subject: Essentials In Internet Media Planning [print this page] Just like physical advertising needs constant planning and strategic inputs to ensure success, your internet marketing strategy must also be designed on the basis of certain logic which acts as the driving force to its success. Depending on your budgets, target audience profile and creative requirements advertisers and marketing professionals help design a relevant media plan which decides where your communication strategies will be placed for maximum exposure and results.
Online advertising is more than just Banners
The dynamic nature of internet based advertising opens doors to new, innovative and interactive options in communication which can custom developed for targeted advertising from a geographic and behavioral perspective. Typically, online media buying and planning demands more expertise because of the ever increasing opportunities as well as the complexities herewith. A major difference between traditional and online media planning is the need of development of a media plan before the development of the creative communications because of the lack of standards and consistencies in advertising opportunities online.
The Media Buying and Planning Process
1. Like every other creative process, the online media buying and planning process begins with gaining clarity on the advertising objectives. It is important to get complete understanding on what this exercise is trying to achieve and if there are any specific restrictions that need to be imposed in lieu of the campaign. The client can possibly share some supporting information and sample ads to further elaborate what it is that they want exactly.
2. Based on the decisions made in the first step, the media planning team will sit down to chart out possible media buying concepts which will form the basis of the media research exercise. One receiving client approval on the approach, a comprehensive media research is conducted to identify the media platforms which offer the most potential.
3. Based on the findings of the online media research exercise, the internet media planners will commence negotiating rates with owners of these platforms to strike cost-effective deals on social networking websites, search engines, and other portals which will boost our communication strategy.
4. After completing the negotiations, a comprehensive media plan is presented to the clients with information regarding the website, its audience, advertising opportunities, impressions purchased and predicted traffic.
5. The media planning exercise now moves on the execution phase, where the planners will secure purchases for the clients and provide an ad specification sheet to the creative team who will be responsible to design the communications based on the design requirements of each media space bought.
6. Once the creatives are finalized, media planners set up a tracking URL to track traffic and facilitate optimization of the campaign.
Over a period of time, the media planners provide clients with detailed information on the success of the ad campaign and also make recommendations towards making strategic changes to enhance internet response to your brand and communication strategy.
