Paid Media Services

The Vendor is required to provide paid media agency to develop and execute a comprehensive media strategy that elevates the national recognition of the university’s brand, enhances reputation among key audiences, and Positions University.
- Paid media agency to design and implement an integrated media program that strengthens the university’s national reputation.
- This work must not only support near-term campaign execution and optimization, but also provide continuous learning loops that improve ROI over time.
- The Primary Objectives:
•    Design a data-driven paid media program grounded in a clear point of view on the role advertising should play in advancing university marketing and communications objectives — including driving national reputation and brand perception.
•    Leverage paid media to test, build, and validate priority audience segments using performance data to understand which audiences most effectively drive brand awareness and perception.
•    Create a media testing framework that incorporates lift experiments and test-and-learns to inform media performance, budget allocations, and long-term strategic planning.
•    Define a media mix, budget allocations, and flighting strategies that maximize brand impact and efficiency.
•    Develop a strategic approach to balancing broad national reputation campaigns with more targeted, perception-shifting efforts — ensuring media spend, messaging, and measurement frameworks are optimized across both mass reach and niche influence priorities.
- Primary platforms of interest include, but are not limited to, social media (emphasis in LinkedIn, YouTube), programmatic video/display, and streaming platforms.
- Paid media planning and buying methodology, including how they approach  traditional and digital media, campaign budgeting, timeline development, and performance optimization.
- Explain how they will use paid media to help university reach and influence both broad  national audiences and more targeted niche segments tied to specific perception goals (examples include:  citizenship and public service, national security, energy resilience).
- Outline their approach to identifying and activating paid media partnerships — including media outlets, sponsorships, creators, or brand collaborations — to advance perception, storytelling, and trust. 
- Responses should address how partnership strategies are evaluated, proposed, and integrated within broader media plans.
- The tools, platforms, and data sources they use to inform paid media decisions and explain their intended use and any associated costs.
- It leverages AI tools, platforms, or methodologies to enhance paid media performance, audience targeting, creative testing, or campaign optimization. 
- include examples of how AI has improved efficiency, personalization, or insight generation.
- Their approach to campaign reporting and optimization, including proposed cadence (e.g., biweekly, monthly), KPI dashboards, and narrative performance summaries aligned with brand perception goals.
- Recommend a framework for benchmarking performance (e.g., reach, brand lift, audience engagement) relative to perception-shifting objectives and propose baseline targets to inform campaign optimization. 

- Contract Period/Term: 5 years
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: August 11, 2025