Overview
Media plans are used to determine the total budget by tactic and channel
They are built with a concentrated effort of surrounding the target audience
The basis of a plan is multiple channel exposures (frequency)
This strategy is designed to maximize incrementality
The funnel stages are broken down in the process in order to understand the flow of customers from completely unaware, to considering, to converting
The plan is a construct to help with budget allocation, buying methods, KPIs, and creative messages, but might not always match "reality"
This type of consumer journey planning has been used for 80+ years and is consistently proven to be the most effective (even by Meta itself)
Pre-Final Plan Process
Planning team will create a media plan based on the customer data of the client
Media plan will have an overarching business objective (growth, efficiency, etc)
Plan will have a budget to hit those goals based on target reach + frequency
Once the plan is delivered to Client Services and Activation for internal review:
Collaborate on what’s possible to spend in a given channel and tactic
Understand the specific buying model and target audience by funnel
Ex: Awareness: Vegans 25-54, reach + frequency buying, video assets
Ex: Consideration: retargeted video viewers, conversion optimized
Ex: Intent: retargeted site visitors, conversion optimized
Ex: Retention: historic customers, ROAS optimized
If something is impossible (e.g. too much budget in brand search) please flag
If a tactic is incapable because of restrictions (no ability to ad sequence) flag
Once the planner, CS, and Activation teams are aligned, move forward
Client Approved Plan Process
Finalized plan gets presented to client and adjusted until final approval
Have a round of discussion with the planner and all teams to align on next steps
Structure campaigns in accordance with the plan and any experiments (MMTs etc)
Once activated, optimize your campaigns toward the business goal of the tactic
In-platform performance may look worse than it usually does, this is okay as long as business performance is trending toward its holistic goals (e.g. total revenue)
If your tactic is unable to spend to the levels that the plan suggests, please flag immediately to the AD / AM and work with them to reallocate or change tactics
Critical note:
Don’t shift budgets or optimizations toward a counterproductive goal (e.g. shifting budget into retention when your tactic’s goal is customer acquisition). This is absolutely essential as the impact of the total plan depends on each tactic doing its specific job within the consumer journey.
FAQs
Specific targeting of interests and demographics is dead.
Some channels have better audience targeting data than others, while some algorithms are better at "finding" people. Work with the planner to come to an appropriate compromise of how to target and optimize your campaign rather than just disregarding the structure, as the structure is very important.
Broad targeting + auto optimization CAN BE very effective, but it doesn't work for every brand and heavily relies on solid creative in order for an algorithm to get enough signals. More "visual" mediums (such as CTV, YouTube) perform best with a specifically catered audience in order to control frequency.
Why wouldn't I always optimize everything to conversions?
Some strategies work well with this approach, but not all (or arguably, most). Optimizing toward conversions has no way for the algorithm to determine if someone already decided to buy, or if they're someone who is just a good candidate to buy. This causes over-saturation of our media against the same "high intent" audiences, rather than bringing in net new audiences and "converting" them to customers. In other words, it's more effective this way.
When you buy against something other than a conversion, you're telling the algorithm to relax a bit and let the creative do its thing. This reduces CPMs (and therefore costs) which is an important factor in efficient CPAs etc. We have done multiple studies at Power Digital (and elsewhere) that have shown for some channels buying against frequency, views, or just straight impressions outperform conversions.
How were these budgets determined? They make no sense.
The core principle of media planning is that we need to reach a large number of people a high number of times in order to convince them to do something. Studies over the last 80 years have shown that people are very unlikely to buy a product based on a single exposure, and we see that roughly 2x exposures per week for 4+ weeks is where people are likely to become "incremental" and a net new customer.
This is important because we want our media to actually generate new customers (and therefore, more sales) rather than just showing our ads to people who either already will buy or will never buy. The budgets are designed to do this at every stage of the funnel with the appropriate channels and audiences to ensure it works.
If there's something that's not possible given constraints, then work with the planner to reallocate those funds or develop an alternative tactic with them.
Won't doing this make my in-platform metrics look bad?
Sometimes, yes. But at the end of the day our job as growth marketers is to help the client achieve their overall BUSINESS goals. If our brand search ROAS continues to get better and better but the business is tanking overall, is that a win for us? No. Simply ensure that you're optimizing and reporting out on how your channel affects the overall business (we promise, less tactical information is often better for reporting).