Posted on by Bob Ottaway

Part One: What to Look for When Hiring a Media Buying Agency

Hi, I’m Bob Ottaway, President of Ottaway Digital. I’ve spent the past 20+ years working in both digital marketing and traditional media, helping businesses with everything from SEO to radio ads. If your business is considering scaling up marketing efforts across both physical and digital platforms, it can be challenging to decide on a media buying agency to facilitate your expansion. 

That’s why I’m starting this blog series, which, over the course of several posts, will explain the qualities to look for when hiring a media buying agency. While Ottaway Digital is itself a media buying agency, this guide is intended to help any business, whether or not they choose to work with us, make more informed decisions.

Hiring a media buying agency isn’t just about finding someone with access to ad space. They need to understand your market, your goals, and how to drive quantifiable results across platforms. 

The best place to start is by measuring the agency’s track record. 

Years in business can reveal staying power and an ability to adapt through digital shifts, platform updates, and economic cycles. But don’t stop at longevity, review past campaign portfolios to see evidence of conversion-driven strategies, not just pretty packaging.

Have they worked with brands in your vertical or tackled similar challenges before? A relevant background might translate into faster execution and sharper targeting. 

Whether you’re targeting Gen Z in TikTok feeds or B2B leads in niche LinkedIn groups, the right agency should have the infrastructure and data capabilities to stretch your message across multiple audiences without losing impact.

 

1. How Strong Are Their Media Planning and Buying Capabilities?

When evaluating potential media buying agencies, zoom in on how they build and execute campaigns. “Consumers have made it clear,” adds IntegalAds, “they prefer contextually relevant ads.” 

The right team won’t just place ads, they’ll architect a media strategy built around your goals and your budget and place ads where they have the highest chance of resonating with your target audiences.

Dissect Their Campaign Methodology

Ask for a breakdown of their media planning process. Agencies worth considering will explain how they pull insights, model consumer journeys, and align creative with channel strategy. The best agencies use layered planning across flighting schedules, budget pacing, and message sequencing to create consistent exposure that doesn’t fatigue audiences.

Do they rely on proprietary frameworks or use time-tested templates? Understanding an agency’s methodology will be important for you as you build an understanding of their strategy and decide if it aligns with your business needs.

Evaluate Their Breadth Across Channels

Go beyond the buzzwords. An effective media buying team knows how to work across digital platforms like:

  • Programmatic Display
  • Social Media Advertising (Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest)
  • Video Platforms (YouTube, OTT, CTV)
  • Paid Search (Google Ads, Bing Ads)

But mastery of digital should come with fluency in traditional outlets too. TV, radio, print, and out-of-home still command attention when used strategically. 

Wordstream reports “Omnichannel strategies drive an 80% higher rate of incremental store visits for local businesses,” which shows the importance of bringing a multifaceted approach to all modern marketing campaigns. 

Agencies that can integrate both spheres, digital and traditional, are better positioned to optimize campaign performance across the entire consumer journey.

Scrutinize Their Media Mix Planning

Does the agency know when to prioritize reach and when to focus on frequency? This balancing act is at the core of media efficiency. A skilled agency constructs a mix that maximizes exposure without overspending or oversaturating.

Ask questions like:

  • How do you determine the amount of spend across channels?
  • What’s your approach to ensuring frequency doesn’t lead to ad fatigue?
  • How quickly do you adjust channel investment as performance data rolls in?

You want answers that point to real-time adjustments, data-fed reallocation, and strategic testing. Marketing campaigns are evolving entities, and rigid pre-launch media plans set in stone can lead to missed opportunities. 

Agencies that actively rebalance the media mix during a campaign’s lifecycle consistently outperform those that follow a static playbook.

 

2. Can the Agency Truly Understand Who You’re Trying to Reach?

Most campaigns don’t fail because of media buying inefficiencies. They fail because the message doesn’t reach the right people. Without a clear understanding of your audience, no volume of polished ad placements will translate into results.

