Is Media Buying Hard To Learn?

Well, yes you could do. You just need to calculate how much you can pay as a maximum, so that you have the potential to make money.

To start with that would probably be an educated guess, but you could ask the network if they have stats to help you calculate, then based on the price your product sells for and the amount you want to make, you can calculate your maximum ad spend.


A good product I read that includes this and a whole lot more, is Traffic Blackbook By Chad Hamseh (Not sure on spelling) That was a bit ago, but I believe the techniques would still be as relevant.

Media buys is the fastest way to test anything (headline, product, niche, pricing, etc) Of course you need to have budget and effective tracking system in place. No need to get an expensive adserver if you just starting. Try buysellads.com to get some knowledge and learn about banner buys would be idea. if you want to test your offer.

CPA would be a good test with minimum budget if you have a sales funnel ready, like you have your own squeeze page. If you own your product, it's even better to do direct banner buy but you do need a bit more budget with insertion order to the websites your niche hang around with. Compete.com is easy to verify demographics and traffic for those sites you are going to place IO to.

Never direct link to CPA without having your follow up mechanism in place as you can barely make any money. Do some work and pay for the long run is my advice.

Hope this helps.

As mentioned previously, Media Buys is what most of the top guys are doing. However it can be incredibly costly. I wouldn't recommend it until you have tried simpler methods such as PPC marketing. SEO is great but I am not a big fan of being slapped around by google. If you build an authority site you should be fine though.

Media buying isn't hard to learn per say. But it takes a lot of money and time to get those campaigns that make you the money. You need to go into the game with the realization that 9 out of every 10 campaigns you setup will make you no money but it's those 1 in 10 that usually pay for all of the losing campaigns.

Media buying is a lot of testing, tracking, and optimizing.

So media buying is just finding the right demographics/market..
and just a lot of testing with banners?..I read somewhere that text banners do better than flashy/graphic banners..?

It seems easy.. but I want to know as much about it before I dive in...

I want to move away from seo

I want to be in control of what I do not google..

if anyone can answer my questions go ahead.. thanks..

Media buying is tough, there are many components involved and getting to an ROI isn't easy but its doable. You need a budget, you need to be ok with IMPRESSIONS that are not getting CTR's and know what thresholds to pre-set.

I will also disagree with Jachu2 that PPC is easier, PPC is tough and complex if done right. I prefer PPC over Media Buying but whether I've managed and ran a PPC campaign at 2K a month or 80K its never easy.

On the Statement Dan Curtis made, I agree 100% and I'll add this point. Every NEW campaign starts at zero and you are in the hole before you hit your targeted CPA. Rarely do I ever start positive on any campaign however over the years, I've figured out how to minimize the losses, use the data to my advantage and turn a profit on the campaigns I've ran.

So to answer your question: Yes Media Buying is hard, there is a learning curve. My recommendations: study from reliable sources, read, read and re-read. test and learn and keep going.

BTW

The hot new thing in Media Buying is Programmatic Media Buying. Its been out for a little while but it seems only a few people know about it. Good luck!

So what would be the best thing: go with banner ads? Build out a site? ect.. I have been doing some research and what I find is that demographics matter, how your banner looks matter. Im sure other things matter but I am looking to go the banner route..hope to get feedback..

Don`t go into big media buys. Find some networks that offer smaller packages and experiment a little.

I am pretty biased regarding this matter, but I'll try to be as objective as possible.

Display advertising can be extremely effective, however in many cases you'd have to spend quite a bit of money to find what works, optimize, and get to those profitable segments.

If you're not cautious and are sloppy with your campaigns, you could burn money very quickly.

Overall, great source of traffic, but requires a hefty budget in order to see any significant results.

Media costs are skyrocketing, and it can be hard to know if your media dollars are being spent as effectively as possible.