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What Does a Media Buyer Do?
A media buyer turns a media plan into live advertising: choosing placements, negotiating, launching, pacing budget, optimizing and reconciling. Here is how to evaluate that work.
A media buyer purchases advertising placements and manages them once they are live. They take a media plan, decide exactly where and when ads will run, negotiate rates and terms, set up campaigns, keep spending on pace, adjust toward what works, and confirm that what was paid for was actually delivered. For a business, the media buyer is the person responsible for turning budget into placements that reach the right people at a fair price.
Media planning vs. media buying
The two roles are closely linked and are often handled by the same team, but they answer different questions.
| Media planning | Media buying | |
|---|---|---|
| Main question | Who should we reach, where and with how much budget? | How do we secure and run those placements at the best value? |
| Typical outputs | Audience definition, channel mix, budget split, flight dates, KPIs | Insertion orders, live campaigns, negotiated rates, pacing and delivery reports |
| When it happens | Before launch, revisited at reviews | From launch through reconciliation |
| Judged on | Whether the plan fits the business objective | Whether delivery, cost and outcomes match the plan |
Our Media Planning & Buying service covers both, so the people who designed the plan are accountable for how it runs.
What does a media buyer handle day to day?
- Channel and placement selection: choosing specific publishers, programs, platforms or screens within the channels the plan calls for.
- Negotiation: rates, added value, makegoods for under-delivery, cancellation terms and placement guarantees for direct buys.
- Campaign setup: targeting, budgets, bids, tracking, creative specs and trafficking.
- Budget pacing: making sure spend is on track across the flight, not exhausted early or left unspent.
- Optimization: moving budget between placements, audiences and creative based on results.
- Reconciliation: comparing invoices and platform reports against what was ordered, and resolving discrepancies.
In digital channels, much of the buying happens in self-serve platforms and through programmatic media buying, where a demand-side platform buys impressions automatically. Our explainer on what a DSP is covers how that works. The buyer's judgment still matters: automation follows the rules it is given.
How should you judge media buying performance?
Start with the metric that matches the objective, then check the inputs that drive it.
- Outcome metrics: leads, sales, booked appointments or store visits, and the cost of each.
- Efficiency metrics: cost per thousand impressions (CPM), cost per click, cost per completed video view.
- Delivery: did the campaign deliver the impressions, reach and frequency that were ordered?
- Quality: were ads seen by real people, in brand-suitable places, in the intended geography?
- Learning: what was tested, what changed as a result, and what will be tried next?
Be cautious with metrics that look good but do not connect to the business, such as very cheap impressions on low-quality sites or clicks that never convert.
What does media buying cost?
Costs fall into three buckets. Prices vary widely by channel, market and scope, so ask any partner to break them out.
- Media spend: the money paid to platforms and publishers for the placements themselves.
- Management fees: what the agency or buyer charges for planning, buying, optimization and reporting. Common structures include a percentage of media spend, a flat monthly retainer or a project fee.
- Technology and data costs: DSP platform fees, audience data, ad verification, tracking and reporting tools.
Questions to ask before hiring a media buying agency
- Will we own the ad accounts and data?
- How are fees structured, and will media, technology and management costs be itemized?
- Do you receive rebates or incentives from any media vendors?
- How will you measure success against our business goals, not only platform metrics?
- How often will we see reporting, and who explains it?
- What brand safety and fraud controls do you use?
- Who on your team will actually run our campaigns?
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a media buyer if I only run Google and Meta ads?
Not necessarily a dedicated one, but someone needs to own setup, pacing, optimization and reporting. As channels and budget grow, coordinating them becomes its own job.
What is the difference between a media buyer and a media planner?
The planner decides the audience, channel mix and budget. The buyer secures the placements and manages them live. Many agencies combine the roles so planning decisions stay connected to results.
Can a media buyer guarantee results?
A buyer can guarantee negotiated terms, such as impressions delivered or placement dates. They cannot honestly guarantee leads or revenue, which depend on the offer, creative, market and website as well as the media.
How long before media buying shows results?
Delivery and early efficiency data appear within days. Reliable conclusions about outcomes usually take several weeks, depending on budget, sales cycle and how much conversion data the campaign generates.
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