MQ&C Advertising, Austin, Texas, since 1982
Media buying is a craft. We've practiced it since 1982.
Radio, television, cable, print, outdoor, direct mail and sports marketing for consumer brands, from local businesses to Fortune 500 companies. We plan the schedule, negotiate the rates, produce the spots, and prove that what you paid for actually ran.
We don't advertise. Work comes by referral.
Reach tells. Frequency sells. Everything we buy is built on that.
What we buy
Six channels, one discipline
We've bought every one of these channels for decades, for clients from local businesses to national brands, and each gets bought on its own terms.
Radio
Where we started. Morning drive still sells, and a well-negotiated schedule with the right bonus weight is the most efficient reach a local or regional brand can buy. We know the stations, the sales managers and what a :30 should cost in every daypart.
Television and cable
Spot television bought on measured ratings. Dayparts, spot length, audience limits, cost per point and make-good policy are negotiated before the first spot airs, and the post-log is read before the invoice is paid.
Newspaper, magazine and insert programs for the brands and markets where print still pulls. Position, section, day of week and zone, negotiated and verified.
Outdoor
Billboards, bus and transit, airports and place-based media. Showing, location, illumination and posting dates, with proof of performance on every unit.
Direct mail
Format, paper, print, postage and in-home timing, coordinated with the mail house and the printer. We work from the file you provide and get the piece into the mail stream on the date the campaign needs it.
Sports marketing
Team and venue sponsorships, broadcast packages, signage and hospitality, negotiated as media rather than as a favor to the team. What you get, when it runs and what it's worth are written down before the handshake.
Production
Concept through final cut for radio and television, and finished art for print and outdoor. We've produced enough spots to know which ones sold, so the creative gets built for response.
Post-buy verification
The part that most often gets skipped. Every schedule is reconciled line by line against the station's affidavit of performance. Under-delivery is documented and make-good weight is collected, in writing, before the next flight is placed.
How we buy
Five steps, in the same order every time
- 1BriefWhat you sell, who buys it, where they are, what the budget is, and what a result looks like. One conversation, written up and agreed before anything is planned.
- 2PlanMarkets, channels, dayparts, flight dates and weight, with the reasoning beside each line. You see the plan before we talk to a single station.
- 3NegotiateRates, bonus weight, position, make-good terms and cancellation terms, negotiated directly with sales management. We've been buying from many of these people for thirty years, and they know we'll check the post-log.
- 4Traffic and airSpots, insertion orders, posting instructions and mail dates delivered on time, with confirmations on file.
- 5Verify and reportAffidavits reconciled against the order. Shortfalls collected. A plain report that says what ran, what it cost, what it should have cost, and what we recommend for the next flight.
After the schedule runs
What the post-log tends to show
Patterns from decades of reconciling what was ordered against what aired. No client is named and no figure is quoted. The next schedule is the one that matters.
Projected ratings that didn't arrive
Stations sell on estimates. The affidavit shows delivery, and the gap between the two is weight the client is owed, if someone asks for it.
Make-good terms never negotiated
When under-delivery isn't addressed before the spots air, there's no contractual claim. Most of it can still be collected, as added weight in the next schedule, by a buyer the station expects to see again.
Spots outside the daypart they were bought in
Correct on the invoice, invisible on the summary, and found only line by line.
Bonus weight that never posted
Promised in the negotiation, missing from the affidavit. It comes back when someone checks and stays gone when nobody does.
One medium bought with another's habits
Television bought like radio, or radio bought like print, delivers the wrong audience at a fair price. The buy has to fit the medium.
Radio dismissed before it was tried properly
Built from nothing, with creative written for response rather than for the reel, it has grown past television budgets more than once.
Stations sell audience. We buy results. The affidavit is where the two meet.
Who we are
Two people who have bought a great deal of media
Ilaria Bonalumi
Chief Media Strategist
Ilaria has bought and audited media for more than twenty-five years, in the top Nielsen markets and in small unrated ones, for national brands and for the local businesses next to them. A native of Milan, she came to Texas in 1992 by way of Young & Rubicam, on national packaged goods, restaurant and gaming accounts.
She runs the post-buy reconciliation, station by station. If a schedule under-delivered, she will find it, document it and collect it.
Ben Morris
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Ben's first job was the overnight shift at an Austin FM station at fifteen. He spent eight years on the air and in music direction before founding MQ&C in 1982 with two partners out of radio and television. Radio commercials were the first product. Media buying became the business once it was clear that was where the money was.
Since then he has negotiated radio, television, cable, print and outdoor for clients from nightclubs and local retailers to regional chains and Fortune 500 brands, and he still negotiates the larger buys himself. He studied film theory at the University of Texas, which is where the production side of the agency comes from.
Contact
Reaching us
We don't advertise, and most of the people who write to us were sent by someone we've already worked with. Most, not all. If you have a buy worth doing well, the door is open. If you believe we can help, email us with the type of business you run, the markets you're in, a rough sense of media spend and what you'd like to happen. We'll reply and set a time to talk.
ilaria@mq-c.cominfo@mq-c.com
MQ&C ADV INC
1108 Lavaca, Suite 110333
Austin, TX 78701
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Questions about this statement go to info@mq-c.com. Last reviewed November 6, 2026.