• Media Planning And Analysis,
• Tactical Considerations,
• Specific Media Information,
• Media Limitations,
• Legal And Tax Consideration,
• Language Limitations,
• Cultural Diversity,
• Production And Cost Limitations,
• International Control Of Advertising

What is Media Planning?

Media planning is more involved with formulating a strategy, evaluating its effectiveness, and adjusting, while buying is the execution of the strategy.

As noted, the media planner will evaluate brand and audience to determine the correct combination of messaging and media mix on which to advertise in order to reach consumers in a positive, impactful way.

Media planning is the process by which marketers determine where, when, and how often they will run an advertisement in order to maximize engagements and ROI. The media plan might split advertising spend and resources between various online and offline channels such as broadcast, print, paid ads, video ads or native content.

Media planning is most often done by media planners at advertising agencies. Media planners must work with media buyers and the client organization to develop a strategy to maximize ROI on media spend. Media planners are required to have a firm understanding of the organization’s brand and target audience, various media platforms and developing media trends.

An effective media plan will result in a set of advertising opportunities that target a specific audience and fit in with the organization’s marketing budget. When establishing a media plan, marketers will often factor in the following considerations:

• Who does the ad need to reach?
• What is the marketing budget?
• Conversion goals
• Frequency of the message
• Reach of the message
• How to define success

Challenges of Media Planning

Media planning can be challenging because there are so many contributing factors that must be accounted for, and because many believe that media planning strategies and processes have not modernized along with marketing. Challenges include but are not limited to:

1. Consumer-Level Targeting:

The media plan must understand consumers at a granular level to determine what types of messages resonate with them, requiring in-depth analytics.

2. Platform Preference:

Brands must also know the various channels and platforms that target audience members engage with and when. This will allow them to effectively choose media on which to run campaigns. All of this must be done with budget and media spend in mind.

3. Heavy Budget Focus: 

Media planning continues to revolve around budget rather than customer engagement. There is limited flexibility in a budget and plan to allow marketers to course correct as campaigns run and new insights are discovered. Modern media planning requires the flexibility to allocate budget to different channels if they prove to be more successful.

4.Integrating Measurements:

Because there are so many channels online and offline, it has become infinitely more difficult for marketers to measure the success of these campaigns alongside each other to determine which are most effective and which should be updated.

Today, media planning has to adapt to focus on the consumer experience using flexible budgets and real-time, unified measurements that allow for media plan optimizations in-campaign.

The Essentials of Creating a Media Plan

Creating a media plan is a detailed process that requires planners to consider the needs of target consumers as well as the goals of the business. Here are the essential steps and considerations marketers must make when creating a media plan.

Determine media goals and objectives

It might be easy to assume that the goal is to drive conversions or engagement; however, that would oversimplify this step. Goals may vary by department, or there might be multiple objectives for one campaign. For example, for the sales team and sales goals, increased revenue is the objective. However, marketing objectives might be to increase brand awareness. Knowing the main goal of the campaign will determine how it runs, as well as messaging.

Determine Target Audience

Marketing today is driven by creating positive customer experiences. This means that when developing messaging and selecting where to display those messages across the media mix, marketers need to be focusing on specific audience needs.

Frequency & Reach

Another key component of a media plan is considering reach and frequency. Reach refers to how many people the campaign will be in front of over a specific amount of time. Frequency refers to how many times the consumer will be exposed to the ad over the course of the campaign.  

There are a few popular approaches that marketers take when selecting frequency.

• Continuity:This approach to frequency means that ads will run on a consistent schedule over the course of the campaign: for example, two ads per week. This strategy is often used for goods that are not seasonal and require regular reinforcement to stay top of mind.
• Flighting: “Flights” refer to internment or alternating periods of advertisements followed by pauses in advertising on the channel altogether. This strategy works well for seasonal products or for those with less ad budget. For example, when there is a pause in a flighted television campaign, marketers may choose to run print ads instead.
• Pulsing: This is a combination of flighting and continuity. Pulsed campaigns will incorporate low-intensity consistent advertising that is augmented by flights of higher-intensity ads during times when additional messaging can have a high impact. 

Selecting the Right Media

Goals, audience, reach, frequency, and budget all contribute to the ultimate decision of which media to invest in.

There are a variety of online and offline channels for marketers to choose from, and they must use the information they gathered in the research and goal-setting phases to determine which channels will bring them the most success.

Here are some of the most popular channels that marketers choose when media planning, along with their attributes.

Offline Media

Magazines

• They have a long shelf life and often stay in a consumer’s possession for two to four weeks after being read.
  • Information in this medium tends to be retained longer, since people read faster than they can listen.
  • Research has shown there is a higher amount of trust in magazine ads than in other forms of media. Consumers are also less resistant to these kinds of advertisements, as these often tie in with their interests.
  • Publications tend to be very targeted (e.g., running magazines or cooking magazines).
  • They reach a secondary audience in addition to the target audience, since they are passed along to family and friends.

