Since advertisers cannot any longer resort to one particular TV channel or even network that would provide them with the nationwide advertising coverage of their target audiences, companies have to find the ways for reaching those audiences with their advertising messages through various local TV networks or channels. Such television ad placement is called spot media buying. There are different ways advertising companies can perform their television ad placement and spot media buying. Some of them decide to do it on their own, while the others resort to the help of independent media buyers or advertising agencies.
The Spot television ad placement can be done on local TV networks or on cable television channels. In any case, such spot television ad placement will require from advertising companies to do much more media planning and invest long work hours in order to achieve the desired results. Being an alternative to the nationwide TV networks, spot TV advertising engages in this process many different parties. Another shortcoming of the spot television ad placement is a higher price for such advertising spots, compared to the nationwide TV networks. Besides the thorough planning, it takes much legal work to be done on signing different contracts. In addition, advertisers purchase only a small amount of TV time from the local TV networks, compared to the large amounts of advertising, placed through large networks. Nevertheless, this shortcoming is counterbalanced by the ability of advertisers to carry out much more targeted advertising campaigns and reach such segments of their consumers audiences with their ad messages, which otherwise would remain left out of their reach.
A local TV market is a highly competitive one. Therefore, many of such TV networks do not only wait for their advertising clients to come to them. Most of them work with various go-betweens or representatives. Such representatives receive certain commissions for their mediation work. It can range from five to ten percent of the contract amount. Many advertisers can carry out their sport television ad placement through such independent media buyers. Nonetheless, besides smaller media buying companies, there are also large go-between companies, which offer advertisers to place their ads on over one hundred different local TV networks and channels. Such partnership can greatly benefit large advertisers, since with the help of large media buying companies they can negotiate better prices, simplify and gain a fuller control over their entire media placement and buying activities. Additionally, most of such large media buying, so called wireless networks, can offer advertisers excellent television planning software solutions that can serve to companies as additional competitive advantages, saving them time and work hours' investments and increasing their level of ROI.
On the whole, the market of spot television ad placement tends for the further consolidation, which significantly simplifies the task of local media planning and buying for many advertisers.