Understanding Media Planning

Part One

What is Media Planning?

Post creation of advertising, the task of delivering it to the targeted audience in a way that is visibly effective and cost efficient, is known as media planning. This delivery of ads through various available media is the quantitative task of advertising.

What’s the process?

The process begins with looking at the objective the media plan needs to achieve, and the media budget available. Often, it involves deriving how many people in the target audience can be reached and with what regularity given the budget. The media objective flows out of the advertising objective.

Brand Awareness Brand Persuasion

Get more audiences to see the ad

Get existing audiences to see more of the ad

Advertising Objective

MEDIA TASK MEDIA TASK

Achieve better spread of ad

exposure

Achieve better penetration of ad

exposure

The Media Planning Process Advertising Objective

Media Objective

Media Strategy

Media Operations

Brand Awareness Brand Persuasion

Budget Audience Profiling & Media Habits

Reach Frequency Advertising Exposure

Media Selection Media Scheduling

Negotiation Buying

Placement & Monitoring

Media TV, Print, Radio, Outdoor

Readership profile Viewership profile

Source: The (UN)Common Sense Of Advertising, Sanjay Tiwari

Total number of people exposed to an ad at least once

Number of times a person is exposed to an ad

Framework to ‘Maximizing Advertising Exposure’

Marketing Objective

Advertising Objective

Media Objective

New Customers Existing Customers

Trial Purchase Repeat Purchase

Brand Awareness

Brand Persuasion

Brand Reinforcement

Maximize Reach

Optimize Reach & Frequency

Maximize Frequency

Maximize Advertising Exposure

Qualitative Issues In Media Plans

Creative Impact: Creative and persuasive ads work better and require less advertising exposure to create broad preference than ads that are less persuasive Brand Image: Premium brands should advertise on premium media to reinforce premium image of the brand Competitive Environment: Highly competitive categories see more clutter and to cut through the noise, higher than efficient levels of advertising may be required – high frequency or bigger sizes.