By Forrester Research

1. For Interactive Marketing Professionals August 15, 2012
Create An Audience-Obsessed Digital Media Buying Practice
Executive Overview: The Digital Media Buying Playbook
by Joanna O’Connell and Emily Riley
with Michael Greene and Elizabeth Komar
Why Read This Report
Digital media buying is undergoing seismic change. Where there were once legions of junior staff
managing relationship-based buys, there are now sophisticated real-time technologies. Participants across
all parts of the value chain are affected, from media buyers and agencies to vendors and publishers. The
digital media buying playbook helps marketers and media buyers understand the fundamental shifts that
are occurring and gives the reader a strategic road map and best practices for becoming an audience-
centric, multichannel, media-buying maven. This report includes how to get the most out of data, buying
platforms, and attribution measurement.
The Always Addressable Customer Requires Better Marketing
Marketers are faced with a new digitally connected customer, the always addressable customer. This group
already represents more than one-third of US and Western European online adults as well as two-thirds of
adults under the age of 40.1 These customers expect interactive media to work well all the time and on all
devices. In 2012, Forrester forecasts that US marketers will spend $12.9 billion on display marketing across
mobile, tablets, and PCs, while Western Europe will spend €4.8 billion.2 In addition, spending will increase
with a 20% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next four years.3 Yet throwing more money
at fragmented, untargeted, labor-intensive digital media is futile. Always addressable customers demand
significantly better experiences now. They also have the power to abandon you if you don’t provide them
with what they want or need. They:
■ Ignore traditional marketing. Your customers don’t pay as much attention to your expensive TV ads
as they used to. In fact, 85% of US online adults who own and personally use a DVR or a DVR service
regularly fast-forward through commercials when watching recorded shows on their DVRs.4
■ Use digital as the center of their universe. No other media is as ubiquitous or powerful as digital
media, and always addressable customers access it all day long. Thirty-eight percent of US online
adults access the Internet from multiple physical locations multiple times a day, and 83% of US online
adults who recently purchased a product online began their research on a digital channel.5
■ Expect relevant messages. Always addressable customers are comfortable sharing data to get what
they want. This is especially true among younger consumers: 76% of adults ages 18 to 24 will share
their data if they feel clearly rewarded as a result.6
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2. For Interactive Marketing Professionals
Create An Audience-Obsessed Digital Media Buying Practice 2
Better Digital Media Buying Is Possible Now And Required For The Future
Always addressable customers expect highly relevant marketing across digital channels, and the tools
and tactics to provide it for them are starting to gain traction in the market. From real-time bidding in
display advertising to cross-channel data management and attribution platforms, marketers are starting
to have media buying options that allow for better consumer experiences and more efficient marketing
spending. As of May 2012, 24% of respondents to Forrester’s interactive marketing executive panel
survey indicated they use a demand-side platform (DSP) to execute their digital media buys in real time,
and 20% of the panel plan to switch to real-time bidding in the next 12 months.7 Marketers are also
increasingly focused on the consumer’s experience once an ad is served — 24% of the panel is currently
using dynamic creative optimization, and, over the next 12 months, 38% plan to start. To compete
effectively, marketers must do more than try new tools: They must overhaul their digital media buying
practice to become audience-focused and analysis driven. Says HP’s senior manager of digital marketing,
Mabelle Artz, , about the company’s recent deployment of a DSP for better user segmentation and
targeting, “At HP, we should be focusing on our customers — how do we make sure we’re doing the
right things for them?” When building your new media buying practices, you must:
■ Be data and analysis-obsessed. To reach the always addressable customer, you must
prepare to work with significantly more data across more touchpoints in the near future by
building a continuous loop between planning, analysis, and optimization. You must merge
customer databases, focus on audience buying, and enrich analysis to manage budgets and
messaging more flexibly. Companies such as eBay and Banco Santandar have data analysis and
measurement capabilities to surpass their competition. They use data to offer more relevant
messaging and more profitable solutions to customers. Technologies such as data management
platforms, attribution modeling vendors, and even IBM’s Watson computer are up to the task,
but many firms must add scale and skills to use them well. As Dennis Shirokov, marketing
director of FedEx, explains it, “It’s the job of the interactive marketer to insure we have one
common truth on the data.”
■ Push new buying strategies to the fore. Marketers must create new strategies and processes to
take advantage of broader data sets and more flexible buying capabilities. Marketers can take
actions such as using campaign data to determine creative messaging, creating discreet audience
targets on the fly, and shifting media dollars seamlessly across partners in real time based on
algorithms, not just media relationships. These practices can’t simply be added as a line item to
a media plan. A director of marketing at a large online travel company told us: “It’s important
to have people who understand how the different components fit together. If you’re doing a
brand campaign, what can you do with the audience you’ve reached through a brand buy? Like
messaging sequencing, or following up through programmatic buying.”
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited August 15, 2012

