We used this #MediaSnack Live episode to map a very practical answer. The big unlock is simple but not easy: your success will be decided long before any RFP goes out. The brands that win Media Palooza will be the ones that do the quiet, disciplined work first and only then step into the spotlight.
If you are holding a large global budget or a lean single market spend, the pattern is the same.
Understand yourself, design your future, define the partner you really need, and only then go to market. Get the sequence or timing wrong and you risk weak responses, misaligned expectations, and agencies that quietly choose other clients over you.
A successful Media Palooza play is built on a clear media agency pitch timeline that starts 5 to 6 quarters before your go to market date, front loads internal alignment, and reserves the formal pitch window for execution rather than strategy debates. Brands that follow this pattern attract better talent and secure stronger commercial outcomes.
In this episode, we break the journey into four practical phases that any CMO or marketing procurement leader can use.
Media Palooza is the industry’s strange weather event. Every 10 years or so, a huge wave of media agency reviews hits at once. In 2015 and 2016, that wave was driven mostly by price. This time the storm is different. Complexity, capability, and operating models are the real story.
Agency groups have spent the last few years stitching together data, AI, retail media, influencer, sponsorship, and platform capabilities. They are shaping vertically integrated media operating companies. At the same time, advertisers are rethinking what should sit in house versus what should be bought from external partners.
The net effect is a crowded, resource constrained pitch market. Agency CEOs can only place their A teams on a limited number of reviews. Industry guidance from groups like ISBA highlights that pitches are now fully loaded processes that demand integrated strategic, operational, and commercial responses, not quick beauty parades. ISBA notes that only clients with clear, inspiring briefs consistently attract the people they most want to work with.
All of this matters if you are planning a media review in the next two years. You are not just competing with rival brands in your category. You are competing with every advertiser that wants top agency attention during Media Palooza.
First, there really is a too late. Agencies have finite senior talent and finite discretionary added value, whether that is bonus resources, tools access, or price enhancements. By the time they have committed those assets to nine or ten concurrent pitches, the cupboard is almost bare for whoever arrives last.
Second, there is also a too early. If you rush into market without a clear view of your future operating model, agencies will happily design it for you. That might look attractive in the short term, but it usually leaves the advertiser locked into an ecosystem that reflects the agency’s structure, not the brand’s long term needs.
Third, internal misalignment will eventually be exposed. The moment your brief lands, expect 20 to 30 smart questions from agencies. Any fuzziness between marketing, procurement, and finance on scope, roles, risk, or remuneration will show up in those questions and can trigger delays or even stall the process.
A recent World Federation of Advertisers piece highlighted that more than 40 percent of marketers plan to shift towards output and outcome based models in the next cycle, and around 75 percent expect tighter integration of creative and media in 2026. Having your stance on these questions sorted before you invite agencies in is now table stakes.
We suggest a simple framing: think in quarters, not weeks. Treat Media Palooza as a 5 to 6 quarter journey, not a 12 week sprint. The RFP moment is the culmination, not the start.
In practice, that means using Q3 and Q4 of the current year to get your house in order. Review contracts, assess current capabilities, and honestly benchmark how well your existing agency ecosystem is working. That internal audit is what prevents you from being just another brief in the pile.
Then, move into a design mindset. Decide what should be in house, what needs external specialist support, and how AI, data, and retail media will fit. Only when that future state is sketched should you start to define the type of agency partner you need and the pitch journey that will reveal them.
Crucially, CMOs should see themselves as the coach of a cross functional team. Marketing, procurement, finance, and local markets must be aligned early. If those stakeholders are misaligned at the start, the friction will surface when it hurts most, usually in front of agencies.
The most pragmatic takeaway from this #MediaSnack episode is the simple roadmap that any global CMO can adapt. Whether you control a billion dollar global budget or a 20 million dollar single market spend, the pattern still works.
Step one is about understanding yourself. Audit your current contracts, remuneration models, governance frameworks, and staffing. Identify gaps in performance data, weak termination clauses, or grey areas in scope that have created tension. A structured contract and capability review at this stage surfaces the foundations you will either fix or replace.
Step two moves into designing your future. Here, you map the operating model that will make media investments work harder over the next three years. Decide who does what internally and externally, from data ownership to AI activation to retail media execution. Clarify governance and the technology stack that will hold it all together.
