15 Media Buying Agencies: The Most Incredible for Outstanding Growth in 2024 [UK & US Full Review]

Businesses have used media buying since the dawn of newspaper. But now, it’s tremendously evolved into a much more complex and revenue-generating  marketing tactic.

In the US alone, between the 80s and now, media consumption has only increased. And of course, with all this growth, the way brands use media buying has changed a heck load too! From using programmatic ad technology to buy media spaces and incrementality to measure your performance.

It’s an entirely different playing field , but this complexity has also skyrocketed media buying benefits for businesses and many popular brands know this! For instance, let’s look at the Indian smartphone brand, ASUS. Through the use of real-time analytics and programmatic ads, ASUS was able to multiply their market share by 10 times, from 0.3% to 3%. Plus, they increased their targeting ads efficiency by 3 times through customer segmentation, and sold more than 1 million units.

The right media buying agency can help you define and deploy the best strategies to achieve these amazing results in no time.

After ample research we’ve summarized our key findings for media buying and the top media buying agencies to help your brand become the next best thing in 2024.

Ready?

Let’s get started! 

What is Media Buying?

Media buying is the practice of purchasing advertising space on media channels. These media channels include paid ads like display ads, video ads, etc. and television, publications, newspapers, radios, and mobile apps. Most brands use programmatic ads in their media buying strategies because it allows them to leverage technology that can automate the entire media buying process.  This means you’ll have more accurate customer segmentation, buyer demographics and similar data giving you insight into your ideal personas buying behavior. 

When businesses purchase media space through paid digital ads, they do this through real-time bidding (RTB). Think video ads space, text ad space, display ad space, etc.

There are three main components of media buying that make the RTB process possible and these are:

1. Supply-side Platform (SSP). An SSP helps the ad publisher manage their ad inventory to maximize their results. Publishers can set their ad types, minimum spend on ad promotion, ad categories and ad rules. Once all these controls are in place, the SSP will automate the entire process after.
2. Demand-side Platform (DSP).  DSPs lie at the opposite end of SSPs. This component involves your business, the party who wants to promote their content. A DPS allows you to configure your ad campaign, determine your ad budgets,  ad goals and who you want your ads to target. There are various DPSs in the market, and you need to understand how many partnerships they have and the technology they use to determine which DSP is best for your ad inventory and campaign goals.
3. Ad Exchange. The ad exchange platform connects the SSP and DSP to finally make the RTB process happen. Publishers and clients participate in real-time buying and selling on ad exchange platforms to find the most profitable ads and ad spaces for their businesses.

When investing in media buying, you need to set a budget, define a target audience and decide how long you’d like to advertise your brand. 

Media buying can be valuable for your business because:

• Brands that use media buying have maximum control over their advertisements, how much they want to invest, and who they want to target.
• You’ll have a better shot at targeting your ideal buyers successfully. The media buying agency you partner up with will choose a time to advertise your brand when your audience is most likely to see it.
• Media buying agencies can provide real-time analytics to measure your marketing performance. Real-time analytics is crucial because it gives you a more in-depth and well-rounded analysis of engaging your audience and what you’re lacking.

Now that you understand media buying and why it’s beneficial, I’ll explain how media buying works. 

How Does Media Buying Work?

Media buying works in these simple stages:

1. Choose a media buying medium and determine your ideal buyers. Before you get started consult with your media buying agency and decide on the best medium. You also want to define your buyer persona to develop an effective media buying strategy. When defining your target audience, consider where your buyers shop, the questions they ask, and what media engages them most.
2. Determine your media buying goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). To evaluate whether your media buying efforts were successful, establish campaign goals. Once you’ve outlined what you want from your media buying strategy, choose the relevant KPIs to help you measure your performance.
3. Establish a sound media buying strategy. Like all the steps in this list, your media buying agency will help with this. Develop a strategy that includes your approaches, posting schedule, budget, and your value proposition.
4. Buy your placements on media channels. As you understand what you want from your media buying strategy, it’s time to put your money where your mouth is. To purchase ad placements, you need to bid against other media buyers. Depending on your media channel, you could also automate your bid processing, requiring less time and effort and producing more ROI.
5. Launch and measure your campaign. After buying your media placements, you’re ready to launch your campaign. But the work doesn’t end there. Consistently measure your campaign to ensure you’re achieving your goals. If you’re not seeing your desired results, you’ll have enough information to modify your approach. 

