Who said we can’t be innovative in media plans? 

Working in media was always exciting to everyone as innovation was always at the core of advertising. Media experts used to be recognized as the driving force of innovation, but somehow in the last few years this energy has largely faded away. Agencies used to compete against each other to come up with the craziest and most advanced ideas across media, creative and partnerships. 

During and post pandemic, we observed a change in strategy with brands increasingly focused on maximizing revenue and ROAS through lower funnel media activations. 

With this change in approach, planners started to feel monotonous in their day-to-day work as clients started to avoid or deviate from big ideas that drive awareness and engagement with community and audience.

With that being said, there is still room to innovate within our media planning approach despite the focus on lower funnel. A media planner can always use their creative thinking skills to provide a new plan leveraging a test and learn framework in each new campaign. 

The innovation framework can be utilized in any of the below ways:

  1. Audience: It is a common practice to target / re-target high value audiences who will be more likely to convert online or offline. However, it is recommended to allocate at least 10% of budget to test new audience. This might be based on demographics, interest or buying behavior. With the growth of digital ecosystem and increase in 1st/ 2nd party data aggregators, we can push advanced data sets to different platforms for activations. You can target your direct competitors consumers based on their shopping behavior or apps they use on their mobiles. 
  2. Platforms: Don’t limit yourself to plan and execute campaigns on the well-known platforms which will generate transactions or allow you to buy on CPA model. By adopting a Data Driven Attribution Modelling (DDA), we started to witness the large impact of platforms used to be considered as upper funnel platforms on direct conversions. An upper funnel platform might be a video, audio or a publisher. There are no limitations on what to test and when to test. 
  3. Creative and Automation: Being present on limited number of platforms can’t stop you from using different variations of creative and ads. It is recommended to use at least 2 creative per target audience and placement in order to better understand the audience reaction towards your messaging and creative approach. In addition, start utilizing dynamic creative platforms to enable efficiency, scalability and personalization. DCO platforms unlock personalization at scale for advertisers which allows delivering the right message at the right time on the right moment and platform.The improvement in performance in terms of CPA and conversion rates we keep witnessing justifies the tech fee we need to pay to adopt any DCO approach or framework.
  4. Addressability: Audience addressability is one of the most interesting and challenging topics in markets which lacks the availability of 1st or 2nd party data. In many cases, we reach a point where we can’t make our high value audience addressable on digital platforms. This challenge must encourage you to become more innovative and use your skills to ensure reaching out to these audiences precisely. In some cases, onboarding data sets from data aggregators would be the easiest and the most obvious solution to make the audience addressable on digital platforms. However, this might not be feasible in other cases where the audience profiles are granular and complex. Therefore, we need to start exploring other options beyond audience targeting. The approach might be all about choosing the right placement instead of profiles. For example: audience X could be targeted on long form content ad placement while audience Y could be targeted on vertical short form content formats. In order to avoid duplication across the different targeting sets, programmatic DSPs and social platforms allow advertisers to cap the frequency on campaign level which helps to reduce the risk of reaching the same audience across all other placements by at least 50%.
  5. New Formats: Always try to integrate a new media format in your media plan. This could be an AR / VR placement on your regular social platforms. Another opportunity might be enabling AI optimization features on mid / lower funnel platforms. In addition, we have started to witness an increase in audience inventory in our region along with new formats on music and audio apps. You are now able to drive full funnel metrics by adopting an audio first strategic approach. Finally, gaming is the never-ending trend of innovation. There is always a room to create engaging ads and experience within the gaming ecosystem be it inside the game or overlayed on top of your gaming experience. 


Conclusion

Media planning will always be an exciting job where it is fueled with innovation and creative thinking. Innovative media plans drive efficiencies, effectiveness and for sure aligned with the overall marketing objectives for any brand or advertiser. 

In fact, innovation within media planning is essential today to differentiate ourselves versus other brands. Audiences are not interacting anymore with ads; they engage with brands giving them an experience. 

And now, get a piece of paper and start mapping your innovation big bets for 2023!