Step three is where you define the partner. With a blueprint in hand, you can be precise about the type of agency ecosystem you want. Do you want a single consolidated global partner, a network of specialists, or a hybrid model. This is also when you sketch the high level commercial architecture, such as outcome based incentives tied to business metrics.
Step four is preparation. This is the heavy lift that many advertisers skip. You build evaluation criteria, scopes of work, briefing materials, and remuneration frameworks. You also pre agree scenario plans for when procurement and marketing disagree. Those conversations are far easier inside your own building than in front of agencies.
Steps five and six are for pitch execution and transition. Because your alignment and design work is already complete, the pitch itself becomes a disciplined process rather than a rolling strategy workshop. Agencies are judged on how well they can validate and enable your operating model, not on their ability to invent it for you on the fly.
The brands that struggle in Media Palooza usually fall into a few predictable traps. The first is confusing speed with readiness. A CMO decides to move quickly, an RFP is pushed out in a matter of weeks, and only then does the organization realise that markets, categories, and stakeholders are not aligned on what they actually want.
David and I have seen this play out many times. The telltale sign is a flood of agency questions that expose basic uncertainties around scope, data access, or in house capabilities. That is also when the best agencies quietly start to question whether the client is worth the resource burn.
Another common pitfall is using the pitch to fix internal politics. If marketing, procurement, and finance are misaligned on objectives or risk appetite, pushing those debates into the pitch window simply hands agencies a confusing brief. As ISBA guidance stresses, the best pitches are based on ambitious but unambiguous briefs that give agencies confidence about what success looks like.
A third trap is underestimating agency bandwidth. In Media Palooza years, holding companies and independents triage briefs hard. They look for clients that are prepared, fair, and inspiring. Reviews that demand work over the end of year holidays, for example, often sink to the bottom of the pile. The agencies place their best people on pitches where the process feels thoughtful and the partnership potential is high.
CMOs can avoid these pitfalls by treating preparation as non negotiable. That means setting realistic timelines, being explicit about the decision making process, and showing respect for agency resources. A well designed Five Figure Pitch style process that is lean on speculative work but rich in strategic clarity is more likely to attract the teams you want.
In a congested Media Palooza marketplace, your goal is not just to run a fair process. Your goal is to be the brief that agency CEOs want their A team to win. That starts with clarity but also requires inspiration and respect.
Start by articulating a sharp problem statement and a clear ambition. We shared the example of a global technology client whose first year relationship evaluations scored higher than any they had seen. The agency CEO attributed that success directly to the original pitch brief, which was so clear that the agency knew exactly how to succeed and how to enable success inside the client.
Next, design a pitch journey that reveals how agencies will work with you, not just what they can show on stage. Shortlist processes that include working sessions, transparent Q&A, and early exposure to the real client team tend to attract stronger people. Agencies want to see that this will be a partnership, not a procurement only transaction.
Finally, think about incentives. In a world where more than 40 percent of marketers plan to test outcome based models, you have an opportunity to signal seriousness by tying part of the remuneration to business results, not just media price. When those incentives are realistic, transparent, and balanced, they can make your account a strategic priority inside the agency.
Close your Media Palooza planning with one simple question: would I pitch for this client if I were an agency CEO. If the honest answer is yes, you are on the right track.
1. What is Media Palooza in practical terms for CMOs?
It is a period when a critical mass of large advertisers all review media agencies at roughly the same time, creating intense competition for the best agency talent and added value.
2. How far ahead should we plan a media agency review?
For anything beyond a very small single market pitch, plan 5 to 6 quarters ahead. Use the early quarters for internal alignment and operating model design before engaging agencies.
3. When is it too late to launch a pitch in Media Palooza?
It becomes too late when top agencies have already committed senior teams and discretionary value to other concurrent reviews, leaving you with thinner resources and weaker terms.
4. Can smaller advertisers move faster than globals?
Yes, single market or simpler structures can often compress timelines, but they still benefit from a quarter of preparation and a clear operating model before going to market.
5. What should we review first: contracts or performance?
Start with contracts and governance. Understanding termination clauses, scope, and remuneration gives context to any performance assessment and informs your future design.
6. How do we decide what to bring in house versus leave with agencies?
Map your current capabilities, your appetite for control, and where data and AI should sit. Then decide which functions are strategic enough to own and which can be bought as services.
7. How do we avoid internal misalignment derailing the pitch?
Hold structured alignment workshops between marketing, procurement, finance, and key markets in the preparation phase, and pre agree decision rules and trade off scenarios.
