On one hand, media buying planning has gotten a lot more interesting with the proliferation of media consumption channels and the vast number of media vehicles now available to the majority of consumers. The phenomenal growth of advertising has in turn fueled not just the growth but the specialization and powerful analytics that the media buying planning function has come to depend on. On the other hand, this has created a lot more complexity and challenges in the media buying planning process.
For starters, the gap between media datasets and how consumers actually behave in the media eco-system have become increasingly divergent. The sample-based in-depth syndicated media research surveys that have for decades served as the gold standards in their dedicated currencies now find themselves lagging in timeframes, beset by multi-channel simultaneous consumption with inter-channel influences on top of that. The heaviest consumers of media are even harder to find now, i.e. teenagers, and they’re typically not consuming in readily measurable ways (ie. mobile, handheld devices).
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Then there’s the age-old question of how a specific marketer target set gets translated into the available demographic categories when it comes to media buying planning time. All too frequently, media buying agencies and planners have had to make do with disparate datasets only to then find the distinctions between different segments blurred once the translation into the media vehicle has been made. A set of very specific attributes gets boiled down to 25 to 34 year old urban women. And finally, there are datasets that are just not available to the media planner or buyer: advertiser customer data, media audience data.
One new tool is now available which is designed to make media buying and planning easier: LogicLab. LogicLab gives media planners and buyers access powerful analytics backed up by advertiser and media data to calculate both campaign planning efficiency as well as efficacy of campaign results. Check out www.logiclabinc.com for more details.
