There were 26 Emmy’s awarded this year at the Primetime Emmy’s. Do you know how many of them went to network television? 4.

It’s that magical time of the year! The time when networks show off all their new shows and beg you to love them. There are different tricks they use hoping that they’ve bet on the right horse.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you are probably aware that things are already gearing up for the 2016 elections. The primaries (especially Republican) have been dominating the local and national news.

There used to be a very methodical way to plan out a year at an agency. Towards the end of third quarter you would start presenting plans for the new calendar year. Clients would know their entire budget for the next year and give agencies the opportunity to plan a full year’s worth of media at once. This allowed for great negotiating power but stagnant buys. Good agencies would shift the plan based on opportunity throughout the year, bad agencies would sit back and just let it run.

I love television! I just do! Shonda Rhimes owns my Thursday nights. Four times a year there is a thing you might of heard of called “sweeps”.

I owned encyclopedias growing up. This is not important outside of the fact that until I reached high school the internet wasn’t something I thought of for research. It wasn’t a reliable source and the databases that now exist hadn’t been created.

Over the past few months, I’ve read multiple articles and have actively participated in the buzz surrounding research, analytics and data-driven results regarding advertising and marketing campaigns.

We all have that old t-shirt that is so comfy we don’t want to get rid of it. But after awhile, it probably doesn’t fit anymore or starts getting holes in it. The same goes for your target market.

Working in media planning and buying I was forced to realize something I had rejected my whole life - sports are important and valuable. While time-shifted viewing continues to rise, sports are viewed live 99% of the time. 

“Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” John Wanamaker didn’t have big data and cloud storage to prove the worth of his advertising. What’s your excuse?

Your paid media budget is too high. Not your overall marketing budget, it’s probably underfunded. But, your paid media budget, as a percentage of your marketing budget needs to be reduced. There are better things that you could be doing with those dollars that will improve your marketing ROI.

As a media buyer I am quite often questioned about TV and its value as an advertising medium. Some of the most common things I hear when questioned on whether to use TV ads or not are the claims that people are fast-forwarding through commercials or viewing television online. All of these things have truth to them, but at the end of the day, TV still reins true as the quickest way to reach the largest audience.