Digital Media Planning – Then and Now

For the past few days, I’ve been working on an online media plan for a client. It has been almost 5 years since I had actively been involved in making media plans. I realize nothing much has changed – then & now…

Media planning, we have been made to believe, is a mixture of art + science. What the ratio of the secret mixture is like the Coke recipe formula – everyone knows it is there, but no-one is aware what exactly it is.

5 years back, media planning was mostly about impressions (CPM), Clicks (CPC), and Leads…. The ROI’s were mostly about Click through Rates (CTRs) and effective CPCs… It still is.

5 years back, the tags and weight of the creative were an issue with most publishers… it still is. A normal flash file of 25KB to 35KB is what most of the publisher accepts. It seems like the broadband penetration has done nothing good to the quality of ads that can be served.

5 years back most ad serving tools reported the performance, basis the type of inventory, time, geo, etc. it still does the same, mostly.

5 years back campaign optimization was mostly based on ad inventory placement, frequency capping, creative refresh, or value adds…. It still is

5 years back most innovations were limited to roadblocks, interstitials, shoshkeles, page take overs… It still is

5 years back, search marketing (Google PPC campaign) played an important role in optimizing the performance of campaign… it still does

They say 6 months is too long in digital marketing… but, when it comes to digital media planning, 5 years does not seem like a long period. Well, to be fair, the use of 3rd party reports have increased – ComScore and Vizisense gives the media planner a sense of the media consumption amongst the TG. Things like audience duplicity, is all important information that goes into media planning…

However, the media planning formula hasn’t changed much… Maybe, the ratio would have changed a bit… if previously, it was 75% art and 25% science… now it would be 70% art and 30% science

Cheers

Santosh

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