Classic Media Planning 8211 Where Is The Journey Going
Management Summary
Has the classic media plan had its day?
In view of recent developments, one might get the impression. The topic of programmatic advertising has occupied marketers, agencies and publishers in the online sector for years and is gradually conquering traditional media. Audio and TV can now be booked programmatically and some are already talking about programmatic print as “the next big thing”. One thing is clear – programmatic advertising has fundamentally changed the way we buy advertising and how we want to reach target groups. The programmatic portion of booked advertising can no longer be imagined in any media plan. All the more so the reverse question – what about a media plan in a programmatic world?
Against rigid inventory
The possibilities that programmatic offers make the classic media plan look old in many ways. Due to fixed bookings and rigid inventory, advertisers are often not flexible enough to reach the right target group at the right moment. The key disadvantage of classic environment planning is that every impression is taken, regardless of whether the user is in the desired target group or not (keyword wastage). And that’s exactly the point: We have so much data available to target our advertising messages in a targeted and smart way. Let’s use them! Personalization and digital storytelling should no longer be the exception to a good campaign plan, but the rule.
So do we still need our well-known planning Excel from the media agency?
When, who, how, where, what?
Instead of “Where do I reach my user?”, the question should be: “Which user do I want to reach at what moment with what message?” The key word here is customer journey. An example: Even a sports-loving customer doesn’t always want to buy sporting goods. Machine learning and data help to recognize and correctly interpret signals from the target group. Unnecessarily displayed impressions annoy users and waste valuable media budget. For exactly this reason, we should rely more on our “data” feeling and instead of the classic media plan with environments, we should develop an audience plan in which we deal precisely with the question mentioned above: Which audience – which message?
The end of Premium?
That’s why good advertising environments don’t immediately lose their importance. Even in times of programmatic, the environment is relevant for the impact of the advertising message. Premium environments are particularly important for branding. Familiar and familiar environments have a positive effect on advertising, but care should be taken to purchase them smartly and data-driven. Nobody wants to present an attractive new customer offer to an existing customer. Through proper targeting, I can also display the right message on premium sites – and, for example, thank my existing customers for their loyalty.
Another unfortunately still widespread myth is that high-impact advertising formats can only be played out via IO booking. According to some, this still requires the well-known media plan and a fixed booking. This myth has now had its day, as we prove with our Success Story for Magenta. A mix of 1st party data and innovative formats was played out on premium sites, which got the campaign off the ground. Even fixed placements can be handled programmatically: high-priority deals have the same effect as a fixed advertising space. Most publishers can easily accommodate this.
So the bottom line is – it’s the mix that counts! For successful campaigns you need both: premium environments & Data-driven insights.
