Why 'Media Buyer' Is A Bad Job Title To Post
Zack AllenSeptember 5, 20266:50
"Media buyer" is a category, not a job. Post the wrong one and you hire the wrong person.
If you're running a business that's spending on paid ads, you can't post a job called "media buyer" and expect the person you need to apply.
We run a recruitment firm, not a marketing agency, and recently we've seen a big jump in businesses looking for media buyers. With the way Meta's Andromeda works, you need so many different angles and so much creative volume that having someone strong running your paid ads matters more than ever.
On almost every discovery call, the first thing I have to make clear is that "media buyer" isn't a job title. It's a category. Hire for the wrong category and the person won't fit what your business needs. You'll waste their salary, and they might mess up something you already have working well.
Start with the constraint, not the title
I always work backwards. When I write a job posting, I don't start with the title. I start with the core responsibilities, and before that, with the constraint I'm solving for.
Anyone hires a role for one of two reasons: there's something in the business the founder doesn't have time for, or doesn't have the expertise to do well. There's always one main thing to solve.
For media buying, look at the whole funnel from top to bottom and ask which action produces the highest leverage. That's the role you're backfilling. Once you know that, it usually falls into one of three categories.
1. Execution
This person lives in the ad account. Sometimes that means launching a lot of campaigns. We're working with an event promotion agency that has new shows every weekend, so someone has to launch campaigns constantly. There isn't much optimization, because nothing is evergreen.
Other times execution means day-to-day account work: cutting ads that are clearly above your target CPL, setting up the campaign and ad set structure, getting creatives from the editing team, launching new tests and iterating.
2. Creative testing
Some clients come to us because their bottleneck under Andromeda is creative. They need someone producing static images, AI images and Canva images, writing scripts for the talent, and telling the video editor what to make from the content they have. The goal is to keep creatives ready for whoever is executing, weekly or ideally daily, depending on spend.
3. Strategy
This is the person who looks at your full-funnel analytics and finds the constraint inside media buying. Is cost per click too high, so you need better creative? Does the person in the account need to optimize differently? Is the show rate low, so you need to test new landing pages? Is there a pre-call education problem? The strategist tells the creative and execution sides what needs to change.
Hire for one, measure one
If you hire for skill and competence instead of an arbitrary number of years, the person can grow into something broader. A strategist might also jump in on creative when it's needed.
But I see a lot of businesses run into trouble wanting a director of marketing who does everything. You hire the best talent you can afford, and for a lot of businesses that means picking one of these three.
There's a second benefit: you isolate the variable. If you've identified the constraint and you hire only for it, you can see clearly whether that number improves. You're not left guessing because the person was also working on three other things that weren't the problem.
Transcript
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A media buyer is not a job title. If you're running a business that has paid ads, you're actively spending on paid ads. You cannot make a job posting for a media buyer and expect the kind of person you need to come through and apply for your job. So, I am not a marketing agency. We run a recruitment firm and we've had a drastic uptick recently in the velocity of people that are interested in media buyers.
Of course, if you're familiar with the way Andromeda is, you just need so much different like avenues on creative volume and on like the full strategy that having a media buyer and running paid ads has become a very important thing. And I guess it's always been important, but like it hasn't died out. It's still very relevant. Anyways, we have a lot of people that will come through and I'll take discovery calls with looking for a media buyer.
And the first thing I always have to do is make it clear that like media buyer is not a job title. It's more of like a category. And if you hire for the wrong category of media buyer, it's not going to fit with your business needs. You're going to waste their salary and they might mess up something that you already have working well. there's a lot of things that determine what that media buyer is going to look like.
And so I always work backwards. I don't, you know, when I, when I make a job posting, I'm not starting with like what's the job title going to be? It's more so I start with the core responsibilities. It's like what is this? I guess even a step further than that. I start with the constraint that I am solving for. The reason why anyone hires a role is because there's something in the business that either I don't have enough time for as the founder or I don't have enough expertise to do it well.
And so this is the like there's always one single thing that I want to solve for. And so for a media buying I see it broken down typically into like three different categories of media buyer. And so you need to figure this out first before you can determine which media buyer style is going to be what you need. You need to look at the constraint as a whole top tobottom funnel. If you're, you know, if you're hiring a med buyer in the first place, you understand what a funnel is, right?
And so we have to look at Alex Herozi theory of constraints. What is the action I can take that is going to produce the highest leverage and that's the role that I'm trying to backfill and hire for so we can get a greater output from there. And so the first category that I see media buyers fall into are the execution ones. These are sitting in the ad account for the most part.
This is when you're either actively launching a lot of campaigns. So like we are working with a event promotion agency right now and so they have like new uh shows coming up every weekend that someone needs to be constantly launching campaigns for. There's not much optimization because it's not evergreen. And then on the other side of the execution, it's someone that is sitting in the ad account making, you know, cutting ads that are clearly not working above the CPL, setting up the campaign structure of the ad sets, getting the creatives from the the editing team and and launching the new tests for them, iterating on how things go, and basically just like optimizing what's actually in the ad account.
That is the the first category of media buyer, the the execution side. Then you have the creative testing. And so some clients will come to us and their bottleneck with Andromeda is creative testing. So like being able to produce more static images, AI images, Canva images or telling the you know writing the scripts to tell the the the talent here's the script that we're going with or um you know in the frame and with the video editor like telling the video editor what needs to be done from these this content that we have so the execution side can have these creatives ready to go on like a daily basis. uh probably like weekly but like ideally daily depends on your the the volume of spend in the ad campaign.
And then the third category I see for a media buyer is the more strategy side. Someone that's able to look at your whether you're using high or some other like fullfunnel analytics to see what is actually again the constraint that we're solving for in the media buying side. Do we have too high of a cost per click and we need better creatives or we need like a better like the execution whoever's in the ad account needs to be optimizing differently or do we have to you know a low show rate and we need to to fix the landing page test new landing pages.
Do we have a uh like pre-all education issue? someone that's like looking at being able to tell the creative side or the execution side what needs to be fixed in the ad account more the the strategy. And so those are the three categories that I see media buyers fall into. And again, you have to work backwards like you can't just start with like oh I think this is what I need. It has to be like data driven as like this is actually what I'm solving for.
Now, ideally and usually any like like if you're actually hiring for competence and hiring for skills, not years of experience that some arbitrary number like someone that can actually do XYZ, they can grow into something that is more encompassing where they they might have their core in the strategy, but they can also do a little bit of the creatives when they see it's needed. I just find a lot of businesses will run into trouble.
Obviously, I want to hire someone who can do the entire I want a director of marketing. I want a director of this. But like you hire the best talent that you can afford. And for a lot of businesses that means picking one of these things that is and you can also it also means you can isolate the variable better. It's like if you identified this was the constraint that needed to be solved for, when you only hire for that, you can easily see if there's an improvement in that number or not rather than like, oh yeah, but they're, you know, they're also working on here and over here and over here.
That's not the problem that needs to be solved. If this is the problem needs to be solved, this is what you hire the media buyer for. Hope this is helpful in giving you some context on like what I look at um as to how to determine what role is actually needed. Uh, we hire media buyers dedicated full-time for high ticket service agencies, businesses. So, there's g link below if you want that.
But, catch you. Ketchup.
