An independent media buying agency
We work out where your media budget should go, negotiate the buy ourselves, and show you exactly what it returned. For brands in Melbourne, Sydney and across regional Australia.
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$13m+
in ad spend managed.
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98%
client retention.
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$22
cut from Southern Phone’s account CPA — media strategy, planning and buying since 2021.
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m|devices
Ongoing paid media clients include m|devices and NOVUS Glass.
What you get
The scope, in writing
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A media strategy tied to a commercial goal
What you need to move (revenue, leads or market share) and what media can realistically do about it at your budget, rather than a channel wishlist.
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A channel-neutral media plan
Budget split, flighting and a forecast for every line, across search, social, video, programmatic and OOH. We recommend the mix the evidence supports, not the channels we happen to like.
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The buy itself
Biddable media set up and managed in-platform. Direct buys (OOH panels, BVOD, publisher deals) negotiated with the media owner on your behalf.
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Costs you can actually see
Media spend and our fee itemised separately on every invoice. You always know what the media cost and what we cost.
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Accounts that stay yours
Google Ads, Meta and DSP seats are all owned by you, with Gudu added as a manager. If we ever part ways, everything stays with you.
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A measurement framework agreed before spend
What counts as a result and how we’ll count it, settled in writing before the first dollar goes out.
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A monthly plan-versus-actual review
Each channel’s forecast against what it delivered, plus a plain-English call on every line: keep, shift or stop.
How we do it
5 steps
Jordan Parrello, our Advertising Director, leads this. We dig into your margins, sales cycle and past media performance (existing ad accounts, GA4, whatever history exists) before anyone mentions a channel.
We build the audience picture from your first-party data (GA4, CRM exports) and the platforms’ own audience tools. When the question is bigger than the data, our research and insights work fills the gap.
Channel mix, budget split and flighting go into a written plan with a forecast and the reasoning attached to every line. You’re expected to pull it apart. Nothing gets bought until you have.
Joseph Arboleda, our Digital Media Specialist, runs the biddable buys hands-on in Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager and the relevant DSPs. Direct and negotiated buys go through us to the media owner, and the negotiated rate is the rate you see.
Monthly, we report actuals against the plan using GA4 and platform data, then move budget to what’s working. When we stop something, we tell you what we stopped and why.
Case study
Southern Phone
Southern Phone
Southern Phone came to us in 2021 with paid media that had been set up and then neglected: attribution was broken, creative was inconsistent, and costs were spiralling. We rebuilt their media strategy, planning and buying from the ground up. Targeting and bidding were restructured, creative went into continuous A/B testing, and a person now watches the account instead of third-party automation. Account CPA fell by $22, and Southern Phone backed the result by reinvesting 68% more spend year on year. Five years later, they’re still a client.
Read the Southern Phone case studyQuestions, answered straight
FAQ
Most agencies charge either a percentage of media spend or a flat retainer. Percentage models reward the agency for spending more, which is why we scope a fixed fee after discovery instead — priced on the work, not the budget. Whatever you’re quoted, insist the fee and the media cost appear as separate lines. If an agency won’t split them, that’s your answer.
We don’t publish a floor, because the honest answer depends on your market and your margins. There is a practical minimum below which paid media can’t produce readable results, and we’ll tell you in the first conversation if you’re under it. Sometimes the right advice is to fix the website or the offer first, and we’d rather say so than take the retainer.
Planning decides where the money goes: which channels, which audiences, what budget split, what timing, and what each line is forecast to return. Buying is the execution — setting up and managing biddable campaigns, and negotiating rates with media owners for direct placements like OOH or BVOD. We do both, which means the person who made the plan is accountable for how the buy performs.
Holding groups negotiate bulk inventory deals, and those deals can quietly shape which channels get recommended. We hold no inventory and owe no network a spend commitment, so the plan is only ever built on what should work for you. You also deal with the people doing the work: the director who wrote your strategy runs your account, not a rotating grad team.
Expect a media plan within a few weeks of kick-off, and biddable campaigns live within days of you signing it off. Search and social start producing readable data in the first month; direct buys like OOH and BVOD run on longer lead times. Judge the plan as a whole at the 90-day review, when there’s enough data to compare every channel against its forecast.
Ask four things. Who owns the ad accounts (the only right answer is you). Whether you’ll see actual media costs separate from fees. Who does the day-to-day work, by name, and whether they’ll be in the room. And whether they can show a client who’s stayed. Ask ours: Southern Phone has renewed every year since 2021. Any agency that dodges these questions has told you what you need to know.