Planning / Buying

Media planning and buying jobs involve obtaining advertisement space to optimise client campaigns at an optimal price and placement.

Planning and Buying Roles

Media planners are the ones to create media strategy, navigate target groups, and decide what marketing mediums to use and at what time. The role involves lots of planning, analysing and organising of the company budget. Media buyers work alongside media planners to make purchase decisions and negotiate the best prices. 

Media Specialists and Media Planning and Buying jobs have a vast array of media outlets at their disposal, both traditional media and new media (Digital). The internet offers a number of Online Media that has surfaced with the improvement of technology and the accessibility of the internet. Online Media can include:

  • Social media
  • Emails
  • Search engines and referral links
  • Web portals
  • Banners (display)
  • Interactive games
  • Video clips

Landing a role in media planning and buying doesn’t require prior education, however, a bachelor’s degree in a related field can be helpful. Though it’s difficult to get directly related experience, having previous experience in marketing, media or advertising roles is a great advantage to your application.

Technical skills that may be sought by employers include Media Metric’s such as

  • CPA
  • CPC
  • CPM
  • Strong Excel and Data skills
  • Experience with planning tools such as TGI
  • An understanding of Ad Serving tools such as CM360
Planning and Buying in Agencies


Media planners and buyers typically work within advertising, marketing, or media agencies, some examples of agencies include such as:

  • groupM
  • WPP
  • Mediacom

Working in media planning and buying, it is essential that you have great organisational skills due to working with more than one client at once. 

 

When planning what to buy, Media Planning & Buying specialists must evaluate factors based on, but not limited to formats, pricing rates, demographics, geographic, and psychographics relating to the advertiser's particular product or service objectives.

The Media Buyer needs to optimise what is bought and that is dependent on budget, type of medium (radio, internet, TV, print), quality of the medium (target audience, time of day for broadcast), and how much time and space is wanted.

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