What Services Do Media Buying Agencies Offer?

Creative Services

When you invest in media buying, you need your advertisements to stand out from all the other companies. Think about it: How often are you genuinely engaged by a YouTube ad or an ad between your TV shows? Most of the top media buying agencies in the US and the UK offer creative services to give your marketing efforts an innovative edge.

Typical creative services from media buying agencies include video production, creative concepting, photography, and styling. With these services, you’re sure to have unique advertisements that captivate your audience. 

Media Buying Strategy

Before you start doing anything related to media buying, you need a foolproof strategy that outlines your goals, KPIs and market disadvantages and advantages. You also need to define which social channels you plan to use, what content you want to promote and who your ideal buyers are. Your media buying agency will handle all these details for you, and determine the best strategy to suit your business.

You may even get lucky and find an agency that can do a free audit of your current market position. But whether or not you get this perk isn’t a train smash, what’s more important is that your agency designs a strategy tailored to your business. It’s best to look at an agency’s case studies to understand how well they can achieve this.

Media Buying Campaign Set Up and Optimization

After your agency has developed an award-winning media strategy for your brand, it’s time to get your campaign set up and optimized. This includes creating the content you want to promote and additional content to complement your campaign, defining and documenting a posting schedule and then actually starting the media buying process. Because a media buying campaign is often very technical and requires strategic bidding, it’s best to let your agency handle this.

When developing a media buying strategy, you and your agency would have already agreed on vital points like your budget and the best media buying channels. Your agency will use all this information to start and manage your media buying campaign. But they won’t just stop there. Media buying agencies will also optimize your campaign through A/B testing, heat maps, performance measurement and managing your ad inventory.

Other Essential Marketing Services

Besides the three key services we just discussed, media buying agencies also provide a few more additional services to complement your media buying strategy and campaign. These services often include influencer marketing, mobile app optimization and digital marketing. Let’s take a quick glance at each of these additional media buying services.

• Influencer marketing: It is vital for media buying agencies to expand their reach and secure credibility. Rather than casting random talent for your advertisements, you can rely on the power of influencers. These influencers usually have tens of thousands of followers to expose your brand. Another valuable aspect of the influencer marketing services from media buying agencies is they’ll choose the perfect influencers for your brand. This support will save you the effort and money of influencer marketing tools or reaching out to influencers yourself. 
• Mobile App Optimization: If you’ve ever played a mobile game, you’ll know how common ads are. For your business to develop viral mobile apps or use the best ads for mobile apps, media buying agencies specialize in this service. Whether you understand the basics of mobile marketing or not, many media buying agencies offer specialized services to help brands who have mobile apps or need ad placement. 
• Digital Marketing: The smallest and biggest media buying agencies provide a wide and valuable range of digital marketing services. These services include social media marketing, web development, and design, SEO, digital media planning, and so much more.

With the help of these services, you can optimize all aspects of your digital marketing endeavors. You’ll get support to build a professional website tailored to your audience, and develop digital campaigns that engage your current consumers and attract new buyers. 

Source: IgniteVisibility

How to Evaluate the Perfect Media Buying Agency 

When choosing the best media buying agency for your brand, consider these points.

• How well do the services suit your brand’s needs?  Some of the agencies we’ve reviewed offer a broader range of services than only media buying. For example, video marketing, SEO, social media marketing, and content marketing. Not every business needs these extra bells and whistles, while others might. Determine what exactly you’d like your agency to help you. The best way to do this is to outline your media buying goals and identify what you lack to accomplish them. 

