How I'd Screen a Creative Media Buyer for an Agency
Zack AllenOctober 6, 20263:41
A real client call with an agency owner whose media buyers lacked creative diversity, and how I'd screen candidates for creative strategy, starting with the ad libraries they follow.
On a recent call, the person leading an agency's media buying team told me their biggest gap was creative diversity.
Their setup made sense on paper. If an ad was doing well on one media buyer's account, the others could look at it and make variations of it, and in the past they could even run that same ad.
The result was a very narrow tunnel. Performance would pick up for a bit as more people ran a proven style, and then it would slide back down.
How the team got there
I asked if they'd picked these media buyers themselves. Mostly, no. They'd inherited the team.
Before, each media buyer worked almost like a separate company. They got the offers and the resources, and the brief was, "Here's this offer. Go make it work." Then the agency moved to a team model: "This offer works. These are the creatives we've seen work. Run them, make new ones, tell us what help you need."
In their words, they went a little too far on the helping side. Everybody ended up running the same stuff, so of course growth stalled. They wanted each media buyer making new creatives again, so the whole team wasn't riding the same creative wave.
80/20 on creative ideas
I asked whether they believed in borrowing what's working from other industries, or coming up with entirely new ideas. Their take was 80/20: about 80% should come from what's already proven in other industries and get adapted to theirs, and maybe 20% should be completely new.
How I'd screen for it
That gave us the shape of the screening.
Ask for their ad libraries. One of the first screening questions would be: "Send me your favorite ad libraries." A creative media buyer has to know what's doing well, what people are running and which formats they like.
Test the 20%. Then have them pick one of the ad libraries they follow and design an ad that's a new idea for this agency's market. Judge the psychology behind it: how it hits the ideal prospect, and how they'd analyze whether it works.
That tells you far more than "can this person media buy." Someone with media buying experience still covers the back end, but you're testing whether they can bring something new from outside the bubble. For this agency, someone who isn't caught in the same back-and-forth is exactly how they break through.
Transcript
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The biggest thing we're lacking is creative diversity. With our media buyers, we have it a little open to where if an ad is doing well on somebody's account, the other guys can kind of look at what style of that look at that ad and either create their own variations of that ad and write themselves. Or in the past we have had them be able to run that ad. Now what that causes is a very narrow tunnel and performance could start to pick up a little bit when other people start to run it cuz it is like a successful, you know, style, but it's going to end up going down.
So our biggest I would say our biggest issue is creative diversity.
Do you believe that you should borrow what's working from other industries and niches or you should like come up with entirely new ideas to to get the highest impact?
I think it's I think it's this is my opinion 80/20.
Mhm.
You know, go back to the 80/20. I think 80% should be looking at other other industries and trying to bring that to our industry, you know, cuz it's already proven. And then maybe 20% is totally new ideas.
I think this is more so, sorry to cut you off.
No, no, no, you're good.
I think this is more so what we would we should focus the campaign on is like getting, you know, like one of the initial screenings would just be like, "Hey, send me your favorite ad libraries." Like you got to be in the know on what's doing well, what people are running, what are your favorite formats.
Mhm.
And then I think another side of it could be like we we have someone make a, you know, pick pick one of your ad libraries that you're currently running and like design an ad that's that's the the 20% like the the new idea that you can work in and judge the psychology, like how it how it hits the ideal uh prospect from that ad.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, makes a lot of sense.
I think that'd be a cool way to do it rather than just being like, "Hey, someone can media buy." It's like how will you actually analyze the effectiveness of of an ad? And then, you know, that's there would be someone that has experience in media buying, so you could still have the the back end on that. And have you played a big hand in selecting these media buyers that have come on?
So, I kind of inherited the team a majority. We went through a transition cuz how we had it set up before was each media buyer basically operated as their own company, and we were just given the resources of the company, the offers, the help. But like, it was, "Hey, here's this offer. Go make it work."
Mhm.
That's how it was. Now, we're more of like a team, so we go, "Okay, this offer works. These are the creatives that we have seen work. Run them, make new ones. Let us know what help you need." That's how it works now.
Mhm.
Um we think we went a little too far in the uh helping in terms of like, "These creatives work." Um we think it's more beneficial to have at least each media buyer make their own creatives just so we're not all on the same like creative wave. Right? And that's the issue that we're running into right now. It's just everybody's running the same stuff. So, of course, we're not going to keep growing.
Got you. And so, you think having someone come in and not be in that like uh the bubble of just like back and forth is why you guys could break through.
Yeah. Yeah, that would be the idea.
