The Dark Secrets No One Tells You Before Investing in Media

There is a moment in every media plan when someone has to make the call. The budget is approved, the agency recommendation is on the table, the numbers look convincing, and the audience appears to be right. There is reach, frequency, impressions and a clear rationale for why the plan should work.

So you sign off. I have been that person.

Before I worked on the media side, I was the client sitting across the table from agencies and media owners, responsible for deciding where the money should go. I had the presentations, the audience figures, the recommendations and the reassurance that we were making the right choice. But there was something I did not always have: the full picture. I knew what I was buying, I knew how much it cost, and I knew the audience I was being told I could reach.

What I did not always know was what my investment was actually changing. Looking back, I realise that this was not necessarily a failure of the agencies or the media owners. It was simply the reality of what measurement could tell us at the time. The uncomfortable truth was that we were often making decisions with an incomplete view of the journey.

For a marketer holding the budget, that distinction matters enormously. Because the objective was never really to buy impressions. It was to influence someone. We wanted people to notice a brand, remember it, consider it, visit a store, choose one product over another and ultimately buy. Yet much of the language of media buying was built around what could be measured most easily: audience, reach, frequency and exposure. These are important measures, but they describe the opportunity to see an advertisement rather than necessarily what happened because someone saw it.

The real value of media sits somewhere between exposure and action, in that space where familiarity can become consideration and consideration can become a decision. That is the part of the journey I wish I had been able to see more clearly when I was on the buying side.

It is also why my perspective on IRL media has changed so significantly. Consumers do not experience life in media channels. They experience it in the real world. They leave home, drive to work, walk through malls, stop for coffee, pass stores, meet people and make decisions. IRL media exists within that journey. A billboard on a familiar route, a screen in a shopping environment, a brand presence outside a retail location or an advertisement encountered on the way to a destination can become part of the environment in which a decision is made. It does not necessarily need to interrupt the consumer's life to get attention. It can simply be there when life is happening. That physical presence is one of the reasons I have become such a strong advocate for IRL media. It has the ability to meet consumers in the context of their everyday lives, often much closer to the places, behaviours and moments that ultimately matter to a brand.

But being an advocate for IRL media does not mean asking marketers to believe in it blindly. In fact, I believe it means asking the medium to prove more. For years, Out of Home has understandably been measured through visibility: how many people passed the site, how many impressions were delivered and what reach the network could generate. Those measures have played an important role in establishing the scale and value of OOH, but they largely tell us that an opportunity to see existed. They do not necessarily tell us what that opportunity influenced.

“As a buyer, I did not need more impressions. I needed to know whether the media was building credibility and influencing choice.”

That is where I believe one of the biggest secrets in media buying sits: an impression is not an outcome. As a buyer, I could receive a beautifully presented number telling me that millions of people could have seen my campaign. What I really wanted to know, however, was whether those people did something differently because they saw it. Did they visit the store? Did more people visit than would otherwise have done? Did the campaign reach audiences that other channels were not reaching? Did exposure move someone closer to a purchase? Did it contribute to the commercial result the brand was trying to achieve? More fundamentally, did the presence of the brand build the credibility and familiarity that can make a consumer more comfortable choosing it when the moment came?

Those were the questions I wish I had been able to answer then. The agency understood the media landscape. I understood my brand and my budget. We were both trying to make the right decision, but there were things neither of us could always see clearly because the measurement simply was not there. That experience has stayed with me because being the person responsible for a budget changes the way you think about media. You are not simply buying space, screens, impressions or reach. You are investing in the possibility of an outcome. You want to know whether the money you have been entrusted with is creating value, and you want evidence that allows you to make the next decision with greater confidence than the last one.

Today, that picture is beginning to change. Audience intelligence, location, movement,insights exposure and real-world outcomes can increasingly be brought together to give marketers a clearer understanding of what happens beyond the impression. For someone who has been the buyer, that is not simply a technological advancement. It is a shift in confidence. Measurement should not exist simply to make the person selling the media more convincing; it should exist to make the person buying it more certain. That distinction is important because better measurement does not mean every brand should suddenly spend more on OOH. It means brands can understand where IRL media genuinely creates an advantage and where it fits within the broader consumer journey.

Every brand has a different consumer, a different category and a different path to purchase. There are different moments when influence matters and different places where a brand needs to show up. The smartest media investment is therefore not necessarily the one that delivers the biggest audience. It is the one that has the greatest ability to influence the outcome that matters to the business. That is a much more useful conversation for a marketer than simply asking which medium can deliver the most impressions. It moves the discussion from buying exposure to understanding influence, and from relying on assumptions to making decisions with evidence.

There is another dimension to IRL media that I think deserves more attention: credibility. There is a difference between encountering a brand in the physical world and seeing another message disappear in a digital feed. A brand that consistently shows up in the places where people live, move and spend can become part of the environment itself. Its presence can signal confidence, familiarity and relevance. It can create a sense that a brand belongs in the world around us. That does not mean every billboard creates credibility, nor that physical presence automatically translates into preference. But when the right message reaches the right audience in the right context, IRL media has the ability to contribute to something that is harder to build through exposure alone: a brand that feels present, established and familiar.

That is ultimately why I have become an advocate for IRL media. Not because I believe every brand should buy more of it, but because I believe brands should be able to understand exactly why they are buying it. When I was the buyer, I did not need another person telling me that a medium was effective. I needed evidence that helped me make the decision for myself. I needed to know where it was working, who it was influencing and what role it was playing in the journey towards choice. Today, we have a greater opportunity to answer those questions, and that should change the way we approach the medium.

The real secret is not that the media does not work. It is that for too long, we have been better at proving that people could see advertising than proving what happened because they did. We have measured visibility because visibility was easier to measure. But the world does not stop at the impression. People continue moving, shopping, considering, comparing and choosing. IRL media lives within that real-world journey, and its value should be understood within it.

For me, this is where the conversation becomes much bigger than Out of Home. It is about giving the person holding the budget the confidence that I once wished I had. It is about moving from being told what media can deliver to understanding what it actually contributes. It is about recognising that credibility, influence and choice are ultimately more meaningful than an impression on its own.

I may no longer be sitting on the buying side of the table, but I have not forgotten what it felt like to be there. And perhaps that is the reason I believe so strongly in what Out Of Home as an advertising medium can become. We have always known that it can be seen. We now have the opportunity to understand how being seen can build credibility, influence choice and create value.

The next generation of media buying should not simply tell brands that their advertising was seen. It should help them understand whether it made a difference for their business.