More Than Demographics: Do They Know What Motivates Your Customers?

Check whether the agency goes beyond age, gender, and location. Deep targeting stems from insights that reflect user behavior and decision-making patterns. 

Ask to see how they build customer personas. Do their personas include a position in the buying process, digital habits, and emotional triggers?

  • Customer personas: Are their personas rooted in first-party data, interviews, and tracked behaviors, or are they templates pulled from general marketing assumptions?
  • Behavioral data usage: How frequently does the agency test assumptions with real behavior? Do they refine targeting based on page visits, search intent, or previous engagement?
  • Audience segmentation: Do they segment audiences dynamically, based on funnel stages or lifecycle models? Or is the segmentation static and broad?

Effective Targeting Makes the Difference Between Impressions and Conversions

Media buying success doesn’t mean hitting more screens; it means hitting the right ones. Agencies that fully understand your ideal customer will achieve lower acquisition costs and improve your ROI. Targeting effectively trims wasted spend and shortens conversion cycles. 

Next time you meet with an agency, ask them: “If we gave you no creative and no media plan, where would you start to understand our audience?” Their answer will reveal whether they’re guessing or informed by real market truths.

 

3. Interrogate Their Numbers: A Media Buying Agency’s Data Game

Media buying has outgrown gut instincts. To generate measurable results, agencies need to build entire strategies on concrete, relevant data. 

Ask direct questions: What data do you collect? How do you analyze it? If you’re not satisfied with the answer, move on. Guesswork doesn’t scale.

Ask to See the Data Trail

The best media buying agencies don’t just launch campaigns and cross their fingers. They monitor every dollar and every click. Insist on visibility into the full performance chain. That includes:

  • Impression data: How many people are seeing the ads?
  • Click-through rates (CTR): Are those impressions converting into action?
  • Conversion tracking: Is traffic becoming leads, purchases, or other valuable outcomes?
  • Customer acquisition cost (CAC): How much is being spent to acquire each customer? According to WordStream, the average cost per click on Google ads is $2.69.

Check if performance metrics are tied to business objectives, whether that be generating leads or product sales. A high CTR means nothing if conversions are low. Agencies should adjust spend and targeting based on hard numbers, not hunches.

 

Balance of First- and Third-Party Data

First-party data tells the story of your actual customers. It’s pulled from CRM tools, transaction histories, website behavior, and email performance. Third-party data supplements that with behavioral, demographic, or interest-based insights gathered from external platforms.

An agency operating at a high level will use both. First-party data should shape audience definitions and lookalike modeling. Third-party data should expand reach into new segments and channels. Ask for examples of how they’ve integrated both data types in past campaigns and what the outcome was.

Want to go a layer deeper? Request information about the data tools in play. Are they relying on standard dashboards, or do they build custom attribution models? Do they pull in data from sources like Google Analytics and Meta Business Suite? These things matter.

Conversation around data should be relentless. If the agency doesn’t volunteer details, ask again. When they do, probe further: How do you use this data to shape bidding? Targeting? Creative choices? Their answers will expose whether they’re scientists or storytellers posing as strategists.

 

H2: Conclusion

Choosing a media buying agency isn’t a decision that should be taken lightly. This one choice affects every part of your marketing strategy, from how well your ads perform to how efficiently your dollars are spent. As we’ve explored in this first part of the series, the most effective agencies aren’t just media brokers; they’re strategic partners who bring robust planning capabilities, cross-channel fluency, and deep audience insight to the table. 

They understand that great campaigns are built on more than surface-level demographics or catchy creatives; they’re backed by smart data, real-time adjustments, and a clear focus on measurable outcomes.

As we move forward in this blog series, I’ll dive deeper into other critical aspects to look for, like transparency in reporting, creative collaboration, and how well agencies handle scaling campaigns. Whether you’re just starting your search or re-evaluating a current partnership, this series is designed to help you ask smarter questions and make a more informed choice. Stay tuned for part two.