Newspapers

• When selecting this medium, marketers can choose which section of the newspaper ads are placed for further targeting. If they want to target those interested in fashion, they can select that section of the newspaper for their ad.
  • Newspapers have a desirable audience for many marketers. Consider the following:
    • Newspaper readers are more likely to have higher education and earn a higher salary. This can be important when selecting ad space based on demographics.
    • The older the demographic, the longer they will spend reading the newspaper.
  • Advertising with local newspapers is a great way to ensure a brand’s message stays local.

Radio

• Radio ads have a local appeal, allowing you to target specific areas or regions of the country.
  • It is an easy medium to build frequency with your target audience.
  • According to research, exposure to a radio ad and time to purchase is the shortest of any medium. Additionally, if paired with other forms of media, the overall campaigns were more effective.
  • This tends to be a lower-cost medium.

TV & Cable

• This media is highly visual and can demonstrate products in everyday life. For example, if you sell a cleaning product, consumers can see the benefits of your product and how these can be applied in their home.
  • This is very pervasive, as the average American watches approximately five hours of television a day.

TV & Cable

• Media such as billboards are large and get attention. In a busy area, your message can reach 10,000 people in a month.
  • Out of home isn’t limited by billboards, only your creativity is. It is an extremely mobile option. (e.g., using displays to advertise luggage at an airport)

Online Media

5Digital Publications

• Many digital publications have opportunities for you to email their database through a personalized email or newsletter.
• • They can track open rates and understand conversion rates to your site or asset.
  • These are often specialized publications, making it easy to reach your target audience, and are great tools for lead generation campaigns.

PPC

• Advertisers can capitalize on search intent.
  • Advertisers can retarget people who have visited their site.
  • PPC is an extremely cost-effective medium.

Social Media

• Like PPC, social media is an extremely cost-effective medium.
  • It is also extremely targeted, allowing marketers to target by interests, age, marriage status, etc.
  • Social platforms are constructed on a basis of community, which allows your brand to connect more personally with consumers. It also gives your brand the chance for content to go viral.

Programmatic Advertising

• Programmatic advertising is extremely targeted, using an algorithm to find and target specific audiences across digital platforms. When looking into this, there are two methods to consider:
  • • Programmatic Bidding – uses demand side platforms to buy ads on the digital market based on target audience.
    • Real-Time Bidding – allows advertisers to bid on impressions to their target audience. If their bid wins, the ad is displayed right away

Media Analysis

Media analysis refers to examining the various types of media and evaluates which of them would be best suited and appropriate to promote a specific product or service. How certain messages would be portrayed using any of these mediums and how public would perceive them?

Media plays a vital role in disseminating several news items gathered through reliable sources. Therefore, it is impossible to deny its significance in shaping and functioning of any society. Media analysis enables an organization to:

• Identify the critical issues to be presented,
• Examining how to frame a certain message, and
• Looking critically to improve an existing coverage of an issue

Defintions:

“The examination, interpretation and critique of both the material content of the channels of media of communication and the structure, composition and operations of corporations that either own or control those media. Media, in this sense, refers to what used to be called the mass media, the means of communication of information to large numbers of people – television, radio and newspapers. It now encompasses multimedia, the electronic networks of communication made available by the Internet.”

Methods for Media Analysis

Below are the main methodologies we are examing:

Content Analysis

• Content analysis is a systematic method used to turn items (mainly texts) into content categories. This method (more usually intended to inform quantitative research) follows explicit rules of coding, and enables large quantities of data to be categorized with relative ease. Content analysis offers a quick, broad overview of data sets, and as such can be used to support (and be corroborated by) other more detailed methods of textual analysis.

Evaluative Assertion Analysis

• This approach, based on work in the 1950s by the psycholinguist Charles Osgood, attempts to map texts and their object referents by reducing them to fairly unequivocal evaluative (“nuclear”) statements. EAA was later developed using Computer-Assisted Evaluative Text Analysis (CETA).

Frame Analysis

• Frame analysis looks for key themes within a text, and shows how cultural themes shape our understanding of events. In studies of the media, frame analysis shows how aspects of the language and structure of news items emphasize certain aspects (and omit others).

Discourse Analysis

• Discourse Analysis (DA) examines how the social world is constituted through discourse. Within DA there are various distinct traditions including conversation analysis and ethnomethodology; sociolinguistics; discursive psychology; critical discourse analysis; Bakhtinian research; and Foucauldian research.

Preparing the Media Analysis Report

The written media analysis starts with an executive summary that highlights the introduction of the topic, the purpose of the study and the major findings. The other sections of the report include the

• Methodology,
• The analysis of the issue,
• The spokesperson analysis,
• The framing analysis, and
• Conclusions and recommendations.

The citations of the articles included for formulating the media analysis should also be included.

The final report should be reflective of the opportunities to determine the best possible angles for the coverage of a particular piece of news. This will respectively help the organizations to devise more effective media strategies to deliver their messages to the target audiences effectively.

