Media Buying FAQ’s

A media buy is an order for advertising space placed with a media company. Media buying simply refers to the transaction and ongoing management of advertising. At Thrive, we purchase traditional advertising and digital advertising.

Traditional advertising includes TV commercials, radio spots, bus advertising, billboards, and print ads in any publication.

Digital advertising platforms are constantly evolving. Display advertising includes ads on websites, apps, or social media (through banners made of text, images, video, and audio). Digital Radio (Pandora/Spotify), OTT Ads (Over the Top = Streaming TV) as well as Native Advertising (sponsored content), or Instagram ads are all examples of what could be in a digital media buy.

You probably don’t choose your retirement allocation without consulting an expert. When writing or reviewing contracts, you hire an industry-related attorney. Chances are, you know your CPA can make your life easier. When allocating an advertising budget, marketing professionals and business owners use a Media Buyer.

A Media Buyer’s full-time job is to invest in advertising. Therefore, we have experience allocating millions of dollars of marketing budgets and have had discussions with hundreds of business owners and marketers who’ve disclosed what advertising tactics work and what don’t.

Thrive’s negotiating power gives you lower rates and better placement than direct ad buys. Our full-time management of your media buy ensures seamless management of your advertising campaigns.

Thrive was founded in 2008 by an award-winning sales exec, Robin Ruckinsky. She cut her teeth at ABC TV in Seattle, selling media space directly to business owners (of every industry) and ad agencies.

During that time, she saw the simplistic need for business owners and marketers to understand how to invest their advertising budgets and negotiate with knowledge. She knew if she could help businesses and brands select any media on any platform – she could be an unbiased advisor for her clients. In turn, she also found she streamlined how her clients achieved their revenue goals.

For the past 15 years, Robin has led her team at Thrive with one goal in mind: providing a business service that gives extraordinary value and dramatically increases ROI. Thrive’s experience in Traditional Media, combined with our ongoing education and extensive experience in the Digital Marketing world, allows us to be highly competitive Media Buyers.

Our client testimonials are our best sales pitch. Take it from them, utilizing our expertise in your business gives you an edge over your competition, hands down.

Hiring Thrive does not add to your marketing budget. We do not charge hourly fees or retainers.

We value transparency. We make an industry-standard commission of an overall ad buy and are compensated with the same percentage on all ad buys. Thrive does not have a financial incentive to place your advertising dollars with one media company (or tactic) over another.

We keep our overhead low and focus on being the experts of negotiating media buying. We skip marking up services (as other agencies often do), do not charge “account management” fees, and skip fancy office digs. We take pride in our simplistic approach and being straightforward to work with.

You may not know, advertising sales reps are typically 100% commission-only. (This is why they flood your inboxes.) When a Media Buyer places your ad buys, the salesperson’s commission structure is adjusted to compensate for the order we brought the media company. Commission is always “baked in” an ad buy. You can purchase ads directly from a media company (and the media sales rep gets the whole commission pie), or you can let us act as your unbiased media advisor advocating for you, and we get a slice of the commission pie. It is that simple.

We manage your advertising investments as if they are our own.

We are skilled at tracking nuanced invoices and delivery reports with a fine-tooth comb and managing ad buys with exceptional attention to detail. Our focus on ensuring accurate campaign delivery is paramount to our success, and we take the responsibility very seriously.

Holding media companies accountable for what they sell is critical to our role. We’ve seen campaigns miss a target because someone did not analyze the campaign performance and fix it.

We provide monthly digestible metrics showing full campaign delivery with detailed notes about optimizations and performance. We protect your advertising investments by making the media companies honor their promises and hold “their feet to the fire.”