Understanding the Difference between 1st Party Vendors and 3rd Party Vendors

I had an interesting conversation  with a client a few weeks ago about dealing with,“middle-man” style vendors and the disadvantages of such an arrangement that got me thinking...  “I wonder how many advertisers are purchasing media from this style of vendor without even realizing it?”  Throughout my years of experience in digital advertising, I’ve learned there are many advantages to working directly with 1^st party vendors. Within this blog I’ll discuss several of the benefits and share meaningful questions to ask potential 3^rd party vendors, even the ones that may not want you to know their arrangement. I hope this information can help equip you with new knowledge of how your strategic partners are placing your paid digital advertisements!

Questions to Ask Any Vendor You are Contemplating Working With:

1. Does your company access this platform directly or do you work under a white label agreement with another company?
2. Are you selling for another company and marking up their rates?
3. Will my campaign be monitored/optimized in-house?
4. Will I have easy access to reporting during my campaign?
5. Are my ads primarily being run through Google’s Display Network?
6. Can I speak directly with the Traffic Manager, Media Strategist, Analytics and Reporting Manager etc., and are those positions employed by your company?
7. If I have a campaign question will you have to reach out to another company to find an answer?

Once your partners have answered these questions you will be much more informed on the way that your prospective vendors work.

Advantages of Working with 1^st Party Vendors

I recently posed a question on Social Media to find out what some of my friends/clients thought about the advantages of dealing with 1^st party vendors.  Here is what they had to say:

“Direct = more accountability for quality of the product, better customer service, less time for receipt of goods, and better cost.” – Danielle Herod

“I’m in the system integration and security industry and almost everything is distributed through a 3^rd party.  A lot of It has to do with resources, requirements and codes that drive the local markets.  We prefer a direct approach but sometimes due to things out of our control, we have to work through a 3^rd party.” – Ryan Hall

These two statements sum up the advantages to working directly with a 1^st party vendor.  In the advertising industry, whether you are an agency buying media or a client directly planning your advertising campaigns, there should never be a reason that you have to go through a 3^rd party.  It costs more, takes longer to get answers to your questions, takes longer to get programs off the ground and you will have very little, if any, communication with the people running, optimizing, and making key account decisions on your campaign.

Orange142 manages all of our advertising and marketing campaigns in-house. We utilize no contractors or 3^rd parties for any aspect of our client partnerships. Every one of our clients can not only interact with the Orange142 sales and account management team but also our fulfillment and operations staff that are the ones actually managing and optimizing media campaigns!

Contact Orange142 today and get a more hands on partnership.