It is important to recognize that consumers have specialized needs that media can meet, such as wanting to know more about certain kinds of products and brands. At times, audiences browse a print medium, stopping to look at or read any advertisements that seem interesting. At other times, they deliberately search a medium looking for a certain kind of product. Print media, therefore, tend to serve as catalogs for readers. Broadcast media audiences also pay attention to many commercials, but not in the same way as print audiences.
Advertisers often want to reach both mass and specialized audiences and find it is more expensive to buy media that reach specialized audiences. However, no matter which kind of audience advertisers want to reach, it is imperative that someone plan the purchase of media as far ahead of publishing or broadcast dates as possible. Advertisers cannot afford to buy media impulsively or capriciously. Therefore, the planning function is a major operation in advertising agencies and at client companies. Too much money is involved for advertisers to fail to plan. This book concentrates on the planning function.
In discussion of this subject, two words are sometimes used as if they meant the same thing; medium (the plural is media) and vehicle. They are exactly the same. A medium refers to a class of carriers such as television, newspapers, or magazines. In other words, a medium is a group of carriers that have similar characteristics. A vehicle is an individual carrier within a medium. The Chicago Tribune is a vehicle within the newspaper medium. "60 Minutes" is a vehicle within the television medium. Martha Stewart Living and People are vehicles within the magazines medium.
Media Planning
The process of media planning consist of the series of decisions made to answer the question, "What are the best means of delivering advertisements to prospective purchasers of my brand or service?" This definition is rather general, but it provides a broad picture of what media planning is all about.
Within this broad context, a media planner attempts to answer specific questions, such as the following:
1. How many prospects (For purchasing a given brand of product) do I need to reach?
2. In which medium (or media) should I place ads?
3. How many times a month should prospects see each ad?
4. In which months should ads appear?
5. Where should the ads appear? In which markets and regions?
6. How much money should be spent in each medium?
When all questions have been asked and decision made, the recommendations and rationales are organized into a written document called a media plan. The plan, when approved by the advertiser, becomes the blueprint for the selection and use of media. Once the advertiser has approved the plan, it also serves as a guide for actually purchasing the media.
It would be a mistake, however, to think of media planning as nothing more than finding answers to a list of questions about media. Such a view is too narrow to provide the necessary perspective. Rather, it is better to assume that each question represent certain kinds of problems that need to be solved. Some problems are relatively simple, such as, "On which day of the week should television commercials be shown?" Other problems are much more difficult, such as, "In which media will ads more effect the prospect's buying behavior to result in sales?"
Media planning should be thought of as a process or a series of decisions that provides the best possible answers to a set of problems. A planner might find that a solution to a given problem does not guarantee it will work when other factors are considered. Finding the best solutions to a set of problems represents the main task of planners, and this is what makes media planning so intellectually challenging.
Changing Face of Media Planning
Some marketers believe the traditional media forms, such as television, newspapers, magazines, and radio, are less effective in producing sales now than in the past, because markets are changing and media must reach the product's best prospects much more selectively. Traditional media are challenging because they are mass media in an era where culture is changing--the masses are breaking up into a smaller segments. Therefore, advertisers must define markets much more precisely than they were defined in the past.
During the introduction of a new product, it is sometime easy to see that mass advertising is the way to communicate with large or small markets, as consumers flock to buy new brands that they first encountered through advertising. But today's consumers want more information about both new and established products that can be communicated with the traditional media. Because consumers expects to get this information from the Internet, marketing plans must consider how to use this new medium to build on the awareness created with mass advertising.
Traditionally, media planning has asked questions revolving around how media can reach the right persons. The "right" persons came from broadly aggregated data, such as "women aged 18-49," or "men aged 25-54." But these broad demographic characterizations obscure an almost unlimited array of life-styles, interest, and even media habits that are relevant to marketers if they want to deliver advertising to their best prospects. Today's media planning requires planner to identify smaller groups of product users and the media that best reach them. Furthermore, a society changes, media will have to be able to alert marketers that a target group's size and composition might have changed, so marketers can reach these smaller groups with little waste.
Technology has made it economical to deliver program content that appeals to smaller and smaller groups of people. Audience fragmentation has become the dominant characteristic of media, especially television, in the early years of the '21st' century. Today the average home can receive 75 television channels, up from 41 channels in 1995. Cable television programs, delivered either by wire or by satellite, can now be seen in 82 percent of 'U.S.' households with TVs. This proliferation of viewing chooses has significantly eroded the audience of the traditional broadcast networks, but total hours of viewing have remained essentially constant.
