SOMEWHERE THERE’S A MEDIA BUYER OPTIMIZING THE DELIVERY OF AN AD THEY’VE NEVER SEEN, TO A LANDING PAGE THEY’VE NEVER VISITED, FOR A BRAND THEY LEARNED ABOUT FROM A BRIEF THEY SKIMMED.

AND THEY JUST SENT YOU A REPORT CALLING IT “PERFORMANCE.”

Most media buying is a logistics job wearing a strategy costume. Someone gets a set of ads from a creative team they’ve never met, uploads them into a platform they partially understand, sets some targeting parameters based on a brief that was already a game of telephone by the time it reached them, and optimizes for a metric that may or may not connect to an actual business outcome. Then they send you a report full of impressions and CPMs and use the word “insights” at least four times.

This is why media buying has a reputation as a commodity. Because the way most people do it, it is one.

The reason my media buying is different is the same reason everything I do is different: I also make the ads. I also built the strategy. I also designed the landing page. When I’m optimizing a campaign, I’m not just adjusting bids and audiences. I’m asking: is the creative right? Does the landing page match the ad? Is the message correct for this stage of the funnel? Should I change the targeting, or should I change what I’m saying?

A media buyer who can only adjust the delivery side of the equation is working with one hand tied behind their back. I work with both hands, which in this analogy means I can change both the ad and the delivery simultaneously, which doesn’t sound revolutionary until you realize that at most companies, changing the ad requires a brief, a meeting, a creative review, a revision cycle, and three weeks. I can do it this afternoon.

I also wrote the book on programmatic media. Not metaphorically. An actual book. When programmatic was still something only the biggest agencies had access to, I learned it, then wrote the playbook so smaller brands could use it too. I’ve been doing this longer than most media buyers have been in the industry.