• How much the agency costs. How much your business can afford a media buying agency relies on the size of your business and the services you want. Media buying agencies for startups may offer free audits or consultations to ease the cost. However, it’s best to choose a budget and discuss this with your media buying agency. 

• Which clients have the agency worked with? If you’re a B2B business, you want a media buying agency with experience working with brands like yours. Always check the agency’s portfolio before opting for them. Any agency you choose needs to understand and have experience in your market’s pain points and gaps. 

• What partnerships or recognition does the agency have? You’ll notice that many of the media buying agencies on this list are certified partners of tech companies like Google. Publications and review sites like Clucth.io have also mentioned some of these agencies. It’s best to choose an agency with certifications or social proof to ensure quality services.
• The agency’s success stories and rates. It’s one thing if your media buying agency says they’ve worked with Amazon. But what exactly have they done for Amazon, and how successful were they? Look at case studies on the agencies’ websites or speak to a consultant for this information.

8 Best  Media Buying Agencies in North America 

1.CommCreative

CommCreative is a media buying agency that tells your story through various digital marketing and media buying services. From brand development, social media marketing, web development, and ROI measurement frameworks to event marketing and product design, CommCreative has it all. Most of the clients in this media buying agency’s portfolio are huge, tech companies. This agency is also considered one of America’s 500 fastest-growing private companies, a certified HubSpot partner and received a Hermes Creative Award.

2.Moburst

Mobust offers services that focus on media buying on mobile, via apps. This agency will help you produce the best videos and find the perfect placements for your advertising through mobile apps. Mobusrst has an impressive track record of increasing Yala’s ROI by 1000%, generating over 1400% growth for Samsung’s mobile app, and gaining $5 million worth of App Store Optimization for Discovery.

3.InPulse Digital

Companies love InPulse Digital because they are a strategy-driven and creative agency that offers a wide selection of services. With InPulse Digital, you can grow your business, increases your ROI, and develop strategies beyond standard media buying. InPulse Digital has worked on more than 1000 projects. This agency takes a six-step approach to help your business achieve its objectives. Some of this agency’s clients have been with them for over 7 years!

4.Fieldtrip

Fieldtrip helps small businesses through brand development, market research, product design, and web development. The primary aim of this agency is to drive the success of Nonprofits and help them reach a wider audience and gain credibility in this sector. You can rely on this agency to manage your assets, plan and achieve your benchmarks, design and manage your products and find the best mediums for your marketing efforts.

5.Colormatics

Colormatics is all about taking a creative approach to help businesses stand out and get known. This agency has a 5-step process to help you create award-winning content driven to achieve your goals. Colormatics’ process will support your brand from strategy to post-production and deployment. Making this creative agency more impressive, it’s produced engaging and story-driven videos for Steph Curry, Shaquille O’Neal, and Udonis Haslem. As this agency has loads of experience working on crypto projects, you may want to consider it if you’re in this sector.

6.Cutwater

Cutwater is a media and creative agency that doesn’t just produce visually-appealing ads but drives brands toward conversion and growth. When you work with Cutwater, they’ll use an in-depth 3-step process that includes developing your growth hypothesis consisting of your targets and goals, creating a 4-cycle strategy, and building creative concepts based on your tailored plan. The four main service offerings from Cutwater include Strategy, Creative, Media, and Production. Russell Stover, an old brand, turned to Cutwater and from that, this agency was able to bring fresh, trendy concepts to their advertising tactics.

7.BigSea

BigSea primarily focuses on these industries: B2B, higher education, CBD, Ecommerce, attractions, and museums and Nonprofits. This media buying agency uses content as its core for successful marketing strategies and media buying solutions. They also provide resources for businesses, such as a 10-step checklist to ensure your website is geared toward conversion and news articles to keep you relevant. Working with just one NGO, BigSea helped them increase their revenue by over 100% and gain 145% more unique contributors.