8. What makes an agency more likely to pitch for our business?
A clear, inspiring brief, a respectful process, realistic timelines, and a commercial model that rewards strong performance all increase your attractiveness to senior agency teams.
9. Should outcome based remuneration be part of our next pitch?
For many advertisers, yes. Even a modest outcome linked component can focus both sides on business results rather than only on price, provided metrics are fair and measurable.
10. How should we start if our contracts expire in 2027?
Begin contract and capability reviews now, sketch your desired operating model this year, and reserve 2027 for a focused pitch and transition while agency capacity is still available.
So we're heading into Media Palooza, but how is it gonna happen? What should be your timeline, and when do you go to pitch? Let's just unpack that on today's Media Snack live from New York. And live from London. It's Media Snack Live. Hello, I'm Tom Denford in New York. And I'm David Indo from London. Welcome to Media Snack Live. It's our weekly roundup of all the important news, and stories, and trends you need to know about the global media marketing industry.
In every show we ask, what is going on? What are the implications for advertisers? And what should marketers be thinking about next? Thanks for joining us. Let's get into this week's show.
Right. Back onto Media Palooza. Last week, if you were with us last week, we introduced this concept of Media Palooza, or reintroduced it because it's a 10 year phenomenon. It happens about every 10 years, and it is when there are just so many agency pitches all happening at the same time.
Sometimes this happens, it's a weird kind of strange weather event. We get this incredible concentration of pitches and I think it then snowballs. People are obviously talking about Media Palooza now, and there are probably advertisers going, "What? Should we be pitching?" Well, this is for you because what we're gonna do today is unpack the actual timeline of a typical weather event like Media Palooza, how it gathers momentum and snowballs.
If you are a marketer or in marketing procurement, and this is on your radar, maybe your contract with an agency is coming to an end, maybe you're already planning a Q4 or 2027 pitch or something, you're going to need to know what this event is going to look like so you can make the most of it and navigate through it carefully, and not get crushed by it. Because that's the danger, that you become an insignificant pitch and you just lose out.
So that's what we're going to look at today, unpacking the timeline. And just to remind you, if you're joining us on Media Snack, if you're joining us live, this is obviously a live show. We're streaming on LinkedIn, we're streaming on YouTube, and we may or may not be streaming on TikTok. Still don't know. Somebody tell us, please.
You can submit questions in real time and if they're interesting and relevant, we'll throw them up into the chat live. You can comment on anything or build on what we're saying. Just stick a comment in LinkedIn or YouTube, and we see it in the studio and we'll bring it up on screen if it's helpful to propel us along. So thank you to those who are willing to share their comments live.
This is a show that Dave and I have been doing for a long time, but right now we're starting at least a 10 week program where we're unpacking Media Palooza. It's going to be such a phenomenon. It's really important. So if you're not a subscriber, follow us on LinkedIn, or subscribe to the Media Snack channel on YouTube, and make sure you get alerts because we're gonna be doing this every week and unpacking it.
Okay. So David, part 2, let's look at what we might call the master timeline of a Media Palooza. And we're gonna show marketing and procurement how to structure their calendars if they're thinking about this, because if you're pitching in the next two years, anytime within two years, you're gonna be competing with a lot of other brands to get the best agency talent and really strong commercial terms.
So, what is going on in terms of the timeline. Let's start at a very high level. I generally get one question that is asked to me by advertisers that are thinking about going to review. When should we start preparing for that process.
Most advertisers think that a review begins with the submission of an RFP, the brief to the agencies. Actually, in our experience, that is when it probably concludes. Most of the work that needs to be done is about preparing the business for a review, and that happens a lot earlier.
The last Media Palooza, Tom, 2015, 2016, life was a lot easier. You would get your long list of agencies, you would send an RFI out. They would all say yes, and you would whittle them down to a point where you could appoint an agency, generally based on the cheapest media pricing. That was the last Media Palooza.
But that world has now gone. What you're doing now is redesigning how marketing actually operates, because there is AI that needs to be taken into consideration. There is data, technology, retail media, specialist partners. The media marketplace and ecosystem is so much more complicated now.
The progressive advertisers, when they are considering a review, are asking a whole lot of different questions. They're asking, "What should we bring in house?" "What should we buy from the agencies?" "Should we consolidate all of our media requirements with one agency, or should we bring in specialist partners?" "Where does AI fit in all of this?" "Who owns the contracts?"
