Media Buyer and Media Planner Staffing for Agencies
Planners who build the flowchart, buyers who go get the rate. Linear, out of home, streaming and programmatic.
Hiring a media buyer means hiring the person who negotiates and places an agency’s paid media, across linear TV, out of home, streaming, audio and programmatic. The planner decides where the money should go. The buyer goes and gets it.
Last updated: September 21, 2026
Most agencies post one job for two jobs. The ad says media planner or buyer, the salary band says $75,000 to $85,000, and the shortlist comes back full of people who have only ever done one half of it. Both halves are real work. They aren’t the same work. And almost nobody is great at both.
KORE1’s marketing recruiters handle these, with the digital marketing staffing desk and the rest of our digital and creative practice a phone call away. Scope first, though. This page covers the agency side, meaning the people who spend a client’s media budget across channels. Someone to run your own Google Ads accounts in house is a paid search hire, screened differently, and we keep those searches apart on purpose.
What the Planner Owns and What the Buyer Owns
Ask a candidate one question and the answer usually sorts them inside a minute. When the plan was approved, what happened next on your desk? Listen for the verb.
- Media planner Audience, channel mix, budget split, reach and frequency The test is whether the plan could have worked before a dollar moved.
- Media buyer Rates, avails, orders, delivery, make-goods Ask what the same money actually bought once a vendor had to say yes.
- Programmatic trader Deal IDs, bid strategy, inventory quality, supply path Watch what they cut out of the supply path, not what they spent.
- Media supervisor The account’s whole budget, and the people spending it One question. Name a client who renewed after a quarter went sideways.
Two different farm systems. Planners tend to come from research and analytics. Buyers tend to come from the sell side, or from a year of pulling avails as an assistant, and they carry relationships that a planner never builds. Crossing over happens. Going buyer to planner is usually the easier direction, because a buyer has watched plans meet reality for years and has opinions about which ones survive.
Then there’s the shop where one person does all of it. That’s normal under about thirty people. It’s also a different hire, because you’re buying range rather than depth. Range costs money.
The Whole Quarter Fits on One Grid
Every agency draws this, and every media system prints a version of it. One quarter, thirteen weeks across, channels down the side. That’s the whole artifact. The rule across the middle is the handoff, where the plan stops and the buy starts.
Q4 flowchart
The top five rows are a plan. Anyone can draw them. The three under the rule are what a buyer went and did about it. That’s the tell.
Ask a finalist to walk you through a real one they owned. Then ask what broke in week nine. Something always does. The answer tells you whether they were in the room, or reading about it afterwards.
What It Costs to Hire a Media Buyer
Media buyer isn’t a federal job code. Never has been. O*NET doesn’t list the title at all, so most planners and buyers get counted as market research analysts and marketing specialists, and the media director rung gets counted as advertising and promotions managers. Two codes, one career.
| Federal category | 25th | Median | 75th |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketing specialists and research analysts | $58,610 | $76,660 | $100,720 |
| Advertising and promotions managers | $93,520 | $133,550 | $192,480 |
The $75,000 to $85,000 band agencies quote for a planner or buyer sits almost exactly on that first median. Useful to know. Less useful on its own, because the same code runs from $45,170 at the 10th percentile to $129,210 at the 90th, which is an assistant and a supervisor counted as the same occupation.
Geography moves it hard, and media money is concentrated. New York employs 3,630 advertising and promotions managers at a median of $174,390. Los Angeles has 1,350. Roughly two in every five of that occupation nationally sit at an agency rather than at a brand.
Our fee is separate from all of that, and it moves with the engagement, whether the person comes in on contract, converts later, or starts permanent.
Media Buyer and Media Planner Staffing, Seat by Seat
Agencies name these differently. Small shops collapse two into one. Each gets screened for something else.
Media assistant
Pulls avails, builds the flowchart, sends traffic instructions and reconciles what actually ran.
Screen for care with a spreadsheet nobody auditsMedia planner
Sets the audience, the channel mix and the weight, and defends the split to the client.
Screen for a plan they argued down and whyMedia buyer
Negotiates rate and position, places orders, then chases delivery and make-goods all quarter.
Screen for one number they moved, and howSupervisor or media director
Runs the account’s whole investment, the vendor relationships and the people placing the buys.
