The media planning and buying practice constantly evolves, reflecting the breathtaking changes in consumer behaviour and touchpoints. Portada interviewed Cailin Bula, SVP and Head of Connections at THIRD EAR, to better understand today’s media buyers’ and planners’ challenges.
Bula and her team are about to wrap up a campaign for INFINITI, a 360-degree program engaging multicultural audiences. The plan includes a Latin Grammy sponsorship, custom concerts with iHeartMedia, and a partnership with singer, songwriter, and composer Jon Batiste, who hosted the exclusive INFINITELY Live concert series. Another account Bula’s team is working on is Visit Austin; she and her team are readying a national campaign highlighting Austin as a premier destination for leisure and meetings travel.
THIRD EAR Agency: Identities Led
THIRD EAR brands itself as an identities-led creative agency for today’s America that aims to unleash a deep understanding of diverse identities in order to craft meaningful connections between consumers and brands.
According to Bula, the identity-led approach uncovers identity-based motives that transcend ethnicity. For example, she cites a segment of highly acculturated Hispanics who are not embracing ‘family over career’ the way Hispanics in general have been assumed to do in the past. When that third layer is unearthed, it presents the opportunity for a deeper layer of consumer connection. “We believe that when brands have a deep understanding of Identities, it fuels a journey of consumer connection points that build long-term loyalty and drive conversion,” Bula asserts.
“We believe that when brands have a deep understanding of Identities, it fuels a journey of consumer connection points that build long-term loyalty and drive conversion.”
From Media to Connections
To observers of the U.S. media buying discipline, it is evident that for the past few years, the word “media” is less frequently cited in the title and job descriptions of media buying and planning executives and is often replaced by “connections”. This is the case at THIRD EAR: “We have evolved our media offering to a more encompassing discipline of connections,” Bula notes. The connections discipline includes the following four components, Bula explains:
- Communications Planning
- Media Strategy and Investment
- Influentials vs. Influencers (micro-influencer approach with influencers impacting culture)
- Data and Analytics (in-house data and analytics team)
Bula explains that there are bridges between each of these sub-disciplines. Interestingly, she approaches influencers separately from media strategy and investment. Bula says she looks at influencers as standalones because curating influencers and incorporating them in creative strategies beyond only social media unlocks additional creative opportunities across our integrated agency team.
Contextual Advertising vs. Predictive Targeting….
Media planners and buyers face an important decision when considering digital media buying solutions: contextual advertising or predictive targeting. “When activating a complete funnel strategy, and particularly taking into account that we can no longer target based on ethnicity in many states, we find a lot of value in contextual advertising,” says Bula. However, “predictive audiences are invaluable at the lower funnel”, she adds. “Predictive look-a-like audiences are valuable for converting consumers more efficiently, especially when targeting a niche audience that you are trying to scale, and you need to model off your audience to expand its size.” Bula notes that “contextual advertising and predictive targeting can complement each other very well for many campaigns.”
AI is undoubtedly impacting Bula’s connection practice. She explains that “The big players in the space (Meta, Google, and Amazon) are integrating their AI tools in-platform, allowing media buyers to leverage faster learnings within each platform and drive stronger results: ‘The ability to leverage and analyze vast amounts of data in real time while continuously learning allows buyers and planners to make stronger optimizations and smarter decisions for future campaigns.”
…and the ascent of E-Commerce Marketing…
THIRD EAR Client: An Example of Two Purchase Journeys
E-commerce advertising and marketing campaigns are essential for one of THIRD EAR’s clients, a western wear retailer for which the agency recently started doing Hispanic marketing work for. The retailer has a D2C e-commerce website and a brick-and-mortar network. Bula explains that for the Hispanic audience, the retailer may need to manage these two different purchase journeys relatively independently, although they sometimes converge: “On the one hand, there are older Hispanic customers; the way they like to shop may be going to physical stores, but they are active on Facebook, on broadcast radio, and in magazines. They want to look, touch, and feel. On the other hand, there is the primarily digital purchase journey, which is followed by consumers who spend a lot of time on social, follow influencers for style and inspiration, and generally are younger Hispanic digital mavens that over-index in social media usage.”
THIRD EAR Agency Profile
- TCA’s Sabeena Mannan: “We are in an Infinite Loop When it Comes to Finding, Reaching, and Retaining Audiences and Consumers.”
- Orci’s Randy Gudiel: “In 2025, Media Planning and Buying Will Need to be More Intentional”
- Lopez Negrete’s Ana Crandell: “In Multicultural, There Are More Opps to Include Publishers in Digital Recommendations Due to the Importance of the Environment and Content.”
- Media Planning: How UM Budgets for Diverse Audiences
