Really! As often as we go chasing the sales planners at work, “XYZ says they’re not in flight, what do you want us to do with the spots” (and you’re holding up the logs, grumble grumble grumble) to get a reply that “Oh, yes, they’re in flight, let me make a call” I thought it happened all the time.
I can take a few of these.
PSAs, Public Service Announcements, are free. Of course, they don’t get much say in where they air. I doubt seriously you’ll see them during Desperate Housewives, but you’ll see them in overnight. Not many advertisers buy overnight, and the stations have to fill with something.
There are talent fees involved. After all, you don’t want to be paying residuals to some actor that appeared in a commercial 30 years ago. Talent contracts expire, and if you run a commercial after the agency has told you to destroy it there could be serious legal consequences.
Stations will air free spots for non-profits, or PSA’s as they’re called. This is pretty common.
We have some big clients at our agency and we recently cancelled all spending in a certain midwest market because they were constantly bumping our spots. The client decided that the money would be better spent in a market that would actually run our spots.
Coke doesn’t need to advertise in Atlanta, I’m positive. I think they mostly advertise on a national level though, so it’s a bit moot. No reason to market directly to individual markets when your product is so ubiquitous.
Ahh… and what about when a station bumps our spots, or pre-emptions as they’re called. Obviously, this isn’t cool - but it happens every single day.
If a station misses our spot for any reason. Whether it’s a technical difficulty, or maybe they just found someone to pay more for the time - they must try and give us a “Makegood” in a similar program that will deliver a similar rating. Half of my day is spent chasing makegoods.
I want to add that a big problem we face, especially this time of year, is political spending.
When you see ads on TV for any sort of political race - they are sold to the candidates at the highest rate. And of course, the opposition gets the same time. Because of this, in markets with heavy political (Ohio, Florida, any county with a hotly contested race for Sherriff) a lot of the airtime gets eaten up and us folks who are just trying to sell a damned car or breakfast cereal.
Political spending sucks. I hope **Ivylass ** can shed more light on how this works on the station side. Do I have it basically right?
Try dealing with the oversell, and fighting with sales about how we can’t take more spots, because we can’t run the ones we’ve got, but it’s okay, we’ll make them good later.
I’m sure you just LOVE that.
So you pulled advertising because the station kept bumping your spots? Maybe I can use that argument with sales, the next time they tell me to pre-empt someone…
Seriously, no one likes makegoods. Time is finite, in that once it’s gone, it’s gone, and you can’t get it back. It’s not like returning a stereo to Circuit City. Circuit City can resell the stereo, but if a station screws up on a spot or can’t run it, it has to be run later, which means it takes the place of a commercial that could have been run.
Is TiVo affecting you any? I know Nielsen was considering ratings based on real time and also based on TiVo…but we haven’t had a lot of call for that.
We just had an unnamed station in an unnamed market that kept bumping our spots and not making them good. Suddenly, guess what - its’ the end of our flight and there’s no where else to put them. They ended up having to credit, or dump, over $10k of a $70k order. Not good. Not good at all. When it comes time to do next year’s buys, that station will definitely be looking at a smaller share of the market dollars.
I haven’t seen any major TiVo effect. I mean, it’s affecting everyone the same way I think, but I don’t have any real knowledge on that.
Actually, no, that’s backwards. At the broadcast level, the political ads must be offered at the lowest average unit rate. This is to allow all candidates an opportunity to reach voters at a fairly cheap rate. The rules when I worked stated the name of the candidate, the office, and the party (if relevant) must be on the ad and the whole buy had to be paid in advance.
Cable, however, not being regulated by the FCC, can charge whatever rate they want for political ads.
Did they give you an explanation? I don’t blame you cutting your spend next year…that’s $10,000 you could have put on air elsewhere!
That’s right… I knew it was one way or the other. All I really know is that it’s aggrivating as all hell - especially when so many stations claim “political” as the reason your spots aren’t running when none of the other stations in a market are having that problem. So frustrating!
Well, I am off to go join the millions of other eyeballs watching Studio 60 tonight. I will check in tomorrow!
I’m out as well! Keep those questions coming! 
What kind of money do media buyers make? I can see you’re in a large city, working for probably a large firm, HelloNinja, but would you say being a Media Buyer is a good paying job? Could you give me quantify that with a salary range?
One of the best parts of Media Buying is not the salary, nor is it the fun benefits most agencies offer (Summer Fridays!!! A lot of agencies have half days every Friday or give you 4 or 5 free vacation days to use on Fridays in the Summer so you don’t have to burn vacation. Love it!). The best part of buying is the perks from the stations you’re buying time from.
