Reviewed by Peter Berk, President and Chief Media Strategist, Berk Marketing · Last updated 7 September 2026
Radio advertising services
One independent buyer across every broadcast and streaming platform worth buying. We represent advertisers, not stations. We hold no inventory, so we have nothing to push and no reason to talk you into the wrong medium.
No cost, no obligation. Or call (866) 747-4707 and speak with Peter Berk or one of his Berk-trained partners.
An independent media buying agency plans, negotiates and places advertising for the advertiser rather than the media company. Berk Marketing does that across radio, television, satellite and streaming. We take your audience, goals and budget, go 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 rep can only recommend the station that employs him. We can recommend SiriusXM over local FM, local over national, streaming over both, or none of the above. Peter Berk has been in radio since 1978, including two decades on the station side before founding Berk Marketing in 1999 to buy for advertisers. He knows the sell because he ran it. Every service below has its own page.
The problem
Advertisers rarely fail at radio or TV because the medium is broken. They fail because every voice in the room has inventory to move, and nobody there is paid to give the honest answer.
Not sure who else is advertising in your category? We will run a competitive monitoring report for you at no charge, through our strategic partner Hybrid Media Services, and show you where your competitors are running before you commit a dollar. In many cases nothing shows up at all, and that is worth knowing too.
Get the ReportHow it works
A media buy is six pieces of work, not one transaction. Most of the money is won or lost in the middle three, which is where a station rep has no incentive to help you.
| Stage | What happens | What it decides |
|---|---|---|
| Brief and budget | What you sell, who buys it, what a customer is worth, and what you can commit per month for long enough to matter. | Whether broadcast makes sense at all, and which medium. |
| Availability search | Stations, networks, satellite and streaming sellers are asked what is open against that brief, including unsold remnant inventory. | The real menu, not one seller’s menu. |
| Rate negotiation | Each seller is negotiated separately and against the others. Nothing is taken at card, and weak positions get traded. | The unit cost you pay and what you get bonused. |
| Writing and production | Script, voice, music and edit, produced in house rather than by the station that sold you the airtime. | Whether the schedule has anything worth airing. |
| Placement and traffic | Orders, dayparts, rotations and copy instructions go out. Affidavits come back and get checked. | That you receive the spots you were sold. |
| Tracking | Response is read by station, daypart and week. Weak stations are cut and money moves to what works. | What months two and three look like. |
None of this produces a guarantee. Any seller promising a specific return from a specific flight is guessing in your direction.
Services
These are not nine products competing for your budget. They are nine answers, and the brief decides which one you get.
National satellite audio bought at channel and program level. We have years of experience buying large volumes of SiriusXM inventory, and we compare it against terrestrial options first.
Unsold airtime on the same stations, reaching the same audience, released at reduced rates. What it saves varies by market and by what is unsold when you buy.
One buy running nationwide through networks and syndicated programming. Built for businesses that can serve a customer anywhere, not for one with a delivery radius.
FM, AM and talk stations inside one market. The usual answer when customers have to physically arrive, and the cheapest way to build frequency locally.
Spoken-word audiences who listen in long sessions and stay through breaks, because there is no music to switch to. Suits offers that need explaining.
A concentrated, habitual audience with appointment listening around games and drive time. Narrow by design, which is the point when your customer is narrow.
Music formats bought by format as much as by station. Reach comes fast and cheap, attention is shallower than talk, so the creative has to work harder.
Streaming audio on desktop, phone and smart speaker. Reaches listeners where they now spend time online, with tighter targeting than a broadcast signal.
Broadcast stations and the iHeartRadio streaming platform, bought together or separately. Useful scale, and worth negotiating hard because there is a lot of it.
Television is a different job with a different cost base. We buy it the same way: availability, then negotiation, then measurement.
The starting point. What television costs once production is counted, where it beats audio, and where it quietly wastes money.
Networks and national cable. Remnant inventory can place you in strong programming without prime-time pricing, subject to what is unsold.
Targeted placement across satellite and cable networks, usually by network and geography, which makes national-feeling advertising possible regionally.
Placement into the DirecTV network line-up. Suits advertisers who want specific cable networks rather than a whole market.
The same discipline applied to DISH, bought against DirecTV rather than instead of it, so the two providers compete for the money.
Streaming video for audiences who cut the cord and cannot be reached on broadcast at any price. Tighter targeting, higher cost per thousand.
Buying the time is half of it. These four are part of how we work, not billed as extras.
Scripting, voiceover and editing are done in house. The alternative is free station production written by the salesperson who sold the spot, which is how you end up sounding like everything else in the break. We ask who you are targeting first.
Response is monitored so effectiveness can be measured rather than assumed, by station, daypart and week. That is what makes the second flight better than the first.
Free and with no obligation. We run a competitive monitoring report through our strategic partner Hybrid Media Services so you can see which stations your competitors are buying before you spend a dollar.
Every seller is negotiated, every time, against competing offers for the same audience. Rate is only part of it: position, rotation, daypart guarantees, bonus weight and cancellation terms all get traded.
Costs
There is no rate card worth quoting. The same thirty seconds costs wildly different amounts depending on conditions you can partly control.
