09-07-2025
Why You're Losing The Media Game In 2025 (And How To Catch Up)
Results-driven marketer with 20+ years of experience with hands-on digital execution. CEO and founder of Twelve Three Media.
Let's be blunt: If you're still executing media buys across a patchwork of disconnected platforms in 2025, you're behind the times.
Too many brands are stuck in the old-school approach, placing separate buys for connected TV (CTV), digital audio, display and digital out-of-home (DOOH). Advertisers stuck in this mode have to deal with a lot of challenges, including each platform having its own set of metrics, data silos and limited attribution. It's like playing four games of chess at once with no idea which move is helping you win.
In today's fluid, cross-channel media environment, that siloed strategy is inefficient, costing you money, time and insight.
The Problem With Old-School Media Buying
It used to be that if you wanted to reach people on streaming platforms, digital radio and out-of-home placements, you needed different reps, multiple insertion orders and separate reporting dashboards. None of these channels communicated with one another, leaving you to sift through multiple sets of data to gauge performance.
Each vendor operated in a walled garden, holding your performance data hostage. That meant your campaign on one platform had no visibility into how it overlapped or interacted with your campaign on another.
You couldn't deduplicate audiences, control frequency across channels or pivot spend based on performance. This model may have worked when media was simpler, but it's a losing strategy in a world where people stream, scroll, listen and view simultaneously.
The Media Ecosystem Has Evolved—Has Your Partner?
Modern media buying tools are programmatic platforms that let you run a single campaign across CTV, display, audio, DOOH and even podcasts. These tools offer unified data and real-time optimization. You can now reach your audience in multiple places at once while controlling spend, deduplicating impressions and aligning every channel to the same conversion goals.
Some media partners are still relying on outdated methods. They are locked into exclusive partnerships, fragmented dashboards or buying structures based on insertion orders that simply can't compete with what's possible now.
If your current partner can't show you how media channels are interacting, or they can't pivot your budget in real time, they're not evolving with the times. That's costing you not only money but also business opportunities.
Unified, cross-channel buying isn't some futuristic idea. It's already here. Programmatic buying shouldn't be about automation for automation's sake. It's about smarter use of budget, precision targeting, real-time optimization and, above all, performance.
What A Smarter Buying Strategy Unlocks
Today's media opportunities are everywhere your audience is, including connected TV platforms (streaming services), streaming audio, DOOH placements (retail screens, gyms, transit, billboards), and web and mobile display inventory. With the right setup, you can reach a podcast listener on their morning commute, a shopper at the grocery store or a family streaming content in the evening. All of this can be powered through one campaign, powered by unified goals and reporting.
With the right strategy, you gain:
• Omnichannel reach with unified frequency controls
• Attribution modeling across devices and formats
• Dynamic budget reallocation based on performance
• In-depth audience insights using real data
• A holistic view of campaign results
This isn't just theory. It's how modern brands are building real media momentum today.
Walled Gardens Are the Real Problem
The biggest challenge for marketers isn't just media cost: It's visibility. Walled gardens keep your data locked away. You can't tell how often you reached someone, where you overserved impressions or which platform truly drove the conversion.
That lack of transparency is bad for strategy and worse for ROI. Finding a media partner who can give you visibility across your channels is key, but you can take steps yourself to overcome walled gardens by emphasizing first-party data collection. When users trust your business with their information, you can cut out the middleman and take a big leap over the garden wall.
How To Create A Winning Media Strategy
First, we recommend aligning teams behind objectives rather than specific channels. Instead of simply saying, 'We need a connected TV campaign,' say, 'We need 1,000 qualified leads or purchases.' Then, draw upon your knowledge of where your customers congregate and what channels drive the kind of leads you want to develop a cohesive strategy.
Walled gardens may limit the data from certain platforms. However, you can get a fair amount of data yourself by investing in a customer data platform (CDP) that pulls from multiple sources, as well as moving away from last-click attribution models to more nuanced approaches like multi-touch attribution.
These steps can help you make informed decisions about media campaigns. Perhaps more importantly, they can ensure that your brand is reaching your customers across multiple online destinations.
Final Thought
Consumers don't think in terms of media channels. They move between streaming shows, social platforms and physical environments without a second thought. Your media strategy needs to reflect that behavior seamlessly, intelligently and proactively.
The game has changed. If your media buying partner hasn't, then it might be time to revisit your strategy.
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