What is media planning?

Why is media planning important?

An effective media plan is vital for everyone involved in making sure an advertising campaign achieves its objectives. Delivering those objectives and making the most out of a budget is the job of media planners and buyers.

Say you have a brand you want to share and a certain amount of advertising budget. Taking out the first ad slot you see is unlikely to get you results and could be very expensive! That’s why media planning is so important. Carefully choosing the media channels that are right for your brand, message and target audience can make all the difference in:

• Helping your ads get seen by the right audience segments.
• Making sure your messaging is consistent for your brand.
• Delivering the best return on ad spend for your business.
• Reaching whatever goals you might have for your media.

• Giving you a competitive edge so you can stand out in the noise.

   

How to build a media plan

When it’s time to build your media plan, we recommend getting support from a media planning and buying agency. The process starts with a conversation – a discussion between the client and the media planner, through which the marketing objectives and the target audience are identified.

Using knowledge and research looking at consumer behaviour, the media planner is then able to select the most effective media platforms through which to reach this target audience.

Furthermore, demographic insight allows the media planner to suss out when and where to advertise. These might be:

• Radio ads on the morning commute.
• A TV spot during Corrie.
• Billboards on a busy arterial road.
• A double-page spread in TV listings.

Just to name a few.

When it comes to media planning, there are thousands of options to get your brand seen and your message heard. If you want a campaign backed by data, research and years of hard-earned experience, we can deliver the media mix you need. Take a look at our media planning services to see the breadth of channels available to you.

What is frequency in media planning?

One of the common questions we hear in media planning is, what is frequency? Frequency means the average number of times someone in your target audience sees your ad in a specific timeframe.

While you might think frequency wasn’t as important as reach (and we’ll get to that), having your message seen multiple times is a key metric for your campaigns. If you think about a busy commuter, the more that person is exposed to your message as they go about their day, the greater the impact you’ll have.

Frequency is particularly effective when you want your target audience to remember a particular message. For example, in our work with ACT, we used media planning to achieve a 43% advertising recall among their target audience of 16 and 17-year-olds.

How do you calculate frequency?

You can work out the frequency for your campaign by dividing your total impressions by the number of unique people you’ve reached. This is often easier with digital ads, but an example would be:

• You’ve reached 10,000 people and gained 20,000 impressions.
• Divide 20,000 by 10,000.
• Your campaign frequency is 2.

What is reach in media planning?

We knew you’d ask… Reach is the number or percentage of people in your target audience who have seen your advertising campaign at least once in a given period. You can use reach to measure the breadth of your campaign’s exposure.

If reach is important for your campaign, choosing media channels like TV ads, radio campaigns or paid social can help you get your brand in front of a large audience.

For an example of reach, say you know the size of your target audience. You also know that your campaign had been seen by half of them. Your reach is 50%.

Put simply, reach and exposure are a little like quantity vs quality. Exactly the right balance will depend on your campaign, and sometimes it’s not possible to achieve both. Read more on frequency vs reach and which we think you should choose.

What is a media planning and buying agency?

That’s us. Media planning and buying agencies can help you deliver on the goal to connect the right people with your brand.

Our media planners are experienced with various media and communication platforms (keeping abreast of developments) and how different audiences interact with them. They combine creative thinking with factual analysis to decide which media platforms to use, how often and for how long to ensure a brand’s message is delivered to the target audience.

Yes, whether it’s your ad on the back of a ticket or up in the air on a blimp, the world of media planning can be overwhelming. Our job is to get your campaign in the right places - and we love it.