Analysis of media planning models in old and new age media

Abstract

Media planning is a serious consideration for managers who need to fully leverage their media options to the best that they can considering the limits of the budget that they have. Media these days encompasses an entire spectrum of offline and online instruments, from Magazines, to Radio, TV, direct mailing, emailing, SMS, games, events, websites, search engine optimization etc. The complexity of choosing advertising media is highly focused on the objective of the brand manager in concern. If the objective is awareness of the brand and to spread a positive feel to the product under consideration, then the reach of the advertisement is most important, and should focus on a variety of media to increase the reach. For certain kinds of high involvement products, which usually require a more focused approach, targeted advertising is usually a better approach. In offline media, we have seen the evolution of the planning models from the very basic choice amongst different types of magazines, to the higher level of complexity amongst different types of media, different time frames, and different geographies. This is in correlation to the amount of processing power that computers afforded at that time, and the level of basic market research done to understand more about the potential customer bases. Based on these estimates, a detailed media mix and scheduling plan can be computed which lower costs while attaining the targets. However, the major drawback of offline media is of course, that everything is based on estimations. From the total viewership, to the potential level of exposure, the level of remembrance, almost everything in offline media is a broad estimation and an optimistic scenario of the effect of advertising. However, the reach and impact of offline media will make it a critical destination for advertisers for years to come. In online media, we have clear advantages over offline media accompanied by a few limitations. Online media offers a new level of connectivity reaching directly to the customer. Thus, beyond just delivering targeted advertising through the web browser, one can also personalize the advertisement itself to cater to the individual profile of the customer. In terms of media planning, one must take care to look at the cost of conversation, as well the highly competitive space, since anyone can place an ad online for a relatively low cost. While we have not been able to come across literature and models that go beyond basic website banner advertisements, one can go beyond and again use estimations regarding the impact of viewership of entire sites sponsored by companies or online events. The role of the media planner is moving towards applying IMC, or Integrated Marketing Communications principles in their media planning. This means making use of traditional media, as well as online media in the form of websites and banner ads. In addition, we are moving towards using social media websites as a way to actually interact directly with customers and take their feedback and involve them in the process of brand building through actual conversations and games. This new level of connectivity and interactive advertisement is still in its early stages, and does not yet factor into the total cost planning yet, but will potentially do so in the future. One common limitation with all the models covered in this report is that they usually factor out the quality and impact of a certain type of advertisement. With better and better quantifiable information regarding advertisements through online banners, we can begin to assess the quality of the advertisement itself, and factor that into the modelling of advertisements as a whole. Media Planning will continue to play a critical role in the realm of advertising, as a key decision making tool, and we are likely to see more complex computation models which can help decide precisely what to place (including the type of advertisement), where to place (covering the breadth of traditional and modern media), and when to place (considering all the effects of saturation, stickiness, forgetfulness, pulsating advertisement). The media planner of the future needs to only be able to provide the relevant basic information (perhaps even this can become automated for all the online aspects, while relying on market research for offline aspects), and the complex model will be able to identify all the key media to use, drilling it down to the channel within the media (the newspaper name amongst the newspapers). Of course, at the end of the day, the media planning model only serves as a guide upon which the media planner has to use his discretion to identify key pointers in the final implementation, and make any adjustments keeping in mind the sentiments of the current time period and cultural sentiments. The importance of the human factor in the final implementation cannot be underestimated, as it can make or break the final effectiveness. A campaign in bad taste cannot ever be effective despite the best of models applied. In counter verse, a good advertisement may never reach its optimal potential a model is not followed considering all aspects of reach and frequency. Based on the review of the current models, we predict that future models will continue to become more complex, and we expect that there are already models currently used in by private players which do their best to estimate the optimal expenditure across all media. For now, we can only look forward to advances in media mix planning in the public domain, and have no doubt they will continue to serve as a critical tool to the marketing managers of tomorrow.