Reviewed by Peter Berk, President and Chief Media Strategist, Berk Marketing · Last reviewed 17 August 2026
Radio advertising & media buying since 1979
Berk Marketing plans, negotiates and places radio and television campaigns on behalf of advertisers. We hold no inventory and represent no station. You call, you reach Peter Berk or one of his Berk-trained partners — not a call queue, and not an account executive who inherited your file last week.
No cost, no obligation. Or just call (866) 747-4707 and talk it through.
Berk Marketing is an independent media buying agency for radio and television advertising. We take an advertiser’s audience, goals and budget, go out to stations, networks and platforms for availability and price, negotiate each against the others, write and produce the commercial in house, place the schedule and track what it returns.
The independence is the service. A station representative can only ever recommend the station that employs them. We can recommend SiriusXM over local FM, local over national, television over radio, or none of the above.
The problem
Advertisers rarely fail at radio because the medium is broken. They fail because every voice in the room has inventory to move, and nobody there is paid to tell them the truth.
You are quoted a price with nothing to compare it against, and no way to know what the same inventory sold for last quarter.
Every proposal recommends the stations that proposal’s author happens to represent. That is not advice, it is a catalogue.
Money split across so many stations that none of them reaches enough frequency to move anyone to act.
Strong inventory packaged with weak, priced as one number, so the filler rides along on the value of the rest.
A local spot dropped onto national satellite, or a visual product sold on audio with no way to picture it.
Nobody establishes what success looks like before launch, so nobody can say afterwards whether it worked.
Both sides of the desk
He ran sales at stations including KABC and KMPC in Los Angeles and 91X in San Diego. He knows what a station will accept, what it will never admit, and where the room is — because he used to be the one holding it.
Radio
Nine ways into the medium. Each one has its own page explaining how it works, what moves the price, and when it is the wrong choice.
Television and streaming
Not sure which of these fits? Send us what you sell and what you can spend. We will tell you where we would put it, and where we would not.
Get a Free PlanHow we treat clients
Media buying has been automated, outsourced and offshored. We kept doing it the way it worked: one person who knows your account, answers the phone, and tells you the truth even when it costs us the sale.
Whoever plans your campaign is the person who negotiates it and the person who picks up when you call. Peter Berk or a partner he trained himself, never a rotating account executive and never a handoff to whoever is newest.
If radio will not work for your budget, your geography or your offer, you will hear it on the first call. We would rather lose the buy than take money we do not think will come back.
Rates, commissions and what each station is actually delivering, laid out plainly. If you want the proposal broken out line by line, that is how you will get it.
Our longest-running client came aboard in 2011 and is still running. Long relationships are the only proof that matters in this business, and they are not won by being clever once.
The ten-point standard
Before a client signs anything, the proposal is read against the same ten points. If yours came from a station and you would like it read the same way, send it over. It costs nothing and carries no expectation that you buy through us.
Why Berk Marketing
Nothing to clear, no quota to hit. Our recommendation changes when the numbers change, not when a station needs the month filled.
In radio since 1979, on the station side for roughly twenty years before founding Berk Marketing in 1999 to buy for advertisers.
Certified Radio Marketing Consultant, certificate no. 589, issued by the Radio Advertising Bureau in December 1980.
Scripting, voice and production handled here, written for the medium it will actually run on rather than repurposed.
Standard media commission built into the placement rather than a retainer billed to you, so our incentive is a campaign that continues.
If your budget, geography or offer does not suit broadcast, you will hear that on the first call rather than after the money is spent.
Proof
The best evidence an independent buyer can offer is not a case study. It is a client who is still here fifteen years later.
Peter Berk, Berk Marketing
A term life insurer selling to people in their fifties with health conditions, running national radio and SiriusXM continuously for well over a decade, with creative developed and campaigns planned here throughout.
How we work
What you sell, to whom, at what margin, and what a lead is genuinely worth to you.
We select stations, networks and dayparts against your audience and budget, and tell you what we deliberately left out.
We take the plan to market, put sellers in competition, and hand you the proposal broken out line by line.
Response is measured against benchmarks agreed before launch, and the schedule is reweighted toward what works.
