The Media Buying Houses

One of the stories to appear in the first edition of Aurora in July 1998was titled Media Buying Houses in Pakistan. The Wrong Place?The Wrong Time? The story was indicative of the disruption theirentry was about to cause. Until then, media placement wassituated in the heart of the agency. Not only that, the agency’s revenuemodel was based on the 15% commission earned by the agency for everymedia placement made. Resistance from the agencies was inevitable.Beyond agency resistance, a major concern was that the skillsetsrequired to deliver the media buying function were lacking.

Media buying was about identifying the most effective advertising platform for a campaignand then negotiating the best rate with the media. By then, media choiceshad expanded beyond satellite and cable TV, with new options emergingin print, outdoor and below-the-line advertising. Nevertheless, the questionin Aurora’s first edition was worth posing, at least in the context of localbrands, although in terms of multinational brands, media buying houseswere late in coming to the party in Pakistan.

The first media buying house to set up in Pakistan was Pak Mediacom,an affiliate of Mediacom Worldwide, in 1996. The company was launchedby Blazon, then affiliated with Greys. In 1998, Pak Mediacom was boughtout by its employees and began to pitch for independent media business. Itwas headed by Raihan Merchant (now founder and chairman of Z2C), whocan justifiably be called the “father of Pakistan’s media agencies.” Aware ofthe huge skills gap, Merchant set about designing the training required –an initiative that continues today across the Z2C Group of companies. Infact, many media specialists today are the product of Merchant’s training.The second entrant was Mindshare in 1999; the third to emerge was MatrixMedia in 2000.

At the start, media buying was mostly limited to “bulk” buying (securingthe best discount from the media). However, with the opening up of privateTV channels and FM radio in 2002, and later the advent of digital, followedby the social media revolution, media agencies came into their own, placingmedia as well as providing strong creative input. Media buying became thecatalyst for the setting up of Peoplemeters in Pakistan. Here, it is pertinentto underscore that until then, media data was either unavailable orunreliable. Digital played the critical role in making data the centrepiece ofmedia buying decisions.

Media agencies have come a long way since 1998, and ad agencieshave had to reconcile themselves to losing the media placement functionand replace their revenue model from a media placement commission to afee model based on their creative output. The next challenge for mediabuying is to incorporate AI in their planning and create messaging thatsticks in an increasingly ad-averse world.

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