The 2023 advertising forecast is, well uhh… it’s complicated.

The word “flexibility” has jumped out front as an early contender for advertising’s word of the year. Every advertising forecast says essentially the same thing: “with all the uncertainty of 2023, we’ll need flexibility in media buying.”

Instead of locking in a year-long deal in the up-front, advertisers are building in escape clauses and shorter deals. Quarterly buys are becoming much more common. As market risk outweighs FOMO, advertisers are willing to take a risk of ad hoc media buying in the spot market.

For unprepared agencies, this extra load of unexpected work can burn out already over-worked and under-staffed media teams.

New Media Tools Needed

Flexibility in advertising requires agility in media planning and media buying.

Using legacy media buying tools in this environment is “like playing Fortnite on dial-up.” Despite your best efforts, you’ll always be behind. You’re destined to lose.

You need new tools actually built for today’s fast-moving market.

Here are 5 media buying tools that will help you survive and thrive in 2023:

  1. AI Powered Media Recommender
  2. Clone Media Plans
  3. Batch Edit Media Plans
  4. Automate Insertion Orders
  5. Automate Re-Flowing Media Budgets

1. AI-powered Media Plan Builder

media plan recommender

Artificial Intelligence is becoming a part of our daily life. ChatGPT gives you the answer to virtually any question. Midjourney generates award-winning art. AI has already been in our lives in many other subtle ways.

Isn’t about time for your media planning tool to employ AI to help you build media plans?

Bionic’s AI-Powered Advertising Research Tool helps you source advertising placement ideas for your media plans. Simply click the “Research” tab on any campaign to see list of recommendations generated from an AI model custom-built for the advertiser.

Want to bring your own AI into the media planning workflow? You can plug your AI into Bionic.

2. Clone Media Plans

clone media plan

The media buying process starts with the creation of a media plan. With more frequent media plans, you have to be efficient in your media planning process.

With quarterly media planning, each media plan is typically a variation on previous plans with new dates, rates, and quantities.

Bionic automates building similar media plans through Media Plan Clone Tool. With it, you avoid hours of manual work. You also avoid costly mistakes.

3. Batch Edit Media Plans

batch edit media plan

Just when you think everything is set in stone, plans change. Start dates are delayed. Budgets are scaled back. Money is moved.

Bionic’s Media Plan Batch Edit Tool enables you to adjust or remove media placements at a moment’s notice.

4. Automate Insertion Orders

automate insertion orders

Upon completion of your media plan, your next step is to create orders. Some of these orders are insertion orders that are vendor contracts with signatures. The rest are internal orders used for reconciliation.

Creating all these orders manually is slow, error-prone, and time-consuming.

In a perfect world, you would press a button on your media plan and all your orders would pop out automatically.

Bionic gives you this perfect world.

Bionic’s Order Generation Tool fully automates the process of creating orders, sending to vendors, and gathering electronic signatures. With this tool, you can create all the orders in your media plan in just a few seconds.

5. Automate Re-Flowing Media Budgets

Re-flowing Media Budget for Current Month

It seems nothing goes as planned in advertising. This is especially true in digital advertising.

When your ads launch, your work is just beginning. Now, you need to monitor the pacing of ad delivery, spending, and all your other KPIs. You have to “re-flow” the budgets of the placements in your media plan to keep your campaign on track.

If done manually, this work will steal a huge chunk of your work week.

Bionic gives you automation to monitor of your ad performance and re-flow your media budgets.

Eliminating his “grunt work” frees you to focus your attention on more strategic – and more fun – tasks your clients value the most.

How to Get These Media Buying Tools

If you’re already using Bionic for Agencies, you already have access to all these tools. Contact your support team for training and help in integrating these tools into your media workflow.

If you’re not yet using Bionic, you can request a trial to access these tools.