Tactical consideration

Tactical Consideration is an evidence based concept for the fire service to consider implementing into their department to enhance efficiency, effectiveness, and increase knowledge to accomplish their mission. With all of the measurements made during UL FSRI experiments as well as the vast experience of our project technical panels, several consistent themes have emerged that may be helpful to the fire service. Each of these themes is packaged as a tactical consideration with supporting text and visuals.

The application of tactical considerations depends upon many factors such as:

• building structure and geometry
• capabilities and resources available to the first responding fire department
• availability of mutual aid

Specific Media Information

The term media, which is the plural of medium, refers to the communication channels through which we disseminate news, music, movies, education, promotional messages and other data. It includes physical and online newspapers and magazines, television, radio, billboards, telephone, the Internet, fax and billboards.

It describes the various ways through which we communicate in society. Because it refers to all means of communication, everything ranging from a telephone call to the evening news on television can be called media.

Media can be classified into four types:

• Print Media (Newspapers, Magazines)
• Broadcast Media (TV, Radio)
• Outdoor or Out of Home (OOH) Media.
• Internet.

Strengths and limitations of various media

Print Media

Newspapers

Strengths

• daily delivery – frequency opportunity
• geographic selectivity
• some special interest selectivity
• intensive coverage of specific geographic market
• reach well-educated audience
• wide range of editorial material aimed at a broad audience
• great flexibility in ad size
• complex information can be communicated
• second shortest lead time
• pass-along audience in household
• credibility of print in general
• can read at leisure
• portable
• can provide “keepers”

Limitations

• short life
• low quality colour reproduction
• not demographically selective
• cannot deliver sound and motion
• messages compete with one another

Magazines

Strengths

• audience selectivity/specific audience targeting
• durability – long life
• excellent editorial climate – loyal readers – transfer of credibility
• artistic variety – bleeds, gatefolds, inserts, pop-ups, spreads
• good secondary readership (pass along audience) inside and outside home
• high quality color reproduction
• complex information can be communicated
• credibility of print in general
• generally attracts affluent and influential readers
• read at leisure
• portable
• can be read inside and outside the home
• can provide “keepers”
• urban and rural
• interested readers
• influential readers

Limitations

• long lead time required
• cannot deliver sound and motion
• low frequency and low penetration levels
• messages compete with one another
• comparatively expensive

Broadcast media

Television

Strengths

• allows for active demonstration of product
• large national audience reach (network)
• large local audience reach
• messages stand alone
• some audience targeting
• prime source of news
• high impact
• spectacular medium – sound, animation, motion, colour etc.
• obtrusive medium

Limitations

• messages have short life plus time shifting
• long lead time
• cannot provide details
• not portable
• high production costs
• most stations urban

Radio

Strengths

• low CPM
• good supplementary medium
• selective audiences
• great flexibility
• universal coverage
• short lead time
• production can be free
• inside and outside home
• loyalty/credibility
• urban and rural
• reaches motorists
• messages are personal
• messages stand alone – obtrusive medium
• portable
• prime source of local information

Limitations

• short life
• no visuals
• can not provide details
• no motion

Out-of-Home MediaOutdoor Advertising

Strengths

• excellent reach (mass audience)
• high frequency
• geographic flexibility
• high impact message
• quality reproduction
• works well with other media
• good for product awareness/recognition
• fairly cost effective – low CPM
• message has a fairly long life
• reaches audience 24 hours a day
• small merchandising aids are available
• can be used for co-op advertising

Limitations

• creative limitations – instant visual impact must be made
• lack of target market selectivity
• production costs are high
• lack of prestige
• no editorial support
• environmental clutter (many displays in one place)
• weather can restrict communication of the message
• urban markets only
• cannot deliver sound and motion
• cannot provide details

Internet

Strengths

• Deploy adverting program quickly
• Specifically target customers searching for your products
• Target region and demographics easily
• Work easily within any budget
• Drive customers directly to targeted landing pages on corporate website
• Ability to easily measure which campaigns are effective and which ones are not

Limitations

• Competition among advertisers can be fierce for certain keywords
• Click fraud by competitors or ad farm websites
• Ease of entry means that competitors can mimic advertising programs easily
• Quality of some content sites included in content network can be poor
• Generally text only

Legal and tax considerations

Laws and taxes control the access to media (radio, tv, newspapers etc), which complicates things, and can become costly if not taken into consideration.

Language limitations

The problem involves different languages of different countries, different languages or dialects within one country, and the subtler problems of linguistic nuance and vernacular. Low literacy in many countries seriously impedes communications and calls for greater creativity and use of verbal media.

Cultural diversity

Communication is difficult because cultural factors largely determine the way various phenomena are perceived. If the perceptual framework is different, perception of the message itself differs. Colors, gestures, noises, music – all things must be considered.

Production and cost limitations

Budget constraints or production limitations call for creative measures. Hand-painted billboards can be used for low-cost reproduction.

International Control Of Advertising

Advertising control is used by federal and state governments to regulate the use of advertising around cities and roadways. Advertising control prevents businesses from presenting false information, placing billboards in illegal locations and other prohibited actions. If a business does not follow the advertising regulations set by the government, it could face a civil suit.