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Media Planning Made Tougher

Submitted by Mitch Seigel on Tues, 9/22/2015

Life was much easier when planning media during the Mad Men era. Three TV networks, strong newspapers across the country, much more limited radio, yellow pages in every city and possibly local print media, direct mail, and that was about it. When I got into the business about fifteen years later, all of the above was still in play, along with several more TV networks and radio stations, cable was born, and away we went. Fast forward to today, there have been several significant changes in the consumer’s behavior toward information. Technology allows for the consumer to determine what information they want, how they will receive it, and when they want to receive it. This is where media planning gets tricky!

It will always be important to know your own customer, and where and when they interact with media. With the convergence of delaying or accelerating when you receive information, with the new technology and sources of information, planning media has become tougher than ever before.

What this means to the media planner is that they need to be on top of all aspects of media, both traditional and new, to be able to do the best job in planning and buying media for the company. While yellow pages and daily newspapers seem to be dying breeds, so much more media has come to the forefront in the last twenty years. This allows the customer to be targeted with more clarity, while creating much more detailed work for the media planner, than ever before!

What are your challenges when it comes to planning media? I look forward to hearing your comments. Until next time…