When I tell our newest team members I used to book media buys via fax machine, I get the kind of look you’d give someone who churns their own butter.
But 25 years ago, faxes, landlines, and Arbitron books were the tools of the trade. It was slow, manual, and full of curly paper.
In the 90s and early 2000s, media buying was completely manual:
• You called someone.
• You haggled on rates.
• You faxed an insertion order.
• Then filed media kits in a cabinet and hoped the campaign ran right.
Performance tracking? Basically, anecdotal or hidden in one person’s spreadsheet.
Changing a campaign mid-flight? You were in for hours of extra calls and faxes.
It was chaotic. But somehow, it worked.
Fast forward to today, and media buying has been completely transformed.
Automation. Real-time dashboards. AI. DSPs. What used to take days now happens in seconds.
But the biggest change? The mindset. We’ve shifted from gut instinct and Rolodexes to dashboards and data.
It was chaotic. But somehow, it worked.
Why does this matter today? Because, seeing how far we’ve come helps us use today’s tools more strategically.
From Banner Ads to Behavior Targeting: Digital Crashes the Party
💻 Then came digital.
Suddenly, you could run ads on websites.
In the early digital days, we didn’t quite know what a click-through rate meant, but we knew it sounded cool.
We guessed our way through targeting with ad servers like DoubleClick. It felt like driving a Ferrari blindfolded, fast, exciting, and mildly terrifying.
Then, Google AdWords changed the game. Suddenly, media buying wasn’t just creative, it was scientific.
• Intent-based targeting
• Flexible budgets
• Real-time testing
• Geo and device targeting
That’s when media buying shifted from art to science. Performance became the new currency.
And then... Social media changed the game again.
Facebook ads launched in 2007, and suddenly “social strategy” became a line item in every media plan, even if no one knew what it meant yet.
The magic? Targeting.
• Life events
• Interests
• Behaviors
Now we could target people based on interests, life events, and even relationship status.
💍 Sell engagement rings to people who just changed their Facebook status?
🍼 Baby gear to moms before they told their own parents?
It was revolutionary, and also, just the beginning.
Social wasn’t just a new channel. It was a total mindset shift.
🤯 And then came Twitter (now X), LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat...
With more platforms came more inventory and more complexity.
Social gave marketers a level of precision we’d never seen before. But it also introduced a new level of chaos we’re still learning to manage.
Programmatic Power: Real-Time at Scale
⚡ Enter programmatic: the fast lane of media buying.
With DSPs (Demand-Side Platforms), we could suddenly bid in real-time across millions of websites. Campaigns that used to take a team and a week. Now launchable over lunch.
Early programmatic had its flaws:
👷🏻♂️ Brand safety concerns
🎯 Targeting gaps
🙏🏼 A bit too much “spray and pray”
But it evolved. Private marketplaces. Smarter tools. Greater transparency.
Today? Programmatic is the backbone of video, display, and CTV advertising.
It’s fast, scalable, and (when done right) incredibly effective.
AI in the Trenches: Media Buying’s Latest Evolution
🤖 AI isn’t just hype, it’s on the media front lines right now. And It’s (Mostly) Awesome.
At Vision Media, we’re using it to:
✔️ Generate audience segments
✔️ Write headlines
✔️ Predict performance
✔️ Optimize campaigns
✔️ Even support pitch decks
It doesn’t replace human thinking. It amplifies
it.
It’s not perfect (one AI once tried to match luxury skincare with truck enthusiasts), but with a smart human in the loop, it’s a power tool.
So, how do you stay ahead in a world that never stops changing?
Here’s what’s worked for us:
🔍 Stay curious
💡 Hire smart people (and trust them)
🧠 Keep the human in the loop
The tools keep evolving. But the mission stays the same, the right message, in the right place, at the right time, managed by the right people. Now with WAY better tools.
We’ve gone from faxes and file cabinets to AI-driven campaigns across multiple platforms before your second cup of coffee.