The result is a splintering of the audience among channels whose content may or may not be relevant to advertiser. For example, marketers of vacation destinations will certainly advertise on the Travel Channel, but the majority of their customers never watch it. The planner's challenge is to deliver the advertising to these potential customers in other, less obvious and less targeted, but much more popular venues.
The growth of digital and interactive television is unlikely to change this picture substantially. The shape of the future can be seen today. If the average viewer can choose among 75 channels, the addition of 10 to 20 more channels is unlikely to change behavior. Digital television brings a clearer picture and the opportunity to buy pay-per-view movies, pay channels, and special events, but since these media do not accept advertising, there are no implications for consumer product marketers. Although the internet has brought interactive salesmanship to more than half of the nation's homes, adding this capability to television is also unlikely to change behavior.
However, one technological development on the horizon has the potential to dramatically alter the media landscape. Personal video recorders (PVRs) allow viewers to create their own virtual television network by recording only the programs that interest them, regardless of the channel on which they appear. The further ability to skip through commercials threatens to undermine the economic base of the medium or, alternatively, to drive the best talent to pay services. In late-2001, penetration of PVRs, was an insignificant 0.5 percent 'U.S.' households, and it remains to be seen whether this technology will grow to the point of affecting television advertising.
Changing Role of Media Planners
As a result of technological advances and audience fragmentation, the role of media planners has changed in advertising agencies. Today, media planning ranks in importance with marketing and creative planning, but in the early days of advertising agencies operations, media planning consisted of simple, clerical tasks. Fewer media were available in those days, and little research on media audiences had been done to guide planners in decision making.
Planning today is executive function because it has become so much more complex and important than it was years ago. Today's planners must have a greater knowledge base from which to formulate media plans. The planners not only must know more about marketing, research, and advertising than did their predecessors. Most important, planners are called upon not only to make decisions, but also to defend those decisions as the best that could be made after considering many alternatives.
What brought about this change? Foremost was the rise of the marketing concept, which changed media planning from an isolated activity to one closely related to marketing planning. In fact, one way to evaluate a media plan is to measure how effectively it helps to attain marketing objectives. Another cause of the change was the development of new and more research data available to help planners choose from among myriad alternatives.
The change is also due to the universal availability of the Internet and low-cost, high-speed computers that make routine the physical acquisition and manipulation of vast amounts of data. The computer is the workbench of planners use to compare and cost out media alternatives. And finally it is used to develop the presentation that will ultimately sell the plan to the client.
Media planning, then, is not so much a matter of being able to answer such relatively simple questions as where to place advertisements or how many advertisements to run each week. It is a matter of proving that optimal decisions were made under a given set of marketing circumstances. Advertisers demand such explanations, and media planners must be able to provide them. Today's media planners have changed as requirements for planning have changed. The new planner must have breadth of knowledge, marketing understanding, research familiarity, computer literacy, creative planning awareness, and media acumen to do the job competently. It is within the framework that media planning now takes place.
Classes of Media
Media are often separated into different classes and categories. Some important classifications include traditional mass media, nontraditional media, and specialized media. This section distinguishes these classifications and describes types of each.
Traditional Mass media
Mass media such as newspapers, magazines, radio, and television are especially well suited for delivering advertisements---as well as news, entertainment, and educational content---to a widespread general (or mass) audience. Mass media are valuable to advertisers because they offer special advantages :
1. Such media are able to deliver large audiences at relatively low costs.
2. They can deliver advertisements to special kinds of audiences who are attracted to each medium's editorial or programming.
3. They tend to develop strong loyalties among audiences who return to their favorite medium with a high degree of regularity.
If planner wants to reach a special kind of audience repeatedly within a certain time period, some media vehicles will be better suited for this purpose than others. Recent research suggests, for example, that certain types of broadcast programs create higher degrees of viewer interest than other program types, thus offering better environments for commercials.
Like other media, however, mass media have limitations in delivering advertising messages. The most serious is that mass media audiences do not see, hear, or read a medium solely because of the advertising content. Media also vary in their ability to expose both editorial and advertising material.
Newspaper offer their readers news, entertainment, information, and catalog values. A newspaper generally has excellent readership of local news, editorial, and advertising material, serving as a buying guide for readers who are looking for many different kinds of products. People often check newspaper ads immediately before their regular food-shopping day to find the best grocery bargains. For frequently purchased products, where prices are prominently displayed, newspaper can be a very effective selling medium.
