Media is the largest line on most marketing budgets and the least understood. Creative can be judged by looking at it. A website can be clicked. Media is a set of decisions made in rooms the client is not in, and it is possible to do it badly for years without anyone noticing, because the reporting is produced by the same people making the decisions.
The six things the job actually consists of
- 01Audience definition. Deciding who has to be reached, specifically enough that it rules options out. Everything downstream is an output of this, and it is the step most often skipped.
- 02Channel planning. Choosing where those people can be reached, at what cost, at what frequency, and in what sequence. Not choosing between the platforms the team already has logins for.
- 03Negotiation. Establishing what inventory is genuinely worth and refusing to pay rate card for it. This is invisible on every dashboard and it is where most of the recoverable money is.
- 04Buying and trafficking. Placing it, getting the assets in the right specifications, and making sure what was agreed is what actually runs.
- 05Optimisation. Moving budget while the campaign is live towards what is working, on evidence rather than on instinct.
- 06Reconciliation and reporting. Confirming that what was paid for was delivered, and reporting one reconciled view across every channel rather than a stack of platform screenshots.
Notice that only two of the six produce a dashboard. That asymmetry is why brands routinely mistake ad account management for media buying, and why the gap can persist for years.
Eight questions to ask your media agency
Not gotchas. These are things a media agency doing the job will answer immediately and specifically, and a reseller will answer in generalities.
- What did we pay against rate card on our largest placement last quarter, and what did you negotiate it down to?
- Which channel in our current plan do you have the least confidence in, and what would change your mind?
- Show me the audience definition our plan is built on. Would it rule out any channel we are currently buying?
- What did we spend reaching people we already have a direct relationship with?
- Which line on our plan is there because it works, and which is there because it has always been there?
- How would we know within four weeks if this plan was wrong?
- What is your fee, expressed as a rand amount rather than as a percentage, and what does it cover?
- Are you buying any inventory where you also have a commercial relationship with the seller?
Fee structures, plainly
Three structures are common in this market, and each biases behaviour in a predictable direction. There is no dishonest one, but there is a wrong one for your situation.
- Percentage of media spend. Simple and scalable, and it quietly rewards spending more. It suits continuous, substantial budgets where the agency's planning genuinely drives the spend.
- Monthly retainer. Predictable for both sides and neutral on spend level. It suits ongoing relationships with variable flighting, and it needs a clear scope or it becomes a source of friction.
- Project fee. Cleanest for a defined campaign with a start and an end. It suits brands testing an agency, and it makes ongoing optimisation harder to fund properly.
Whichever it is, the media budget and the fee should be two separate numbers on the page. If you cannot see at a glance what you are paying the agency and what is buying audience, that is the finding.
The integration point
The single largest structural inefficiency in media is not a bad negotiation. It is that the work being placed was made by people who did not know where it was going. Assets arrive in the wrong ratio, at the wrong length, carrying a message that needs six seconds of attention in a placement that will get two.
That cannot be fixed by the media agency, because by the time they see the work it has been approved and paid for. It is fixed by having the media conversation and the creative conversation in the same room, at the brief stage. Which is an argument about how the agency relationship is structured, not about how well anyone does their job.