What is the process of Media Planning?

Media Planning, in advertising, is a series of decisions involving the delivery of advertising message to the targeted audience. Media Plan is the plan that details the usage of media in an advertising campaign including costs, running dates, markets, reach, frequency, rationales, and strategies.

An advertising agency undertakes media planning for their client. They help to select best combination of media for advertising of products that will reach maximum number of prospects at minimum cost. Proper media planning enables to design effective ad campaign.

1. Define Target Audience

First of all, the media planner needs to define target audience for communicating the ad message. The audience can be classified on the basis age, gender, income, occupation, etc. This enables media planner to estimate the cost and determine the right media for the ad campaign.

2. Deciding Media Objectives

The media objective is the goal of the media plan. Media objectives stated in terms of Reach, Frequency and Gross Rating Points (GRP).

• Reach: It refers to the total number of people or households exposed, at least once, to a particular media vehicle during a given period.
• Frequency: It refers to the number of times that the average household or person is exposed to the media schedule among those persons reached in the specific period of time.
• Gross Rating Points (GRP): It refers to a metric that measures the size of an audience reached through a specific media channel.

3. Determine Media Strategies

Media strategy is determined considering following:

1. Selecting Media Type: The media planner must select specific media type or select a combination of media which in- cludes newspaper, magazines, radio, TV, internet, outdoor etc.

2. Selecting Media Vehicle:The media planner must also select specific media vehicle or combinations of media vehicle. Eg. If Newspaper is selected as media type, the media planner has to decide which newspaper is appropriate such as The Times of India, Bombay Times, Mid-Day.

3. Allocation of funds: Media planner needs to allocate funds depending upon media type and media vehicle.

4. Media Scheduling: It shows the number of advertisements, size of advertisements, and time on which advertisements to appear.

4. Implementation of Media Plan

At this stage, media planner undertakes media buying. Media buying refers to booking time and space in the selected media. Thereafter, ad is placed in selected media. Finally, media planner monitors whether ad appears in selected media as per schedule or not.

5. Evaluation and Follow up

Finally, the media planner needs to evaluate and follow-up the implementation of media plan. This helps to find out whether or not media objectives are achieved. Successful strategies help build confidence and serve as reference for developing media strategies in future, and failure is thoroughly analyzed to avoid mistakes in future.