Magazines, on the other hand, are much different in their ability to expose ads. Some, such as fashion, home, and special-interest publications, are bought as much for their advertising as for their editorial matter. General-interest publications, such as newsweeklies and personality and sport magazines, appeal to readers who are looking for interesting articles and stories, rather than product information.
Consumers are least likely to turn broadcast media, such as radio and television, for the advertisements alone. Broadcast commercials have an intrusive character, breaking into the play or action of a program and compelling some attention to the advertising message. Whether any given viewer will or will not watch a particular commercial depends on more ingenuity and value of the message than its appearance on an interesting program.
The internet is primarily an information-delivering medium. People go to the site that contains the information they looking for, whether that is weather, sports, news, airline schedules, or the fact sheet on a late-model automobile. This makes the Internet a highly efficient medium for delivering sales information to consumer who are planning to buy, as well as offering the ability to place an order directly online.
Obviously, the effectiveness of the advertisement to communicate affects its impact on the consumer and the number of consumers who will read, see, or hear it. This is true regardless of which medium is used.
Nontraditional Media
Traditional mass media all engage in one-way communication---from the source to the viewer, listener, or reader. Almost any other innovative way of delivering ad messages to consumers is considered to a nontraditional medium. These media disseminate advertising messages through means not usually called media. For example, the combination of magazines and sales promotion is sometimes called nontraditional media, even though sales promotion has not historically been categorized as a medium. Similarly, Internet advertising, though certainly not traditional, is generally viewed in its own category as a new electronic medium.
Nontraditional media can fill an advertiser's need to find alternative ways of reaching customers in venues where advertising will stand out from the advertiser's competition. They also satisfy the need for additional revenue from companies that have exposure to the public and feel that their unique location offers an opportunity to sell advertising. The most commonly used nontraditional media include television screens in airport waiting areas and doctors' offices, and poster in health clubs, on golf courses, and at public events. placement of advertising in other locations, such as the walls of public restroom, the floor of grocery stores, and overhead luggage bins of commercials airlines, may be driven more by a proprietor's desire for additional income than by the advertiser's need for an alternative venue.
Many media planners recommend that their clients use nontraditional media, but there have been some problems in determining what advertiser receives for the money. The problems are caused by not having any continuing measurements in audience sizes delivered by this less established media. In addition, what information does exist is typically provided by the media themselves, raising questions about its accuracy and objectivity. In most instances, planners have to "guesstimate" the sizes of audiences. Without independent measurements, it is difficult to calculate a cost per thousand exposures that represents the value of the money spent for advertising related to the number of audience members delivered.
Specialized Media
Special-interest consumer magazines appeal to specific reader interest such as skiing, money management, photography or antiques. These magazines are read as much for their advertising as they are for their editorial content. Therefore, these magazines often attract readers who purchase the magazine not only for the editorial material, but also for information on the kinds of products advertised. Such media often referred to as niche media because of their special-interest focus.
A large category of media also exist to meet the specialized needs of industrial manufacturers, service companies, wholesalers, retailers, and professional workers such as physicians, attorneys, and teachers. These media take the form of publications that contain editorial matter as well as advertising pertaining to the specialized market, but they also include films, trade shows, convention exhibits, and cassette tapes. These magazines are often provided free to readers, paid for entirely for advertisers who want to reach a specialized audience. Business-to-business advertisers are typically the advertisers most interested in these publications.
Other specialized media exist exclusively for delivering advertising messages. They carry no editorial matter and are nor sought after by readers as are other forms of media. Such advertising-oriented media include handbills, direct mail, outdoor billboards, car cards that appear on buses or trucks, and free-standing inserts (FSIs) in newspapers.
Another specialized medium is the catalog. Although consumers often request catalogs, they look at catalogs less frequently than mass media. At the same time, many advertisers find catalogs, productive because consumers use them as shopping guides. One form of catalog is the telephone book, which carries advertising but also carries editorial matter---telephone numbers. Plumbers, for example, might justifiably use telephone book advertising exclusively, because plumbers are not usually called until emergency arises. On such occasions, the consumers will search ads in the Yellow Pages to find a plumber but probably will not notice such ads at any other time. (Rizki Ramadhani/Retype from Advertising Media Planning book)