We are paid by standard media commission built into the buy, split with Hybrid Media Services on most campaigns. There is no separate retainer and no fee for the planning work.
The fastest way to learn what your budget can buy is to tell us the budget and let us go and ask.
Request a Free Media PlanIs it right for you?
If your brief sits in the right-hand column, we say so on the first call and send no proposal.
Comparison
| Radio | Television | Streaming and digital audio | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best at | Frequency. Repeating a simple message until it sticks. | Demonstration and credibility. Showing the thing. | Precision. A defined audience with less waste. |
| Cost to start | Lowest. Audio production is fast and cheap. | Highest. Video lands before you buy any airtime. | Middle. Cheap production, higher cost per thousand. |
| Time to air | Days, once copy is approved. | Weeks, because the spot must be made. | Days, and easiest to change mid-flight. |
| Targeting | Format, daypart, market. Blunt but predictable. | Network, programming and geography. | Platform data. The tightest of the three. |
| Measurement | Inferred: codes, call tracking, response by week. | Inferred, and harder because flights run shorter. | Reported delivery and completion, closer to digital. |
| Where it fails | Underfunded schedules. Two weeks buys nothing. | Small budgets, where production eats the media. | Small budgets, where targeting leaves too few people. |
| Choose it when | You need to be remembered broadly and repeatedly. | Seeing the product closes it, and production is funded. | Your buyer is narrow, data-findable and off broadcast. |
Most campaigns are not a pure choice. The honest answer is usually a mix, one medium carrying frequency and another covering the audience the first cannot reach.
Why Berk Marketing
Berk Marketing represents advertisers, not radio stations or media companies. There is no airtime we need to move, so there is no medium we need you to pick.
Peter Berk has been in radio since 1978, including two decades on the station side at KCHS-AM New Mexico, KKAL California, KABC and KMPC Los Angeles, and 91X San Diego as general sales manager.
Berk Marketing was founded in 1999 to buy for advertisers instead. Every tactic in a station proposal is one he has used, which is why the review is quick.
Certified Radio Marketing Consultant, certificate no. 589, issued by the Radio Advertising Bureau on December 2, 1980.
Big Lou Insurance has run national radio and SiriusXM with us since 2011, selling term life to people aged 50 to 60 with health issues.
Every proposal is scored against it, including ours. If our own plan does not clear the bar, it does not reach you.
How we work
What you sell, who buys it, what a customer is worth and what you can spend. This is where we say no if broadcast is wrong for you, before anyone spends anything.
We go to the market for real availability and price across radio, TV, satellite and streaming, negotiate the options against each other, and come back with a written recommendation.
Script, voice and edit in house. Orders and copy instructions go out, affidavits come back and get checked against what was bought.
Response is measured by station, daypart and week. Weak placements are cut, budget moves to what works, and the next flight is built on evidence.
FAQs
We are paid by standard media commission built into the buy, split with Hybrid Media Services on most campaigns. There is no separate retainer, no planning fee and no charge for a competitive report.
Neither. Berk Marketing is an independent media buying agency representing advertisers, not radio stations or media companies. We hold no inventory of our own, which is why we can recommend against a medium when it is wrong for you.
It depends on what you sell and how much you can commit. Radio is usually the cheapest way to build frequency. Television is the choice when the product has to be seen and the budget can carry production. Streaming and digital audio suit narrow audiences already off broadcast. Most campaigns end up weighted across two of the three.
Remnant is unsold airtime that stations release at reduced rates, on the same station and to the same audience. Where it fits, it lowers the cost of getting on air, but what it saves depends on what is unsold when you buy. Treat it as an opportunity, not a plan.
Yes. Commercial writing and production are done in house: scripting, voiceover and editing. We ask who you are targeting and what makes your product stand out before writing anything, which is not a question the station selling you airtime tends to ask.
Tell us before you go any further. Once a station or network representative has been in direct contact with you and put a rate in front of you, that account generally belongs to the seller, and we usually cannot represent you on it. Nobody warns advertisers about this, because the person doing the quoting has no reason to. The point at which an agency is worth the most to you is before the first call.
We track response so effectiveness can be measured rather than assumed, by station, daypart and week. Broadcast attribution is inferred rather than clicked, so it relies on call tracking, dedicated numbers and codes, and on watching what changes when a station is added or cut.
Yes. Local schedules in single markets, national radio through networks and syndication, SiriusXM nationwide, national and satellite television, and streaming platforms. Each has its own page linked above, and the brief decides which is appropriate.
Then we say so and you do not get a proposal. If your budget only funds a two-week burst, your customer list is a few hundred named companies, or you need attributable results this week, broadcast will disappoint you. That costs us a sale and saves you a season.
Keep reading
We come back with real availability, negotiated pricing and a written recommendation across radio, television and streaming. Or we tell you broadcast is the wrong place for your money, which happens often enough to be worth the call.
Or call (866) 747-4707. No obligation, and no pressure to buy through us.
Tell us who you want to reach and what you want to accomplish. No obligation, and nothing is placed until you approve it.
Ready to plan your radio buy?
Berk Marketing represents advertisers, not radio stations or media companies.
