How a Paid Media Management Partner Drives Growth for Agencies
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Paid media management is more essential and complex than ever. Marketing channels have multiplied: 93% of consumers use 8-10 different channels to engage with companies, and business buyers use an average of 10 channels in their purchase journeys. Consumers now navigate a dynamic web of multiple touchpoints rather than a linear funnel. As multiple-touchpoint decision-making has become commonplace, the traditional purchasing journey has actually grown less distinct.
The fragmentation of media channels presents a challenge for advertising agencies. Managing campaigns across numerous platforms demands specialized skills and considerable resources. Agencies often struggle to scale these capabilities in-house, creating an ideal opportunity for partnership with a specialized paid media management agency.
In our previous blog, we explored these agency growth challenges in depth and outlined strategies they can use to scale effectively. With this foundation in place, it’s time to go deeper. In this second installment in our agency growth series, we’ll specifically focus on how partnering with a paid media management partner can help overcome these challenges. We’ll explore what paid media management entails, how it differs from a basic media vendor, the strategic benefits of outsourcing this function, and how to choose the right partner.
What Does Paid Media Management Entail?
Paid media management covers every step of running effective digital advertising campaigns, including:
- Strategy: Figuring out the best channels, audiences, and budget allocations based on your client’s goals and market.
- Execution: Setting up campaigns and creatives across platforms, configuring targeting, and launching ads.
- Optimization: Continuously monitoring performance data and tweaking bids, creatives, and targeting to improve results.
- Reporting: Clearly showing clients how campaigns performed against KPIs, along with insights and recommendations for next steps.
Considering all this, it’s clear why managing campaigns requires a full team, from channel experts and data analysts to strategists and account managers. However, not every agency can staff all these roles, especially as digital channels multiply. That’s why outsourcing parts of paid media management to a specialized partner can be a smart move.
Paid Media Management vs. Media Vendor: A Partner, Not Just a Platform
It’s important to explain the distinctions between paid media management and a basic media vendor. Media vendors typically provide access to inventory or ad placements on a particular channel, be it a programmatic platform or a display ad network. Vendors are transactional: you buy media from them. What you don’t get from a vendor is strategy or hands-on support. If you decide to go the vendor route alone, you could have to manage multiple platforms and do a lot of heavy lifting.
In contrast, a paid media management agency is a true partner that functions as an extension of your team. Instead of simply selling ad space, a paid media management partner provides a full-service digital media team to your agency. They will plan, launch, optimize, and report on campaigns across channels on your behalf, in alignment with your clients’ goals. Overall, you get the best of both worlds: the wide-ranging expertise and dedicated support of an in-house team, paired with the flexibility and scalability that come from outsourcing.
The degree of service and experience is another significant distinction. Even with a basic vendor, you still need your own people to do things like consolidating reports from different sources. Paid media management relieves you of such responsibilities. In addition to bringing specialized personnel, they often have advanced tools or proprietary technology for things like unified reporting, attribution, or optimization algorithms. Most importantly, a paid media management partner’s incentive is aligned with yours: they succeed when your client campaigns succeed, leading to retained and growing budgets.
Strategic Benefits of Working with Paid Media Management
For many agencies, bringing in a specialized partner for media can yield significant strategic advantages. Let’s break down the key benefits:
- Operational Efficiency & Focus:
Paid media management allows your agency team to focus on core competencies and high-value work. Your account managers and creatives can devote more time to client relations and strategy. This not only improves morale but also results in increased productivity. In the realm of marketing automation, firms that embraced automation saw a 12% decrease in marketing overhead thanks to efficiency improvements: a hint at the kind of resource savings you can achieve by streamlining paid media ops with a partner.
- Access To Top Talent & Tools:
A capable media management partner brings the kind of specialized skills and top-tier technology most agencies can’t easily access on their own. You get advanced capabilities without having to invest in every tool or platform yourself. Given how rapidly the ad tech industry evolves, having a partner who stays at the forefront is invaluable.
- Better Pitch Support & Agility:
Working with paid media management can directly support your business development efforts. Having a reputable media partner on your side boosts confidence when pitching new clients. You can pitch capabilities that you might not fully have in-house, knowing your partner can execute.
- Scalability & Revenue Growth:
Because you’re not limited by your in-house execution capacity, you can scale up campaigns or onboard new accounts quickly. The partner can handle surges in workload (such as a big seasonal campaign or multiple new client launches) without your scrambling.
How to Choose the Right Paid Media Partner
Once you decide to explore a paid media management partner, the next step is choosing the right one. A true partnership goes beyond technical capability: it requires trust and alignment. Here are some key criteria and considerations when evaluating potential paid media management for your agency:
Omnichannel Expertise & Full Ad Tech Stack
Seek a partner who has a full ad tech stack at their disposal and demonstrated experience with all major digital advertising platforms. Your goal should be to cover all your clients' needs in one partnership. Omnichannel-capable paid media management ensures you can offer truly integrated campaigns without juggling multiple specialty vendors, which in turn makes your agency nimbler in meeting client demands. Additionally, they should bring a full ad tech stack to the table, so you don't have to purchase or learn these complex systems yourself.
Leveraging a programmatic agency such as PrograMetrix will essentially supply your agency with an in-house programmatic expert plus an industry-leading tech stack, without the challenges of hiring and onboarding those resources on your own. When evaluating vendors, ask detailed questions about what platforms and data integrations they use, so you know you’ll be leveraging top-tier technology for your clients’ campaign.
White-Labeled Reporting & Transparency
You should have clear visibility into how your partner is managing campaigns, what optimizations are being made, and where budget is going. Ideally, these are real-time dashboards and white-labeled reports to pass along to clients. Additionally, be upfront in discussing their pricing model. A trustworthy partner will gladly explain their fee structure.
Onboarding & Ongoing Support
Consider how this partner will integrate with your team and processes. The right partner should have a well-defined onboarding process to get your agency up to speed quickly. Beyond the initial onboarding, evaluate the level of ongoing support. Will you have a dedicated account manager or strategists available to answer questions and optimize campaigns? How frequently will they meet with you to review performance or plan new initiatives? Strong collaboration and communication are signs of a partner that will be proactive in helping your agency shine.
Alignment & Strategic Fit
Lastly, evaluate how well the values and business model of each possible partner fit the objectives of your agency. Your paid media partner should ideally function as an actual member of your team. Their incentives should be tied to delivering great results for your clients, just as yours are. During your evaluation, ask for case studies or references from other agencies they’ve partnered with and note what those agencies have to say. Do they mention qualities like transparency, integrity, and consistent results? Also consider their partnership model: will they white-label their services under your brand, or work directly with referred clients? Choose whichever model fits how you prefer to service your accounts.
Partnering for Growth
Outsourcing paid media management isn’t about cutting corners; it’s about strengthening your agency’s capabilities in a smart, forward-thinking way. In a world of fragmented media and shifting algorithms, a specialized partner can guide you with confidence. By leveraging a paid media management partner, your clients enjoy better results and fresh strategies, while your agency gains efficiency, frees up your team to focus on what you do best, and captures new growth opportunities that were previously out of reach.
Stay tuned for part 3 of our series, where we’ll explore another key strategy for agency growth through advanced advertising technology. Just as paid media management can expand your service offerings and capacity, our next installment will explore additional areas where leveraging advanced ad tech can give your agency a competitive edge.
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