13 Signs You Should Fire Your Media Buyer

Maybe you SHOULD fire your media buyer..

Maybe that gut instinct you’re having about your ads, and your media buyer or ad agency is on point..

But you must first understand a key component of fast growth with paid traffic and who needs to be in that seat. 

If you don’t take this seriously, you’re playing with fire.

If you’ve followed me for a while, then you might know that part of my brush with death while scaling was due to chasing people and putting out fires constantly. It figuratively and literally made me sick. A significant part of that has to do with what I’m about to share.

This comes from someone who has spent the last decade generating leads online and on foot, selling online and face to face, and helping hundreds of businesses scale their marketing to seven and eight figures. 

I’ve been the media buyer, the CMO, the agency, the recruiter, the advisor, and the business owner. 

Most of my experience comes not from ‘ride the wave’ times but from working in, for and with companies who are so far in the red one bad move will shut them down.

A full stack media buyer is not just a “creative marketer” who’s really good at pushing buttons..

Not a great one that can help you scale your company.

A full stack A player person or company manages your money through research, financial modeling, communication, and investing. 

1. Research the customer, your brand, competitors, all of the data in your company.
   

2. Review your financial model and create simulations based on constraints and theories to identify the exact bottleneck in your client acquisition funnel.
   

3. Communicate to your team via reporting and to the marketplace via copy and creatives.
   

4. Invest your money into the communications that were and are most effective.
   

5. Document
   

6. Rinse and repeat

In that order.

They allocate most of their time to the first steps, not the last.

A weak link media buyer or agency will actually do this in reverse.

The communication will always be type ‘beat 3’ (and this goes for all companies and positions).

Here’s what I mean..

There are three beats in communication:

1. They see problems before they arise, take action, and communicate before you even know they are problems or have a chance to say something.

2. They can give good answers during problems and constraints and may bring them up in everyday communication.

3. You see a problem, make a request, and then they jump to go fetch or fix whatever you’ve pointed out.

I’ve had and experienced Type 3 a lot. 

It leads to low bandwidth and high stress. You will run in circles putting out fires and micro-managing people who won’t manage themselves.

A dud media buyer heavily focuses on shuffling things around in the ad accounts, surface-level solutions, and generating explanations and excuses instead of solutions, actionable insights, and concrete plans.

A players always start with solutions that are within their control. There will definitely be times when things happen with humanity that impact marketing efforts and there will certainly be a time to give feedback on inefficient and ineffective sales teams and processes.

However, it should never be what they lead with. 

The best hires are incentivized to grow your business and can’t afford to waste time focusing on things out of their control.

The double-edged sword to this is that champions also don’t put up with mediocre sales processes and leadership.

So if your sales team only performs with organic, warm leads, but cries about lead quality when they’re cold even though your financial model says otherwise then you need to fix that ASAP.

Here are some things I look for that are clear, definitive signs I should fire right away unless there’s an overnight change in behavior:

Signs You Should Fire Your Media Buyer or Ad Agency

1. Outdated Financial Modeling and Simulation: Cannot provide a financial model or simulation updated within the last 7 days. An effective media buyer should regularly review and adapt models to reveal bottlenecks in your client acquisition funnel. They can provide and explain on moments ’s notice.

2. Out of Date Research: Lacks thorough research on your customers, competitors, company data, and market trends that have been updated in the past 30 days. 90% of their job is to research. They’re not doing their job and making mindless media investments if it's not there.

3. Beat 3 Communication: Only takes action after you notice a problem, instead of proactively identifying and addressing issues before they escalate.

4. Surface-Level Solutions: Focuses on quick fixes and surface-level adjustments within ad accounts instead of delivering comprehensive strategies that address root problems. Usually this looks like shuffling campaigns, re-running the same ads constantly. Playing with tech, testing audiences or adjusting budgets. The solutions they provide will almost never be connected to research or a financial model.

5. Excuses Over Accountability: Regularly blames outside factors or other departments rather than owning up to their role in campaign performance.

6. Inconsistent Documentation: Fails to document strategies, changes, or learnings, making it difficult to evaluate progress or make informed decisions. This means you can’t hire anyone else on the team, they can’t explain anything without doing a case study, and they waste time and company money re-doing and re-learning the same things over and over.

7. No Swipe Files or Competitive Insights: Doesn’t keep updated (with in 7 days) swipe files of top-performing ads or insights from competitors to inform campaign strategies. At moments notice they should be able to share what the best ads are now, and all time. They should be able to also share insights about competitors. Again, if this requires them to go look or do an audit, an adjustment must be made.

8. Reactionary Instead of Proactive: Only acts on requests instead of consistently bringing new ideas, insights, or solutions to the table.

9. Lacks Strategic Foundation for Investments: Without thorough research, documentation, and financial modeling (the 1-6 pyramid foundation), they cannot effectively allocate your budget to maximize impact and ROI.

10. Time Misallocation: Spends more time adjusting ads than on research, financial modeling, or strategy—essential steps for growth.

11. Unable to Handle Pressure: Crumbles under constraints or high-stakes situations, leaving you to micro-manage rather than bringing solutions. What this looks like is not setting or hitting timelines. They can’t share documented time estimates either. A clear sign if this is also passive and ‘shoulder shrug’ communication.

12. Ignores Lead Quality Tracking: Doesn’t integrate lead quality into financial modeling or fails to address lead quality issues proactively. Lead quality and what your sales team can with stand in a financial model is left to what your sales team feels like and what your media buyer feels like rather than definitive and measurable.

13. Lack Of Responsiveness:  If this is an in-house media buyer, it means they miss daily check-ins, end-of-day reports, and end-of-week reports, and they take a very long time to respond to you. I use a check-in system with my teams. We have emergency communication, which is usually text and emergency use only, and then we have Slack or telegram communication. They must respond immediately to emergency channels and respond by their next check-in on the regular channels. If they don’t, they’re fired unless it was due to an emergency, time off etc. This applies to ad agencies except for end-of-day reports. 

If your ad agency or media buyer just focuses on these things, your company will grow. You may already have gut instincts about some of these things already.

Keep in mind, while you want to be open, trust your gut on common sense things. Request an adjustment and if it’s not made let them go. Buying media is a double edged sword because it can drastically grow your company but can also damage it beyond repair.

–Lance C. Greenberg