Designated Market Areas: The Swiss Army Knife of Media Buys

Designated market areas were created in the mid-1950s specifically for use in national TV spot buying. 

Each designated market area (or DMA) covers an area where viewers have access to the same television options, according to The Balance. “Advertisers wanted to tailor their buys to the specific areas of the country where sales were concentrated . . . [DMAs] facilitated this marketplace,” explains media historian Tim Brooks.

Are DMAs a concept that has come and gone? “No, but they need to come into the 21st century,” says Patti Gold, managing partner and chief media officer at The Shipyard. “DMAs work in a way that other definitions—like metro areas—don’t, because they include virtually everyone in the country. We need this kind of common denominator in order to cleanly value offline media and compare apples to apples between offline and online.”

Today, there are 210 designated market areas, according to Nielsen, representing 114,695,130 total TV homes in the U.S.

Read the full article  on the Videa site