3. For Interactive Marketing Professionals
Create An Audience-Obsessed Digital Media Buying Practice 3
■ Understand channel interplay. Always addressable customers are, by definition, moving across
channels on a daily basis, so marketers must work similarly to message to them seamlessly.
Soon, channels including video, social, mobile, and even TV will have viable exchanges
where marketers can target key segments with broad scale. Marketers must think about the
implications of cross-channel media strategies now, for they will affect agency relationships and
vendor partnerships as much as they will affect strategic planning and budgeting. Aaron Fetters,
director of the Insights Solutions Center at Kellogg, told us, “The future is all about cross-media
effectiveness, really understanding how to best plan across media.”
Create an Audience-Focused Media Buying Powerhouse
You must rethink your media buying practice by centralizing data and analysis and streamlining
technology around clear goals. Buying digital media is a messy business on all fronts — from
complex paperwork to convoluted optimization processes to antiquated measurement. Many
digital marketers work with anywhere from 20 to 50 partners for an average media plan. Simply
adding a few more vendors to your “stack” will only decrease efficiency. With Forrester’s playbook,
you will follow the path to more insightful, audience-focused media buying, where you control
the technology rather than letting it control you. During a recent panel discussion, Emily Scott,
director of marketing at Kayak, confirmed that it’s all about creating a single view using technology:
“I see a big trend toward pushing as much as possible through a central platform to enable real
communication across channels.” Our playbook will help you (see Figure 1)8:
1. Discover: Learn how new media buying offerings will change your media buying practice.
See how marketers will shift from people-heavy media buying processes to more effective data
and technology platforms that can target people and place media in real time. Determine if your
investment is on par with those of peers and how to make the business case for technologies
such as demand-side platforms and data management platforms as well as tactics such as
attribution measurement.
2. Plan: Build your new digital media buying strategy. You have your own audience, mix of
brand and performance goals, partnerships, and campaign plans. This phase will help you
personalize your strategy based on these attributes. Assess your media buying maturity,
determine how changes in your buying model could improve your performance, and build a
road map to advance.
3. Act: Create a killer digital media buying practice. Forrester helps you build the right skills,
process, and partnerships to create a fluid practice that is channel-agnostic and built around
data. Learn how to hire and train to build an analysis culture, how to change planning processes
to become more flexible, and determine which partners will get you to your goals with our DSP
and attribution Forrester Wave™ evaluations.
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited August 15, 2012

4. For Interactive Marketing Professionals
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4. Optimize: Position yourself for cross-channel buying capabilities. Learn what to measure
and how to benchmark your progress to prepare for future advancements in technology across
channels. Learn how to create measurement strategies that account for all types of spending,
data targeting that uses new types of inputs, and benchmarks that ensure you stay abreast
of new developments. What you learn from display-based buying initiatives will propel you
forward as other channels such as video and mobile become increasingly enabled with audience
targeting and real-time bidding.
Figure 1 The Digital Media Buying Playbook
DISCOVER PLAN ACT OPTIMIZE
Self- Performance
Vision Organization
Assessment Management
Landscape Strategic Plan Processes Benchmarks
Tools And Continuous
Business Road Map
Technology Improvement
Case
78841 Source: Forrester Research, Inc.
Supplemental Material
The Q2 2012 Global Interactive Marketing Executive Panel Online Survey was fielded to 232
interactive marketing executives; however, only a portion of survey results are illustrated in this
report. For quality assurance, we screened respondents to ensure they met minimum standards in
terms of job responsibilities and budget insight.
Forrester fielded the survey from May 2012 to June 2012. Respondent incentives included a summary
of the survey results. Exact sample sizes are provided in this report on a question-by-question basis.
This survey used a self-selected group of respondents and is therefore not random. This data is not
guaranteed to be representative of the population, and, unless otherwise noted, statistical data is
intended to be used for descriptive and not inferential purposes. While nonrandom, the survey is
still a valuable tool for understanding where marketers are today and where the industry is headed.
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited August 15, 2012

5. For Interactive Marketing Professionals
Create An Audience-Obsessed Digital Media Buying Practice 5
Endnotes
1
Forrester defines the always addressable customer as someone who “owns and personally uses at least three
connected devices, accesses the Internet multiple times per day, and goes online from multiple physical
locations, at least one of which is ‘on the go.’” See the August 6, 2012, “The Always Addressable Customer”
report.
2
For more information on the forecasted spend across digital channels, see the August 24, 2011, “US
Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2011 To 2016” report.
For more information on the forecasted spend in Western European online display advertising, see the
December 13, 2011, “Western European Online Display Advertising Forecast, 2011 To 2016” report.
3
For more information on the forecasted spend across digital channels, see the August 24, 2011, “US
Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2011 To 2016” report.
4
Source: North American Technographics® Online Benchmark Recontact Survey, Q3 2011 (US, Canada).
5
In 2010, we entered the era of pervasive interactivity, in which more people access the Internet more
frequently from more devices in more places. This trend has reached a tipping point, causing the emergence
of a new customer who is "always addressable." What's more — though we've only recently reached this
tipping point, these customers already make up more than one-third of all US online adults. Marketers
cannot ignore this trend if they want to stay relevant. See the August 6, 2012, “The Always Addressable
Customer” report.
Source: North American Technographics Retail Online Benchmark Recontact Survey, Q3 2011 (US).
6
For more information on consumers’ digital marketing privacy concerns and Forrester’s position on
assuaging them, see the May 8, 2012, “How To Defuse Digital Marketing Privacy Concerns” report.
7
Source: Q2 2012 Global Interactive Marketing Executive Panel Online Survey.
8
Please refer back to the online document to see the associated reports in the playbook. See the August 15,
2012, “Create An Audience-Obsessed Digital Media Buying Practice” report.
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited August 15, 2012