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Forbes
09-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
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 Some media partners are still relying on outdated methods.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. Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
Forbes
11-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Want To Be More Productive? Flip This One Daily Habit
Despite our desire to be more productive, Americans spend an average of seven hours a day consuming online content—and that number's still climbing. Between emails, social feeds, podcasts, and newsletters, we're constantly plugged in, absorbing information at every turn. But here's the problem: All that input may quietly crowd out output. And nowhere is that more evident than in our mornings. If you're a founder, solopreneur, marketer, or creator, your most valuable asset isn't your content calendar or your email list. It's your creative energy. And if you spend your first hour of the day consuming—scrolling, reading, reacting—you're using that energy on someone else's priorities before touching your own. That's why one small habit shift can make a massive difference—something I first heard from author and entrepreneur Marie Forleo: Create first. Then consume. When you start your day in creation mode, you shift your energy from reactive to proactive. You build something that didn't exist before—before the meetings, before the client asks, before the world gets noisy. This practice works because it: It's really about who owns your time. When you consume first, the content creators whose work you're consuming own your time. When you create first, you own your time, your message, and your mindset—before anyone else has a chance to rent space in your head. If you're anything like I used to be, your mornings at work might go something like this. First, you open your laptop and check your email. That's a good 10 to 30 minutes of consumption right there. Then, you glance at your phone. A few taps later, and you've read three articles, saved two more for later, and responded to a few comments on LinkedIn. By the time you're ready to start creating something—anything—you're mentally scattered, looking at the clock, and feeling low-key overwhelmed. Sound familiar? Consuming first leads to: The irony? You probably consumed content meant to inspire you to create… but never got around to it. You don't need hours of uninterrupted solitude to make this work. Just 15 or 20 focused minutes can shift your entire day. Start by defining what creating means for you. It might be: If you'd like to give it a try, here's how to make it easy to begin the new practice. The goal is momentum, not perfection. Look, you already create for clients, customers, and your community. But what could change if you created something for yourself first—every morning? Before email. Before Instagram. Before the news cycle. Just you, your ideas, and a few blessed, uninterrupted minutes. Your audience doesn't need more content. They need more of your content. So tomorrow morning, try it. Create something—anything—before you consume a single thing. You might be surprised at how you can be more productive and accomplish your goals when start the day on your own terms.
