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Media specialists

MEDIASPECIALISTSACROSS AFRICA.

Planning, negotiation, buying and optimisation across search, social, programmatic, mobile video and digital out of home. Done in-house, every week.

1500+
Projects delivered
R8.5M+
Media savings reinvested
12
Years in market

What does a media agency do?

A media agency decides where a brand's advertising money goes and then buys it. That covers audience research, channel planning, rate negotiation, placement, live optimisation and reporting across search, social, programmatic display, mobile video, television, radio and out of home. The distinction that matters commercially is between agencies that run ads on a platform and agencies that plan and negotiate the whole mix.

The problem

Running ads is not media buying

A great many South African brands believe they have a media capability because someone is managing their Meta and Google accounts. That is performance execution on two self-serve platforms, and it is roughly a fifth of the available audience. Real media work is the part nobody sees on a dashboard: knowing what inventory is actually worth, negotiating against rate card, spotting when a placement is being sold at a premium it no longer deserves, and moving budget between channels while a campaign is live. Brands that skip it do not usually find out. They just quietly pay more for less.

The approach

01

Audience before channel

The plan starts with who has to be reached and what they actually do with their day, not with a list of platforms. Channel selection is an output of that, which is why our plans routinely include inventory a purely digital shop would never consider.

02

Negotiate, do not accept

Rate card is an opening position. Buying constantly and across categories is what gives an agency the reference points to know when a price is wrong. The savings this produces are real money, and on our accounts they have gone back into the campaigns rather than into our margin: more than R8.5 million reinvested to date.

03

Buy in real time where it pays

Programmatic buying now extends well past display. Digital out of home can be bought by daypart, location, weather and context, and mobile video can be placed contextually in real time. Our programmatic DOOH work won at the MMA Smarties in 2024.

04

Optimise while it is live

A media plan is a hypothesis. Weekly optimisation moves budget towards what is working, and because the creative team sits with the media team, the response to underperformance can be a new asset rather than only a new bid.

05

Report against the business, not the platform

Platform dashboards report on themselves. We report one reconciled view across every channel, against the commercial goal set in the strategy phase, with media monitoring running alongside to catch what paid activity alone will not show.

Capabilities

Deliverables, not adjectives.

All services

Planning and buying

  • Media strategy and channel planning
  • Rate negotiation and buying
  • Budget allocation and flighting
  • Reconciliation and reporting

Digital and performance

  • Paid search and paid social
  • Full-funnel performance campaigns
  • SEO and SEM
  • Conversion and return tracking

Programmatic and out of home

  • Programmatic digital out of home
  • Premium programmatic display and video
  • Tech-enabled mobile video distribution
  • Contextual real-time placement

Listening

  • Always-on media monitoring
  • Opportunity and risk detection
  • Share of conversation tracking
Services in this capabilityMedia BuyingPaid MediaProgrammatic OOHMobile PlatformMedia MonitoringSEO / SEM

Evidence

Where this has been done.

All work
Excella Masterbrand Easter campaign for Excella

Excella

Excella Masterbrand Easter

A national Easter media campaign across nine channels, built to keep Excella on the table at the biggest family meal of the year.

Media Buying · Influencer Marketing · Integrated Campaign

Before you ask

Fair questions.

  • Paid media usually refers to campaigns bought through self-serve advertising platforms such as Google and Meta. Media buying is the wider discipline of planning and negotiating across all available inventory, including programmatic, out of home, mobile video, radio and print, where price is negotiated rather than set by an auction you cannot argue with.

  • There are two separate numbers and you should always be shown both: the media budget that goes into the market, and the agency fee for planning, negotiating, buying and reporting it. Fees are commonly charged as a percentage of media spend, as a monthly retainer or as a project fee, and the right structure depends on how much is being spent and how continuously. We quote them separately so it is always clear what you are paying us and what is buying audience.

  • Programmatic digital out of home is the buying of digital billboards and screens through automated, real-time auctions rather than through fixed monthly contracts. It lets a brand buy a screen only at the times and in the conditions that matter, such as a specific daypart, weather condition or proximity trigger. Our work in this channel won at the MMA Smarties in 2024.

  • Our specialisms are digital, programmatic, mobile and digital out of home, which is where the majority of measurable South African budget now sits. Where a plan genuinely needs traditional channels to hit a reach target, we plan and buy for it rather than pretending the audience can be found somewhere more convenient.

  • Yes. We take media-only mandates. It works best when we are in the room while the creative is still being developed, so the work is built for the placements it will run in rather than resized for them afterwards.

Ready when you are

Let's plugyou in.

We reply within one business day

Big enough to buy the media, small enough that the people who pitched you do the work.