no media department, so they hired me to create one.

During my time at Fly, I, and the four people who worked for me, did the following:

  • Pitched media business to new and prospective clients.
  • Researched customer demographics and psychographics for clients and prospective clients, identifying which media properties they frequent.
  • Evaluated hundreds of presentations from publishers who wanted our clients’ business.
  • Created complete media strategies for clients, including budgets, publishers, timing, and metrics for success.
  • Managed relationships with media-related vendors, including Doubleclick, Atlas, and PointRoll. Negotiated rates and services with those vendors.
  • Negotiated rates with publishers, and purchased media.
  • Trafficked the ads ourselves, directly in the DFA or Atlas interfaces.
  • Evaluated and optimized campaign performance.
  • Provided weekly reports to our clients on the progress of the campaigns, steps we were taking to optimize, and proposals for additional spends based on information learned.

Other than Amazon, our clients included Register.com and the French Culinary Institute.

We also bought ads that ran in print publications, and on train platforms.

When I think back on it, I’m amazed that the five of us accomplished as much as we did. There are not many people who would have had the knowledge, imagination, resourcefulness, and fortitude to create such a complex and self-contained system out of nothing.

See also:

web publisher
web production manager
the conde years

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Comments on “Work History: Media Buyer”

  1. 1 Fernando said at 2:58 pm on November 30th, 2009:

    We did all of the above and loved what we were doing, too.

    I was one of the media planners on Michael’s team and I can tell you that I’ve never had a better boss. Michael challenged me to grow creatively and professionally every single day. He was decisive when certainty was required but solicited opinions from his team whenever appropriate – and he went out of his way to make sure his team members got the credit they deserved for their ideas.

    Michael might be amazed at how much we accomplished as a team but that accomplishment rests squarely at his feet for running his team the way he did. I’d love to work with Michael again someday.

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