These questions are not procurement questions necessarily. They are strategic operating model questions that need to be answered before we go to review. And so the timing of all of these things becomes really important.
If you go too early into the marketplace and you're not prepared, you have not asked the right interrogative questions internally, then what you will be doing is getting your agency to design your operating model for you. Smart advertisers use an agency to validate and enable that operating model, but the work needs to be done first.
So we talk about a five or six quarter timing plan, and that is not to say that pitches should go on for 18 months, God forbid. But the process of consideration perhaps does take that amount of time.
What I am going to do is break it down into four phases. The first phase is understanding yourself. Looking at the contracts that you have, looking at the current capabilities, the current challenges that you have within your own agency structure and ways of working. That is the first phase: understand yourself.
The second phase is design your future. What is the operating model that you want to deploy. What is the operating model that is going to enable your media investments to work just as hard in three years time. What are the roles. Who does what internally and externally, and what are the governance protocols that you're going to put on top of that. And what is the technology that will enable it. That is designing your future.
Then we get into defining your partner. What role do you want your agency partner to play. Do you want to bring in specialists for certain verticals. Do you want a one stop shop with one consolidated agency partner. Define what your agency partner needs to be.
The final one is then go to market. What we tend to find is that those pitches that are less effective, or run out of steam, or do not end up with the right result are advertisers that ignore the first three phases of that process and go straight to market with an impatience that gets found out during the process.
The minute that you send the brief to the agency, you are going to get 27 questions back that expose the lack of clarity on the operating model. The doomsday scenario, given how congested the marketplace is and how pressured the agencies are in terms of their bandwidth and resources, is that you do not have any agencies that want to work with you. You do not have agencies that want to commit themselves to working on your brief.
That is the doomsday scenario, because then you do not have an option. You will have to stick with the agency that you are currently working with. So making sure that you have done all the preparation, and designed your pitch process in a way that is inspiring and provides the right strategic guidance and direction to the agency community, will result in the right agencies wanting to tender for your business.
In any given year, that would be really good practice. If advertisers come to ID Comms and say, "We are thinking about searching for a new agency," or "We have not reviewed our existing agency for a while and we want to think about that," because the media market is evolving so fast, your agreement with an agency three years later can be quite out of date and missing key components.
There has to be continuous reviewing of that existing relationship and the capabilities of that agency. Typically we advise advertisers to go through the stages you described: understanding and designing the capabilities, designing the model, and then finding the agencies that fit that model.
Now we think about the implications when we put a Media Palooza on top of that. The big question we already hear from advertisers thinking ahead of Media Palooza is, when is too early and when is too late.
Some advertisers might say, "Media Palooza is coming, so should we pitch tomorrow and get out in front of it". Others worry about arriving at the back of the queue. There is definitely a too late.
Imagine that the agencies have been building up, restructuring their teams, integrating their products, bringing silo teams together across all these media types, from paid and biddable to influencer, retail, and sponsorship. They have platform technology and data sources, and both the big holding companies and larger independents are making acquisitions and progress.
They are ready to go, but they have a finite amount of talent and energy, and a finite amount of added value they will give advertisers. When you pitch agencies, they have to agree to commercial terms and commit resources. For our clients, we always want a little bit more than our fair share. We want a really good deal for the advertisers we work with.
After a while, that added value depletes. If you are the 10th pitch they are doing in a quarter, you will be left with the bare bones of what is left. The best talent will already be allocated to the top pitches they have decided to go for. A lot of added value will have been given on a discretionary basis to advertisers to woo them.
So there is definitely too late. We think that calendar 2027 is probably going to be peak Media Palooza. That does not mean on January 1 you need to drop a pitch brief. There will be some that we are working on now who will be dropping in November and December, and they know that getting in ahead of the calendar year close is good, just to onboard agencies with the idea of a pitch.
You do not want to work them over the holidays. That is a sure way to go to the back of the queue.
Is it possible to go too early. Yes, because agencies are just assembling now. They will be ready around September or October to start having initial conversations. But if you move too early, before you align the brief with the operating model and your own internal organisation, the pitch will fall over. Agencies are getting incredibly well organised around this broad operating model of media. You have to be ready as an advertiser.
We are helping a lot of advertisers get ready.
So do not rush to market too early. Do not let the Media Palooza conversation panic you into moving too early. Speak to ID Comms or people like us who can help you understand how to do that prep properly. It does take a little time to get organised, and you can plan out a full roadmap of a pitch for 2027.