8.Kiosk

If you want a full-service marketing agency, look no further than Kiosk! This agency is all about using data-driven strategies to develop tailored solutions for your digital marketing and media buying needs. From working with universities, and healthcare providers to financial services, Kiosk prides itself on data and expert collaboration to help you reach your desired goals. Thanks to Kiosk, Covia – a healthcare provider increased its organic page views by 28% and reduced its average page load time by 25%.

7 Best Media Buying Agencies in the UK

1.SpinBrands

SpinBrands is one of the most popular media buying agencies in the UK because of its creative services. The main services this brand offers are Organic, Performance, Ambassadors, Creative, and Strategy. As you can tell, SpinBrands is dedicated to helping your brand grow while providing unique creative concepts. Working with LoveHoney, this agency increased its organic clicks by over 5000, secured over 1,100 new followers, gained more than 114,000 engagements, and skyrocketed its engagement rate by 15%.

2.Toast

Like SpinBrands, Toast is a well-known UK media buying agency. However, what makes this brand different is that Toast is all about TV advertising. If you want to develop the best and most engaging TV ads, Toast is the agency you need. While working under Covid guidelines, Toast has produced and promoted some of the UKs most enhiyable TV ads for Loaf, Innocent Smoothie and Morgan Stanley.

3.LYO Agency

LYO agency strictly focuses on PR and UX optimization for marketing and media buying. It’s also vital to know that this agency only works with small businesses.

4.Priority Outdoor

If you want to use billboards, posters, and outdoor adverting tactics, consider Priority Outdoor. As the name entails, this agency exclusively focuses on outdoor adverting strategies. The prime environments these agency has serviced include airports, tube, and railway stations, airports, motorways, offices, and gyms. This agency will help you find the best digital billboards, the optimal formatting to convey your brand messaging and the perfect spots for thousands of people to see your business.

5.Kairos Media

Kairos Media has a long list of famous clients they’ve helped maximize their social media engagement. Unlike Toast and Priority Outdoor, Kairos Media focuses on media buying planning and strategies for social channels. This agency has five different awards for its amazing results and has featured in countless publications. Adding value to this media buying agency, Kairos Media has recently started digital design services too!

6.Liquorice

Liquorice will help your media planning and buying efforts whether you want it presented on TV or social media. This agency offers specialized B2B marketing and retail marketing services while offering web development and design, social media marketing, digital marketing, and branding. Liquorice has provided media planning and buying expertise for many brands like I.T.S, CryptoTag, Papa John’s, Kelo-Cote, and Bath Fertility.

Source: Liquorice

7.Once Upon A Time Marketing

Once Upon a Time offers robust marketing and media buying services for brands in entertainment, music, retail, and hospitality. This agency knows how to catch your audience’s attention by sharing parts of your brand and your vision. Recently this agency has worked on projects like the Netflix show Maid and Open Your Eyes, branding for Carollini Miami and Iron Maiden’s Senjutsu album.

Source: Once Upon a Time

Final Thoughts and Our Two Top Picks

Media buying agencies have a range of benefits for your business, mainly being maximum growth. You can get your brand in front of your target buyers and leverage various creative and data-driven services from media buying agencies to achieve your goals. We believe the best media buying agency in the US is InPulse Digital. This agency has creative and media services for businesses of all shapes and sizes, and they offer a wider range of services than only media buying efforts. You can rely on InPulse Digital to optimize your entire marketing approach and ensure your brand get’s in the forefront your competitors.

For the best media buying agencies in the UK, our top choice is Once Upon A  Time. Not only has this agency worked with on super-mega projects, but they understand what innovative creative concepting means. You can trust this agency to ensure your business gets professional and visually-engaging video production and overall content for media buying.

References

Institut numerique: The evolution of the consumption of the media in the last 50 years

ADScholar: 5 Programmatic Advertising Case Studies That Yielded Exponential Results

Hootsuite: 56 Important Social Media Advertising Statistics