Stations are very competitive to get every share of the market budget they can. In order to do this, they seriously schmooze buyers. Lunches and dinners at fancy restaurants are just the start. I’ve been to the Indy 500 in a luxury box, seen countless football and baseball regular season and playoff games, been invited to Super Bowls (haven’t been able to go yet due to other committments), etc. It’s really crazy and most people have no idea that these “perks” are out there for people in this business. Once you get used to it though, it’s hard to pay for your own tickets to anything, let me tell you.
Besides sporting events, I’ve seen buyers get gifts ranging from small chotzkies to DVD players to televisions. I’ve even gone on several vacations completely paid for by stations. Last year I went to Mexico (several nights at a very nice resort and all travel, meals and expenses completely covered). On Saturday, actually, I get to go on another trip – but I won’t say where as not to give away too much information on where I work. I also have a free cruise I need to cash in at some point.
Some buyers may unethically let these gifts affect how much they spend on a station, but once you get that reputation it’s hard to shake it (I know Chicago’s ad community is a pretty “small world” and inter-agency gossip travels fast). Ethics are a huge deal and your reputation is king. You just can’t let anything affect the fact that you’re out there to do right by your client and they’re your number one priority.
Why, oh why, in most of the tv ads that involve a salesperson does the person always start their spiel by walking toward the camera? Is that in Marketing 101? It gets a little stale when everyone does it.
Do all commercials have to be approved or audited/screened by the station before they are aired? Whose job is it to ascertain that a spot is suitable for broadcast?
What is the most controversial commercial you’ve ever had? What does it take to get an ad pulled from the airwaves?
Unfortunately, I don’t have any experience in the creative side of things. I’m sure we have a doper or two out there that do work in this facet of the industry, and hopefully they can jump in and help w/ these types of questions.
As far as who approves the commercials… I imagine **IvyLass ** might be able to answer that from a network standpoint. I assume it’s the General Manager of a station, the Traffic Manager, or someone else well versed in FCC rules.
At some time during prime-time viewing, there will be a commercial break where maybe five or six commercials will run, with all but one or two being car or truck commercials. During the local 10 o-clock news, it is not unusual to see, in one break, four local and/or regional car/ truck commercials in a row.
It would seem to me that the people who want that Ford truck commercial to attract attention would be rather upset if their commercial was directly followed by a Dodge truck commercial, and then later by a Toyota truck commercial all in the same break.
Why does this happen?
How come network radio is so much lower-class than network TV?
Rush Limbaugh claims 20 million people listen to his show each day. Not to be political, Paul Harvey and Charles Osgood also claim multi-million audiences.
So why don’t Chevrolet and Coke and other big national advertisers buy a whole bunch of cheap radio spots and run maybe five commercials for the cost of one network TV spot?
Instead, even on network news and sports programming, I hear commercials for 5th rate national advertisers (CarQuest auto parts) or barely respectable outfits (name a star for your girlfriend.)
Beer seems to be advertised on network radio. But Charles Osgood’s “prestige” sponsor appears to be Bose radios. Nice, maybe, but it ain’t Lexus.
What’s the rationale?
Great question.
Some car companies care more than others, but most of it really depends on clout. General Motors for example spends more than any other automotive company. It’s huge. They spend so much that they’re able to demand exclusivity in a break, or “pod.” In fact, GM hires people who’s job it is to just watch TV and make sure no other car ads run in the same break as their own. If the station breaks this agreement, they owe GM free spots as compensation.
Smaller car companies that don’t spend as much money aren’t able to demand such exclusivity.
This mostly comes down to how controversial a program is. On network television, there isn’t a lot of questionable programming - but still, most major advertisers try and stay away from anything that might cause a stir (on TV, a lot of advertisers steer clear of things like Family Guy and South Park). On radio, almost every client I’ve heard of has a pretty strict “No Rush” rule… the last thing they want is for him to say something completely out of line, and have their ad immediately follow it.
Another reason… Syndicated radio programs often air during times of day that auto dealers really want no part of, chiefly - midday, or approx 10a-3p. You mentinoned Lexus… Lexus, I know, knows that the people that generally buy their products do not listen to the radio during the middle of the day. They’re at work doing whatever Lexus buyers do.
The syndicated radio costs also aren’t as cheap as you think. It’s like a national TV spot that goes all across the country at the same time. It’s cheaper than TV, but not as cheap as just advertising on a single station during their PM Drive.