If you have agency contracts expiring in 2027 or at the end of this year, or you are starting to have conversations internally about integrating different media silos, if you think you need to raise your capabilities or pitch an agency, start thinking about it and start planning how you're going to navigate Media Palooza next year, because it will get in the way if you do not acknowledge it.
For advertisers that are thinking about it, we remind you that ID Comms helps advertisers pitch agencies every week of the year. We run dozens of agency pitches with advertisers small, medium, large, and gigantic. We do billion dollar global pitches and regional pitches with advertisers spending 10 million.
We have a scalable product based on 15 years of innovating the agency pitch product. If you are looking to understand the basics of pitching, or you are in procurement and think you might need some advice, we have a lean but comprehensive product called the Five Figure Pitch. You can find it on our website or at fivefigurepitch.com.
The Five Figure Pitch simplifies the whole process down to five steps, involves a five person team from our side, and is careful about the amount of agency resource it burns. That makes it particularly helpful in Media Palooza when agency resource is finite. The basic pitch is 99,000 dollars end to end, with optional modular add ons.
If you are interested or starting to plan a pitch, go and have a look at fivefigurepitch.com.
Now, if I put myself in the shoes of a global CMO or global head of procurement, and I am keen on going to market in 2027, this is the approach I would take. I know it is going to be a busy marketplace, but I also need an agency in place at the back end of next year to drive planning for the following year.
In Q3, so now, halfway through Q3 2026, I would start reviewing all of my contracts. I would look at my contracts, at how good they are, at my remuneration model, my governance plans, my staffing. I would audit where I am now given the contractual scope and payment structure I have with my existing agency.
In Q4, the back end of this year, I would assess which bits of my current operating model are working well. Which capabilities do I want to amplify, and which bits are working badly. For the things that are not working effectively, I have two questions: do I want to bring those things in house, or am I happy for them to be operated externally but need my agency partner to compensate for those weaknesses.
That is the important question. What is working well in my internal operating model, and what needs to be true for my external operating model for media management to work effectively.
That gives you clear actions on what to adjust internally and gives you a blueprint for your agency review brief. It delivers your blueprint, your agency ecosystem blueprint.
Then you go into preparation. In Q1 of next year, you create evaluation criteria, briefing materials, scopes of work. You define the remuneration model you want to impose on agency partners. You define scenario plans for when procurement and marketing disagree. You do not want to have that disagreement at the end of the pitch. You want those scenarios designed and aligned before you go to market.
If you can lock in optimum preparation, where everything is done before you invite or engage with agency partners, then the pitch management process in Q2 of next year is simply process management. All of the difficult conversations and strategic decisions have happened earlier.
Then you go into pitch management. Going into next year, the more considered, strategic, and inspirational the brief to agencies, the greater the response from the agency community. They will be inundated with briefs. You have to make sure that your brief rises to the top and that the agency CEO thinks, "This is the brief I want my A team working on."
That is how I would roll it out over the next seven or eight months. It is a fairly gentle timeline, realistic and reasonable. Sometimes advertisers come to ID Comms and say, "All gas, no brakes. What is the quickest we can do this". We can move fast. We always say we can move as fast as you can. The thing that typically slows it down is internal complexity.
It is worth working that through to get full alignment upfront. Then the pitch itself can run quickly. We can run these in a matter of weeks. The Five Figure Pitch can manage agency engagement in weeks, but prep still takes a bit longer.
One final point. In our experience, where pitches fall off the rails, the source is invariably misalignment internally within key stakeholders. If you have misalignment between procurement, marketing, and finance, that is where the issues are. The preparation stage is about getting those key stakeholders and departments pointing in the right direction, fully aligned and focused on the end result. Then your pitch will be brilliant.
As we wrap up, this is part two of at least a 10 part series. We have mapped out at least 10 interesting things we can talk about, and it will build into specific actions you should be thinking of. You can follow along and think of this as a playbook for prepping for Media Palooza.
If you need help, reach out directly to ID Comms at idcomms.com, or fivefigurepitch.com for more specific advice if you are an advertiser.
Thanks for watching MediaSnack Live. If you found it helpful and want to learn more, head to idcomms.com to get more tips, tools, and resources to help you get good at media. We will see you next week.
If you are planning a media agency review or simply want to stress test your current setup, get in touch to confidentially discuss your gameplan and options to protect your competitive advantage in media