What’s Media Planning and Buying?
Description: The task of choosing and buying the media placement for placing an advertisement. This task is linked to the advertiser’s objective for having this placement (Campaign).
The Media Planner and Buyer will create a document called Media Plan that includes Media Selections, Impressions of Ads and Frequency, Timing and Scheduling of the ads, total cost and cost breakdown by medium, Media Deliverables (such as, Reach, Clicks, CTR/VTR, GRPs).
Part of the process is to connect this placement (campaign) with the Creative strategy and the Owned Media channels strategy (Social Media accounts, Website/App, Store, Office etc.) and PR channels strategy (News media, influencers, internal PR team and so on).
For better media performance, and depending on the advertiser size and internal preferences, some advertisers manage the task of Media Planning & Buying internally, and some choose to assign a specialist or an agency. The bigger and more diversified the media-buying investment the more it is needed to have a media agency for better control on the budget and more optimization in the media performance.
Advertiser (Briefs & Budget) – Agency (Plans, Buys, and Optimizes) – Media Owners (Ad Placement)
Cycle of the media planning and buying process: Media Brief, Media Plan, Media Buy/Booking, Monitoring & Reporting, Financing, Performance Review & Optimization.
7 important phases in the process of Media Planning and Buying:
| Phase | Description |
| Media Brief | Based on Marketing and Communication objectives, an outline for Media Planning and Buying needs. It is created for each campaign. |
| Media Plan | A document that shows the proposed placement and cost to meet the media brief demands |
| Media Rate Confirmation | A pre booking confirmation for the media space rate, as well as Ad Manager & Programmatic benchmarks/rates |
| Booking Order | An official financial order with obligation to buy the media spaces as stated in the Media Plan. |
| Monitoring | 3rd parties and internal tools that provides a vie on the campaign performance and its progress, helping to identify areas for budget optimization. |
| End Report | Needed to confirm the booked media inventory/amount against the delivered ones, usually the final amount is slightly less than what was initially booked especially for biddable media. |
| Invoice | The final amount to be paid based on the booking order and end of campaign reported data. |
In general, the Planning task is managed by a planning and performance team, while the Buying is managed by a Buying/Trading team, and both teams coordinate together on the investment overall needs and individual campaign’s needs.
#MediaPlanning #MediaBuying #DigitalMedia #SocialMedia #TV #OOH #Advertising #MediaAgency
