Media Scenario Planning

This is "doing the media math" to come up with options, costs, efficiencies and trade-offs for a media plan. Media scenario planning is creating alternative scenarios of reach and frequency and GRP (gross rating point) levels to different broader or narrower target audience groups to understand the costs and trade-offs of different options (scenarios).  And then determining what media strategy is the best way to accomplish your specific objectives within your budget.

Media scenario planning is best done:

• By a professional media planner who has a solid understanding/knowledge of your business AND experience in doing this type of planning using media data subscription services and third-party media research.
  • You want to find someone with expertise in reaching your intended target audience(s) and with all types of media.
  • Best Sources for Marketing Freelancers
  • If you're hiring a freelancer you want to make sure they have access to all the media research tools. The best option might be a media planner who works at a media planning agency and is willing to take on "moonlighting projects" after hours. 
• Before you hire anyone to create ads or decide what type of ads you want to create. You may want the media planner to have "an open canvas" to come up with the best media mix and options for you to consider. 
• When you are determining your ad plan and budget. It may be you learn through this media scenario planning that you can't afford to do an effective job at advertising and are better off using another type of marketing.
  • How to Determine Your Ad Budget
    

The best media planners are great at "doing media math" and coming up with creative ideas. 

There are so many media options. You want someone to come up with inventive ways to reach your target audience(s) when your ad messages will be most relevant.

TIP:  Read the advice shared by freelance and professional media planners on the tabs associated with this article. If they've given good advice, they may be people you want to talk to and hire to do media scenario planning. If they want new business they will have set up a listing and profile page you can link to for more information about their expertise, how they charge and their contact information.

A media planner will work with you to create a Media Brief that outlines exactly what your advertising target audience(s) are and other information they need to develop plans. 

Media scenario planning considers several factors

• Media mix.  That is determining the types and combinations of media (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, outdoor billboards, online ads, search ads, etc.)
• Share of voice.  This is calculating what your company or brand’s percentage of ad spending in a given media type (TV, radio, newspapers, online, magazines, etc.) is relative to the total spending by competitors that are advertising in that media type. Schoenfeld Associates is the source many media agencies use to research industry and competitors share of voice.  Their reports are $400 and $500 dollars.  Check to see if the local library has it. 
• Scheduling when the ads will run throughout the year
  • Continuity scheduling spreads media spending evenly across every month. This method ensures steady brand exposure and takes advantage of volume discounts in media buying. Since this is expensive, this may not be practical for small advertisers or wise for advertisers who sell products only during peak seasons. 
  • Flighting is concentrating advertising in certain months and running no advertising in other months.
  • Pulsing maintains a low level of advertising across all months but spends more in selected months.
• Reach is the number or percent of persons exposed at least once to an advertising schedule over a specific period of time. Reach, then, excludes duplication. A Reach of 70% means that 70% of your target audience is exposed to your ad.
• Frequency is the number of times an average person will have an opportunity to see an ad.  It’s a measure of repetition.
• GRP (Gross Rating Point) measures the total volume of delivery of your message to your target audience.
  • The formula of calculating GRP is:  GRP = Reach x Frequency.
• Reach and frequency are both important.  You may want the highest reach possible because that means more people will have an opportunity to see the ad, which should lead to more brand awareness, customer loyalty, sales, and so on. You may also want adequate frequency levels if you feel that consumers will only take action (that is, buy the product) after seeing the ad message multiple times. 

Know this:  As a rule of thumb, everything being equal, it costs about twice as much for a GRP of 84 as a GRP of 42. 

 

To give you an idea how this works, some media scenarios for reaching a GRP of 84 might be:

• Advertising twice on the Super Bowl.
• Or buying 6 spots on popular prime time shows that each have a rating of 14 (6*14 = 84)
• Or buying a large number of spots (say 42 spots) on a range of niche-market cable TV programs, radio stations or magazines that have a rating of 2.

If a media plan calls for a broad reach and a high frequency, then it calls for very high GRPs (lots of ad exposures to lots of people). Achieving a very high GRP is very expensive so media planners may start with the allotted budget, then estimate the GRPs that they can afford and then either sacrifice reach to maintain frequency or let frequency drop to maximize reach.

• Media Terms gives explanations of the key media terms you'll want to become familiar with to understand the industry "lingo" and not get taken advantage of. 

Next page- How to do media cost scenario planning