Screen for a bad quarter the client stayed throughStrategy and audience work often sits next door with a brand strategist, and the reporting side with analytics hires. Head of media and chief media officer searches run through our executive search team, and a seat that owns marketing top to bottom rather than the media line is closer to fractional CMO territory. In-house paid search is a different screen again, and it sits on the paid channel side. Buyers work closest to content, art direction and creative teams, and to the product marketers who own the launch calendar. Run those searches together.
When Agencies Need a Media Buyer Fast
New business is the usual trigger. An agency wins an account, the media budget triples on a Monday, and the planners on staff are already booked to the clients paying them today. Nobody planned for that. Samantha Litman has been on the other end of that call. She runs executive search for marketing, creative and media at KORE1 now, and earlier in her own practice she was brought into a media agency in exactly that spot, hiring more than twenty people across analytics, media, ad operations and leadership. An ad operations supervisor was one of them. The relationship lasted about five years. Entertainment and streaming accounts pull hardest here, which is why that work often runs alongside our media and entertainment staffing desk. The operators who keep those buys trafficked and on pace are a separate search, covered under ad operations staffing.
Her read is simple. Agencies that call early get a choice. Agencies that call in week three of the onboarding get whoever is available.
Shape follows the risk. Contract suits a flight with an end date or a maternity cover in the middle of a quarter. Contract-to-hire suits a new account that may or may not renew. Direct hire is right when the vendor relationships are the asset. Relationships don’t transfer. A buyer who has negotiated with the same station group for four years gets calls returned that a newcomer simply doesn’t, and that access tends to show up as inventory nobody else was offered. And when the ask is bounded, say a one-off audit of where the programmatic money is actually going, project staffing is cheaper than a headcount.
One more thing worth checking. The tooling under these roles moved this year, so ask what they’ve actually operated.
Common Questions
What’s the difference between a media buyer and a media planner?
A media planner decides which channels get the budget, in what weight and when. A media buyer negotiates the rates, places the orders and holds vendors to what they promised. Planning happens before money moves. Buying is everything after. It runs all quarter.
How much does it cost to hire a media buyer?
$76,660 is the May 2025 median at ad and PR agencies for marketing specialists, the federal category most media buyers and planners are counted in, which brackets the $75,000 to $85,000 band agencies usually quote. That band is real. The 25th percentile is $58,610 and the 75th is $100,720. Director-level media seats are counted as advertising and promotions managers instead, with an agency median of $133,550. Search fees are added on top and depend on the engagement type.
Do we need someone who has bought linear TV, or is programmatic experience enough?
Depends on the plan. Linear buying is a negotiation with a human being over avails, rate and position, and it carries obligations like make-goods that have no programmatic equivalent. Programmatic is an auction and a supply chain problem, where the ANA’s December 2024 benchmark put 43.9 cents of every dollar entering a demand-side platform in front of an actual person. Someone strong at one is not automatically competent at the other, and plenty of agencies find that out in week two.
Can one person plan and buy?
Plenty do, and at agencies under about thirty people it’s the norm. The trade is depth. A combined seat gives you someone who can carry an account end to end but rarely someone who will squeeze a network the way a career buyer does. Price it as the broader role it is.
What should we ask a media buyer in an interview?
Ask about one campaign where delivery fell short and what they got back for it. Make-goods, bonus weight, a credit, a better position next flight, any of it. The answer separates people who placed orders from people who held vendors accountable. Four minutes, tops.
Which platforms should a media buyer already know?
Ask which system of record they actually worked in, usually Mediaocean’s Prisma or Strata from FreeWheel, and whether they ran buys in it or only read reports out of it. The platforms moved in 2026, with Prisma Direct opening direct streaming and CTV transactions in March and Nielsen audience reporting landing inside Prisma in September, so recent hands-on time is worth more than it was a year ago. Measurement questions are fair game too. A buyer who can explain the Media Rating Council viewability threshold, 50% of pixels for one continuous second on display, is reading their own delivery reports.
How fast can KORE1 fill a media buyer role?
17 days is our average time to hire, so a buyer or planner search usually lands inside three weeks, and 92% of the people we place are still in the seat twelve months later. Director seats take longer. Buyers also move in rhythm with the account calendar, so a good one rarely walks mid-flight, and that is worth planning around rather than fighting.
Who’s Spending Your Client’s Budget Next Quarter?
Send us the channels, the budget and the date it has to be in market. We’ll come back with a realistic band, a shortlist shape and a timeline you can hold us to.
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