What is media planning? Most people don’t know. It took me a solid year of doing the job to start to understand it. Now, I’m almost three years in, so I’m going to try to break it down for y’all.
When asked, “So, what do you do for work?” I could easily just say that I work in advertising, but then people think that I design magazine ads or shoot commercials, which is definitely not the case. Now, I’ll just send them the link to this blog post.
For context, I’m currently a senior media planner working on Amazon Prime campaigns like Prime Day. More information on my background and advertising agency can be found at the bottom of this post.
IN SHORT, WHAT IS MEDIA PLANNING?
Every year, companies spend millions, sometimes billions, of dollars on advertising. According to Investopedia, Coca-Cola spent an average of $4 billion on advertising each year from 2015-2019 to market its drinks to consumers around the world.
Media planning is recommending where a company’s ads should be presented to the public (on TV, on the radio, online, etc) and how much money should be allocated to each channel and partner (tv network, website, magazine, etc.) in order to reach a desired group of consumers.
Advertising opportunities are always changing with new media platforms (like TikTok and Peacock), media channels (like podcasts), ad formats (like voice-activated ads on Amazon Alexa), and consumer trends (like the switch from traditional linear television to streaming platforms like Hulu).
WHAT DOES A MEDIA PLANNER DO?
I work at a media planning and buying agency and do not design or create the actual ads. That’s the job of another creative or full-service agency. A creative agency offers creative production and will write the copy (words) you see in magazine ads and hear on radio and tv ads, film the commercials, record the audio ads, etc. An example of a creative agency would be Lucky Generals. Sometimes a brand hires a small creative agency, or sometimes a brand might choose to work with the creative department of a bigger full-service agency. A full-service agency offers media planning and buying, creative production, and all the other services a company would need to create ads like strategy and social media. An example of this would be Wieden+Kennedy, a full-service agency in Portland, Oregon that is best known for its work for Nike.
At a media agency, the media planners will function as account managers. It’s fairly Excel-heavy and I’d say some key job responsibilities are:
- Handling daily client communications on behalf of other partnerships teams (digital, OOH, social, TV, etc.).
- Leading all partnership teams to put together a media plan on time and on budget
- Overseeing campaign implementation, optimization, and performance
- Pulling consumer data reports to ensure that the audience’s media behaviors align with the media plan.
- Becoming the expert on their client’s business and industry, keeping a pulse on current events and what is happening with the client’s competitors
- Using programs and tools to run reach and frequency scenarios to make sure the ads reach the most people as possible.
- Ensuring all vendors are billed correctly and on time
HOW DOES THE MEDIA PLANNING PROCESS WORK?
I can really only speak to my experience, so I will tell you how media planning works at a large media planning and buying agency for a national advertising campaign. This process could be very different at a smaller media agency, creative agency, or in-house media planning team, but hopefully you get the gist.
The client will send the media agency a media brief which includes information about a campaign such as budgets, campaign dates, target audience, media channels they want to activate, media objectives, type of creative assets that will be available (online videos, audio spots, etc).
Big companies that advertise on traditional television throughout the year will purchase most of their TV commercial space with TV networks a year in advance in deals that are called “Upfront” deals. In media, “the Upfronts” are when TV networks present their TV programming and advertising opportunities for the upcoming year to brands and agencies. Networks create packages and advertisers can get the lowest rates if they purchase the media upfront. The Upfront presentations are usually in the spring, around March-May, and negotiations end in the fall around September. With the advent of streaming video on ad-supported platforms like Hulu, ABC Online, Paramount Plus, etc., there are also streaming deals happening. If brands choose to make additional smaller TV deals later in the year, called “scatter” deals, the cost might not be as efficient.
As you can imagine, there are dozens of TV networks to make deals with from NBCU to Disney to ViacomCBS. This is the job of the video partnerships team. As this is negotiated a year in advance, TV and streaming video media is usually already taken care of by the time the client sends a brief for a big national campaign, so that leaves the rest of the media channels to plan.
For digital media (ads that you see on websites), the digital partnerships team will send out requests for proposals (RFPs) to publishers (examples: Buzzfeed, The Guardian Online). The publishers will send back a media plan that fits the campaign budgets and objectives in the RFP. Then digital partnerships will evaluate the proposals and decide which publishers to run with. They will negotiate rates, allocate budgets, and create a digital media plan that includes multiple partners.
If the client wants out of home (OOH) media like billboards, posters at bus stops, and subway stations, then media planners relay all the campaign information to the OOH team so they create an OOH recommendation in the specific cities/markets that align with the campaign goals. Similarly, if the client wants radio or social media advertising, the media planners will reach out to those teams and facilitate those media plans.
All media plans are put into a single recommendation, often presented to the client in a Powerpoint/Keynote deck or an Excel plan. The clients review the plan, ask for more information and/or questions. Media planners get all the different teams to provide answers. Once the plan is approved by the client, media is secured and purchased. The client will work with their creative agency to provide the actual ads in all the requested formats.
The creative is trafficked and goes live on the campaign launch date. The media planning team checks that all ads are live on all media channels and then makes sure all media is taken down at the end of the campaign. Once the campaign wraps, the media planning team works with the other teams to write post reports that analyze what partners, creative, media channels, and strategies worked and didn’t work to inform future campaigns.
