Download Media Planning and Buying

Media Planning and Buying
Media planning attempts to answer the question, “How can we reach our target
audience/s in the best possible way?
Media Planning is the process of determining how to use time and space within a given
budget to achieve marketing objectives.
Terminology
A medium is a single form of communication (television, billboards, online media)
A media vehicle is a single program such as a magazine or a radio station
Media refers to a mix - tv, radio, magazines, etc.
Aperture - the point at which the advertising message connects with the target at the best
possible time and place. Usually when the target is searching for information or
searching to make a purchase.
Basic Goals for Media Objectives
1. Connection - the right media with the intended target audience
(challenge is there is a lack of reliable research on the new media and
sometimes there isn’t a perfect vehicle to reach the target audience)
2.Geography - which areas do you want to cover, national, regional, local or
a combination?
3. Timing - tries to answer the question, “When is the best time to place a
message before the target audience?” Timing decisions relate to factors such
as seasonality, holidays, days of the week, and time of day.
4. Duration - How long to advertise? The length depends on a number of
factors: the advertising budget; target audience use cycles(the time between
purchase and repurchase); and competitors advertising campaigns. The
object is to find media where the advertiser’s voice is not drowned out by
competitor’s voices - share of voice.
5.Size, length or position of ad - what has greater stopping power, gets the
message across the best and is affordable for the duration we need?
Strategies to meet media objectives
1.Target Audience -Currently use mass media audience research - tons of data
about who’s reading what or watching what, when. Retail scanners are providing data
about individual consumer’s purchasing behavior. For example if you buy tuna every
week, we can survey you to see what tv station you were watching the night before.
Database is a list of customers or potential customers and their various characteristics
stored electronically. The internet is a challenge because there is no standard agreed upon
measurment. We can look at hits, return visits, page impressions (total number of pages
those people looked at while at the site)
2. Geographic - When sales patterns are uneven, the media planner must balance sales
with advertising investment market by market. For example, in a weak sales area you
could increase the media buy if you thought there was the potential for greater sales.
Conversely, if you thought there wasn’t much room for sales growth you wouldn’t invest
your dollars in that area.
3. Timing and Duration - involves a balance between available advertising dollars and the
length of the campaign.
Continuity strategy spreads the advertising continuously and evenly over the length of the
campaign.
Pulsing - intensify advertising before an open aperture and then reduce advertising to a
much lower level until the aperture opens again.
Flighting - alternate periods of intense advertising with no advertising. The hope is there
will be a carry over effect where consumers will remember the product until they see the
ad again.
4. Size Strategies - size and length relate to advertising objectives. If you need to educate
a full page ad may be in order. However, if you just need to create name recognition a
smaller ad may work. Positioning - where the ad is placed in print - better readership near
the covers and first few pages, sometimes center spread is best depending on how the
magazine is bound.
Terms/concepts for measuring media impact
1. Impression is one person’s exposure to a program, newspaper, magazine or outdoor
location. Impressions are a measure of the size of an audience either for one media
vehicle(one magazine ad) or for a combination of vehicles.
2. Gross Rating Points - GRP - used in buying television coverage. A measurement of the
saturation for a given media effort. One gross rating point equals one percent of the TV
homes in a market. For example: David Letterman had 100,000 viewer impressions out
of a possible 500,000 TV’s (number of household with TV’s whether turned on or not) at
that hour. So the 100,000 viewers would represent 20 percent or a 20.0 rating. The total
rating on four telecasts would be 80 (20 rating x 4 telecasts equals 80)
3. Reach - is the percentage of the target population exposed at least once to the
advertisers message during a specific time frame.
4. Frequency - The number of times people are exposed to a message. There’s no
agreement about how often we have to see a message to understand it.
5. Effective Frequency - reach x’s frequency. How many target’s can I reach how often.
Cost as a planning factor
We don’t always evaluate our media buys based on audience impressions. Many times
the media buying decision comes down to hard cold cash.
CPM - cost per thousand - the cost to an advertiser for the delivery of a massage to 1,000
readers, viewers, etc. May be applied to a variety of bases, such as cost per thousand
circulation, per thousand homes, per thousand prospects.
CPR - cost per rating with TV media.
Media Buying Functions
1. Provide information to media planners before and during the planning stage of an
advertising/media plan.
2. Select the media
3. Negotiate for prices - time and space charges make up the largest portion of the
advertising budget so there is great pressure to keep the prices low.
4. Monitor the performance of the buy - sometimes there are scheduling problems or the
buy isn’t working so it has to be changed.
5. Analyze is the buy achieved GRP, reach, frequency and CPM objectives?
Terminology
Open pricing - each buyer negotiates a price for a particular vehicle.
Preferred position - buyers must bargain for spots in print media
Contents of a Media Plan
1. Plan overview
2. media objectives
3. Specifics and strategies
4. Flow chart