FAQs
Nothing billed to you directly on most campaigns. We are compensated through the standard media commission built into the buy, split with Hybrid Media Services. Because we own no inventory, we have no financial reason to steer you toward one station or network over another.
No. Radio is the core of the business, but we plan and buy television as well, including national cable, DirecTV, DISH and streaming placements on Hulu. If a budget is better spent on television than audio, that is what we will recommend.
There is no universal minimum, and any figure quoted to you as one is usually a particular seller’s threshold rather than a rule. There is a practical floor, though: below a certain weight a campaign generates too little frequency to be measured, and we would rather say so than take the buy.
Yes, and we do it regularly. Advertisers who need visual demonstration, who cannot fulfil outside one small area, or who need results within a fortnight are usually better served elsewhere. Sending someone onto a medium that will not work for them is the fastest way to lose them permanently.
Yes, free and with no obligation. Send us whatever a station or network has given you and we will read it against our ten points and tell you what it leaves out. Plenty of people use that and never buy anything through us.
Yes, in house. Scripting, voice and production, written for the medium it will run on. A spot written for a local station rarely travels to national satellite without changes, and one written for television does not become a radio ad by removing the pictures.
It depends on inventory and whether creative already exists. Availability is checked as part of planning, and we will be straight with you about timing rather than promising a start date the schedule cannot support.
That is why measurement is agreed before launch rather than after. If response is not where it should be, the schedule is reweighted toward whatever is performing, and if the medium itself is the problem we will say that too.
Tell us what you sell and what you can spend. You get back a plan, the stations and networks we would use, the ones we would avoid, and a straight answer about whether broadcast is the right place for your money at all.
Or call (866) 747-4707. No obligation, and no pressure to buy through us.
SiriusXM and satellite. Satellite behaves differently from terrestrial radio: a national footprint, a subscriber base, and targeting by channel and content affinity rather than by market. It is also sold as several distinct products — satellite channels, streaming, podcast and off-platform inventory — that arrive bundled in a single proposal more often than not. Berk Marketing takes those apart, weighs each against terrestrial alternatives for the specific offer, and says plainly when satellite is not the right fit. See SiriusXM advertising.
National and network radio. Networks, syndication, multi-market terrestrial and sponsorships each assemble differently, and the decision that matters most is rarely price. It is clearance — whether your commercial actually airs, and in which markets. Two campaigns with identical invoices produce very different results depending on where they cleared. Berk Marketing checks clearance against the affidavit rather than the proposal. See national radio advertising.
Major-market local radio. Buying New York or Los Angeles is a different exercise from buying a mid-sized metro: more stations, more formats, more competition for the same listener, and commute patterns that change which dayparts are worth paying for. The station list is built from who actually reaches your customer, not from who has the strongest overall numbers. See local radio advertising.
Remnant and unsold inventory. Unsold airtime lowers the cost of entry and brings real limitations with it — preemption, unpredictable availability, and less control over placement. It suits broad, evergreen offers that can absorb an inconsistent schedule. It does not suit launches, events or anything with a deadline. Berk Marketing's position is that remnant is a tool, not a strategy. See remnant radio advertising.
Every claim on this page is checkable. Here are the specifics rather than the adjectives.
| On the air since 1978 | Peter Berk began as a college disc jockey at KCHO in Chico, and became a paid professional broadcaster in 1979. |
| Selling radio since 1979 | More than 45 years of radio advertising and media buying experience, beginning at KEVA in Evanston, Wyoming. |
| Two decades on the station side | Account executive, then sales manager at KABC/KMPC in Los Angeles, then general sales manager at 91X in San Diego. Peter has sat in the chair where the rate card is defended. |
| RAB certified, 1980 | Certified Radio Marketing Consultant, Radio Advertising Bureau, certificate No. 589, awarded 2 December 1980 after examination. |
| Agency founded 1999 | Berk Advertising Services, Inc., trading as Berk Marketing. Built to represent advertisers rather than media companies. |
| Never a station representative | Berk Marketing has never taken on station representation and does not sell airtime on behalf of any station, network or platform. |
The order of those matters more than the length of the list. Two decades selling radio is what makes the buying side useful: Peter knows what a station will accept, what it will never admit it will accept, and which parts of a proposal are structural rather than negotiable.