Some brands have their media planned out for the whole year at once, other brands have quarterly media plans. Media teams are often working on multiple campaigns per quarter and each campaign takes several months to plan, so there are a lot of overlapping timelines and deliverables. There are a million little steps in between, but hopefully this section and the next section will give you a clearer picture of media planning.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: A HYPOTHETICAL SCENARIO FOR CHIPOTLE
Here’s a hypothetical scenario for what I imagine could have happened when Chipotle announced they would be offering smoked brisket for a limited time earlier this year. As of writing, Chipotle’s media planning and buying are handled by an agency called Mediahub.
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*The below is a hypothetical scenario with fake dates and fake budgets*
In September 2020, Mediahub finalized most of Chipotle’s TV advertising and streaming video deals for Q4 2020-Q3 2021.
In May 2021, a Chipotle media manager briefs Mediahub on the Smoked Brisket campaign that will run from September 6-26, 2021. There will be TV, streaming video, digital, out of home, and social media. The budget for digital, OOH, and social is $10 million. The target audience is US adults ages 18-34, with a focus on foodies. The objectives are to drive awareness and trial of the new limited-time protein offering.
The media planning team will create timelines for all teams for all deliverables. They will run reach and frequency scenarios with the agency’s proprietary tools to figure out what the optimal budget allocations will be to reach the most amount of people in the target audience. Let’s say they decide the best budget allocations that will enable the campaign to reach 75% of the target audience is $5 million for OOH, $3 million for digital, and $2 million for social media.
The media planning team will build the campaign timeline and brief the OOH, digital, and social media teams. The media planning team will research the media behaviors of 18-34-year-olds and foodies. The OOH team will put together a market list and media plan with their recommendation for each market. The media planning team will work closely with the digital team to RFP partners that reach the target audiences.
The digital team RFPs 10 partners that are popular with people ages 18-34 and foodies. They receive the proposals back and narrow the list down to Spotify, Vox Media (parent company of Eater and Vox), New York Times Digital, Reddit, and Meredith (parent company of Food & Wine, Allrecipes, Rachael Ray). The social team RFPs Twitter, Facebook/Instagram, and TikTok and assembles their media plan.
The media planning team makes sure all the strategies, placements, and targeting tactics all match what the brief is looking for. They lead status meetings with all the teams to make sure everything is on track for the media plan presentation.
Mediahub delivers and presents the media plan to Chipotle’s marketing team in mid-July. A week or so later, once all the client’s questions have been answered, the client approves all the budgets and partners. Mediahub secures all media and signs contracts with all the publishers. The media planning team makes sure the dollars are correct in agency financial systems. Mediahub works with a consumer insights company to develop a survey that will measure how effective this campaign is at raising awareness and encouraging trial and purchase.
Chipotle delivers the final creative in August and everything is trafficked. The campaign launches on September 6 and all partners have confirmed they are live. All OOH posters, billboards, etc. have been posted, and TV, digital, social ads are running. The survey is live.
Two days later, the media planning team sees that Taco Bell has announced barbecue chicken as a new offering. They work with the digital team to make sure their Chipotle digital and social ads are targeting people who have recently seen a Taco Bell ad and send an email to the client to notify them.
When the campaign is over, Mediahub receives the survey results. The media planning team works with the digital and social teams to write a post report and delivers it to the client in November 2021. Chipotle compares the results with their sales data. Millions of people heard about and/or tried the smoke brisket and sentiment on social media is overwhelmingly positive and Chipotle decides to bring it back as a permanent menu option in 2022 and they brief Mediahub for a Smoked Brisket Is Back campaign to launch in Q2.
MY JOURNEY TO MEDIA PLANNING
No one grows up dreaming of working in media planning, and no one that I knew in college had the goal of working in media planning. I received a Bachelor’s degree in Public Relations and Advertising from Chapman University, but even that program only had one class devoted to media planning and buying, which was an optional elective. I didn’t take it, and you don’t need to major in business/advertising/marketing to work in media planning. While an advertising background can help, you pretty much learn everything on the job, and I have plenty of co-workers with political science and STEM degrees.
My internship experience included social media, event partnerships, and public relations. I thought I wanted to do social media for movie studios, and I absolutely would if I had gotten any job offers for that, but I didn’t. In February 2019, I ended up applying for an entry-level “communications design” role at a global media planning and buying agency called Initiative. I thought the position would involve some sort of graphic design, but it turns out that communications design was their fancy term for media planning.
After I applied on their website, I was reached out to by a recruiter to take a 25-minute online math test, then I had a screener call with the recruiter. After that, I was invited to the office for speed dating-type interviews where I did six 20-minute interviews with different teams. The next day, a recruiter called to offer me a position. The whole process took about a month.
ABOUT MY ADVERTISING AGENCY
There are three Initiative offices in the US: Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. As of publishing, the LA office handles the media buying and planning for several companies like Amazon, T-Mobile, and Nintendo.
The only account I work on is Amazon, and my team of 200-ish people make up an Amazon-focused agency within Initiative called Rufus, named after a corgi that was one of Amazon’s first office dogs. Rufus works on several different Amazon lines of business from Alexa to Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Web Services, and IMDb.com.
Sometimes companies work with several agencies for their media needs, but Initiative/Rufus is Amazon’s global media agency of record (AOR), so Rufus US takes care of most of Amazon’s US media planning and buying, Rufus UK handles most of Amazon’s UK media planning and buying, etc. So if you see an ad for Amazon, my agency most likely had something to do with it.
I hope this post has been helpful! If you have any questions on media planning or are interested in applying/learning more about Initiative (we’re always hiring!), feel free to email me or reach out on LinkedIn!
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