Business: Media Planning

Media planning is today considered to be one of the most important parts of any promotional strategy. A lot of the success of the publicity campaign of both big and small businesses depends on media planning. This article provides a brief insight on what media planning actually is.

Media planning is a very frequently heard term in advertising circles. If you are planning to launch an advertising campaign for your product, you will surely come across this term. However, most people do not know what this term exactly means. Here's an explanation.

Traditionally, media planning meant deciding what kind of media should be employed for the advertising campaign. They would decide where the advertisement would have the maximum impact. Options considered were advertising on hoardings, television, cinema halls, overhead LCD TVs in malls or newspapers. All these traditional avenues of advertising were considered and then their profitability was analyzed. Based on such studies and researches, the final media for the publicity campaign were selected. 

Today, the concept of media planning has undergone a difference. Media planning now involves not only selecting a media for the advertising, but also deep analyses into the outreach of the ads. Also, media planners will today select unconventional streams of advertising such as mobile vehicles, advertising in small retain stores, etc. Newer options are decided depending on what the product being publicized is. That is why today the 'media planning' concept is slowly waning out, and is being replaced by more expansive terms such as 'media strategy' or 'communications planning'.

Aims of Media Planning

There are some specific aims that the media planning industry intends to achieve. Media planning is not anymore just about finding media to place the ads of the business. Determining the right kind of impact with the ad is also an important part of their job. The aims of any media planning project will depend on the following factors:-

The budget that the client defines for the advertising campaign

The type of product and the target audience it caters to

The prime focus behind the advertising campaign

The main message that the advertising campaign carries

These are important points that decide in a large way how the media will be planned for the advertising campaign. Based on these, the following set of aims is established:-

The advertisement in the decided media will reach out to a particular number of people

The advertisement will have a particular number of views/visits per person in a given timeframe

The advertisement will be able to convert viewers/visitors into customers after a particular number of views/visits

A particular figure for cost-effectiveness of the campaign

These profiles are established and discussed with the clients. It can be seen through the aims and objectives here that media planning is much more today than mere media buying. There's a lot more strategizing and planning than there ever was.

Payments in Media Planning

Media planners do not take a commission-based payment as most other people in the advertising industry do. This is because media planners do not work with volumes; they work with strategies. Their services are creative. For this reason, percentage cuts are decided in advance as their payment modes. These percentages are cut off from the total budgets of the advertising campaigns. 

Online Media Planning

Another term that is coming to prominence in this generation is Internet media planning or online media planning. The Internet is a very potential source of advertising for businesses across the world today, and it is quite understandable why every company worth its salt is promoting its wares through websites. But, it is very important to promote these websites in the right manner. The focus here is on reaching out to the niche customers. This is what an online media planner undertakes. The online media planner would first conduct a deep study into the business itself, and then employ fruitful routes of advertising for the business. Various channels can be used, such as affiliate advertising through text ads and banner ads, creating business collaborations with other websites and advertising through Internet-specific methods such as article submissions, blogs and forums, etc. The job of the online media player is to optimize the consumer traffic that can be brought in through various media routes.

By Neil Valentine D'Silva