Media Planning

The Business Challenge

Many media plans are driven by the same exact data sources for persona identification (e.g., Comscore, Nielsen, Quantcast, Moat, AppNexus) and focus on an inventory-first approach instead of a more effective consumer-first approach. Paired with inferior targeting, such “old school” approaches to media planning block your brand from realizing the full potential of your own first-party data.

Additional challenges relevant to media planning include:

• Lack of consumer-level targeting: unwillingness to apply analytics to identify what messages resonate at a user—not channel—level
• Role of technology: inability to differentiate between various technology platforms, such as demand side platforms, in driving brand or performance objectives
• Budget allocation: lack of granular planning by audience, channel, or specific campaign
• Conversion metrics: usage of traditional attribution models, which can be imprecise, without accounting for cross-channel, cross-device behavior along the buyer journey

The Benefits of Solving It

The best media plans go beyond universal audience and media attributes and uncover hidden insights that provide brands with a competitive advantage.

We help brands improve the performance of their media plans in the following areas:

• Setting full-funnel marketing goals for both branding (awareness) and performance (conversion) channels
• Applying a rigorous tech selection process to optimize bids, frequency, and reach beyond AdTech platform defaults so you “buy smart, not more”
• Applying marketing mix modeling (MMM) to optimize budget allocation
• Applying data-driven personalization to identify best message/audience fit
• Applying analytics to go beyond attribution and identify the true conversion causality

Our Process

• DELVE will review and define goals across the whole marketing funnel (awareness and performance) in one integrated approach. We believe that branding is performance, just with a longer lookback window—and that every campaign needs to be measured against the revenue it drives to the bottom line.
• Our media planners will review your audience targeting assumptions against your ideal customer profiles and apply advanced models to assess their pLTV and conversion potential, as well as:
  • Analyze various methods for targeting your “best-fit” audiences (e.g. context, look-a-likes, geospatial signals)
  • Review and recommend a frequency and reach strategy across audiences and channels to align with your goals
  • Recommend AdTech to be used for every brand or performance channel
  • Review and recommend optimal budget, bidding, and targeting for each audience or campaign using data-driven methodologies
• At the end of this process, DELVE will present to your team a final media plan with suggestions for ongoing data-driven optimization.
• Upon request, DELVE can then help you dive into budget allocation, RoAS management and even optimize campaigns in your branding and performance channels.

Your Outcomes

• A media plan that applies data insights that your competitors cannot easily duplicate
• More effective media measurement options than traditional attribution models that often fail to capture accurate media-to-revenue causality
• A roadmap for media optimization as part of media buying and management
• Well-defined next steps for your in-house staff or external agency(ies)