No obligation attaches to any of this, and nothing is placed until you approve it.
1. A conversation about the objective. What the campaign has to achieve, in terms that can be counted — calls, orders, form fills, showroom visits, a launch. A goal that cannot be measured cannot be optimised toward, so this comes before any discussion of stations or budget.
2. Audience and market definition. Who your customer actually is and where they are. This determines the station list. Doing it the other way round — picking markets first, then hoping the audience matches — is the most common reason a radio budget underdelivers.
3. Availability requests. Requests go out to the relevant stations, networks and platforms. This is the step that takes real time, because the numbers have to come back from the sellers themselves. It is also the only way to produce a rate that means anything.
4. A plan you can actually evaluate. Station, daypart, spot length, spots per week, rate, total, placement terms, preemption terms and cancellation rights — itemised. If a proposal does not contain those, it is not yet a plan.
5. Creative and measurement, before launch. Commercials are written in house with professional voice talent subcontracted as needed. Tracking numbers, landing pages and a baseline are set up before the first spot airs, because attribution retrofitted afterwards is guesswork.
6. Tracking and adjustment. Response is tracked against the schedule and the buy is changed where it needs changing — including moving budget away from stations that are not performing.
One person handles all of it. The person evaluating stations and negotiating rates is the person who answers your call. See radio media buying for how a schedule is assembled, or read about Peter Berk's background.
"A station has sent me a proposal and I cannot tell whether it is any good." The most common one. A proposal listing spots and a price has told you almost nothing about audience fit, frequency, placement or preemption exposure. Peter will read it and explain what it contains, and what it leaves out.
"We tried radio and it did not work." Usually the structure rather than the medium: budget spread across too many markets to build frequency, a schedule weighted into cheap dayparts, or no measurement in place to tell whether it worked at all. Worth diagnosing before writing off the channel.
"We are being pitched SiriusXM and do not understand the numbers." Satellite proposals frequently bundle several distinct products behind one headline figure. They have to be separated before they can be compared to anything.
"We need to go national and do not know where to start." The first decision is not which network. It is whether a national buy or a set of assembled markets better matches where your customers actually are.
"Our agency handles everything else but nobody there really knows radio." Berk Marketing regularly works alongside an advertiser's existing agency, handling the radio component while the agency runs the rest.
If you are researching rather than ready to buy, these are the places to begin. All of them are written to be useful whether or not you ever contact us.
The complete guide to radio advertising — how the medium works, what it is good at, and where it falls down. Start here if radio is new to you.
What radio advertising costs — why there is no universal rate, what actually moves the price, and an interactive planning tool that shows how a budget divides across markets and weeks. It does not quote rates, because nobody honestly can without station availability.
What an independent radio media buyer does — how buyer-side representation differs from a station seller, the thirteen factors a schedule is judged on, and a full disclosure of how Berk Marketing is compensated.
Radio media buying — how a schedule is planned, negotiated and evaluated.
Talk radio advertising — why talk inventory behaves differently from music, how to buy by programme rather than by station, and how to handle adjacency and brand safety.
The Big Lou case study — a long-running national radio relationship, and what it looked like in practice.
A short note on what is deliberately absent from this site, because the omissions are the point.
No guaranteed savings figure. You will not find a percentage discount promised anywhere on this site. What a station will accept depends on that station, that quarter and its inventory position at the moment you ask. Any firm quoting a fixed saving before seeing a single availability request is quoting a marketing claim, not a media outcome.
No published rate card. A rate is only real once a specific station returns availability for specific dates. A number published here would be wrong for most advertisers most of the time, and wrong in an unpredictable direction.
No audience statistics without a source and a date. Audience composition changes continuously, varies by market for the same syndicated programme, and shifts when a host changes. Current data belongs in a campaign-specific analysis, not on a web page that would be stale within a quarter.
No claim that radio is right for everyone. It is not. An independent buyer is free to say so, and that conclusion is one of the main reasons the independent model exists.
