Our media strategies editor explains how those on the publisher side can optimize their relationships with media planners and buyers, thus ensuring better business.

I've got a pretty good team working for me. They do the job as well as they can as soon as they can. And, like so many teams on the planning/buying side of the business, they are oftentimes asked to do extraordinary things within an unrealistic timeframe.

But they don't complain too much. They do complain a little, though. Sometimes it is about how the agencies or clients we work with don't provide clear direction until after we deliver what we thought we were being asked for. But most of the time, when my team complains, it is about not hearing back from certain publishers in a timely enough fashion.

Back in the day, and that day was a LONG time ago now, when I was committing online buys very selectively and with the kind of regularity promised only by an overdose of ex*lax, I experienced the problem of timely responsiveness constantly. There were times my client was already up and running by the time I'd hear back from some reps.

This was something I encountered more frequently with the big-name outfits, all of which seemed to have adopted an attitude of "I can always write better business than what you might have to offer." A lot of this hasn't changed much over the years.

Although many of the buys placed are motivated by a direct response, data-driven objective often first manifest through a testing strategy, a lot of the bigger publishers seem to ignore inquiries for inventory and avails, sometimes hunting for the elephant of an exclusive deal.

But a big factor in some of the dissatisfaction buying outfits are experiencing with some publishers is borne of a lack of experience. Though many online reps are overworked, more than a few are being tasked with big goals dependant upon skills they have not yet developed. There simply aren't enough experienced online ad sales people to meet the needs of the industry. Though the youth of the industry breed an electric dynamism rarely seen elsewhere in the business world, there are benefits to experience, and sometimes the young'uns should be accompanied by someone with that experience. Am I dating myself if I point to Sean Penn and Robert Duval in the movie "Colors" as an example?

Responsiveness is the key to anyone in business' success. Believe me -- I know this from my own frequent lack of responsiveness! 

The media planner and buyer will frequently use the volume of their business as the reason for their lack of response; unfortunately, this doesn't fly for those on the sales side. I know it isn't fair. It is a total double-standard. With experience, those of us on the planner/buyer side come to realize that and try to operate with greater sympathy for our brethren on the sales side. But, alas, that sympathy rarely trickles down to the planners and buyers who serve as primary gatekeepers of accounts. This is a reality of this business.

And so, if a planner calls or emails with some crazy request for something, whether it be highly desirable inventory for a $1 CPM that is locked up by another advertiser until the next coming of Christ, or whether or not a site can run an ad unit that has a 100K file size and does everything but chew your food, there needs to be a response. Send an email, or call to say it isn't possible. You can't leave the planner hanging, which in turn leaves the client hanging. You're much more likely to make a friend than an enemy if you tell the planner that what is requested is not possible or reasonable.

I will grant that a lot of media people and the account managers at agencies working on the business have done a lot to promote the unreal expectations on the part of clients that result in the kinds of things that cause lapses of responsiveness, e.g. the 24 hour turn-around RFP process of which a lot of interactive ad agencies are guilty.

The vendor needs to make it clear to the agency that you can't pay a $1 CPM for such a labor-intensive medium and expect that to buy the kinds of resources necessary to provide the level of service needed to ensure that every RFP, email, and phone call are responded to in a timely fashion. The agency needs to make it clear to the vendor that revenue originating with them, the agency, is directly contingent upon the vendor's responsiveness.

Media Strategies Editor Jim Meskauskas is vice president and director of online media for ICON International, Inc., an Omnicom Company.