•
notwasted. Oneway to achieve that is by evaluating the media plan
•
before it is executed, and then again once it is up and running.
•
It is no longer true that an annual plan is left unchanged for a
•
whole year; more and more, advertisers will make changes to at
•
least some part of the marketing plan while the campaign is running.
•
This may be in response to changes in any part of the marketing
• important; or competitive pricing strategies may require alterations • to the original, approved plan. And beyond that, economic trends • can affect almost all marketing efforts. For example, in recessionary • times, most “experts” tend to predict that the economic hard
• _ _
•
This chapter presents three of the ways that a media plan can be
•
evaluated, before and after it begins running.We have explained the
•
concepts of reach and frequency
. With today’s sophisticated computer
•
tools, syndicated data on past purchase and media consumption
•
can be analyzed to give a “best-guess” estimate of how well a
•
medium, or total plan, will reach the chosen target audience. This
• to check that your ads actually run as scheduled, a practice known • as post-buy analysis. It is up to the media specialist to make sure • that if, for some reason, the ad did not run as scheduled or was not • positioned in the agreed-on place, that some form of compensation • is given, either monetary or in time or space. Last but not least, it
• may beworthwhile spending additional dollars to research the consumer • impact of the media (and/or marketing) plan. After you doubled
• the spending levels in television, are your brand’s awareness
•
Preplan Analysis
•
The first time to evaluate the impact of the media plan is before it is
•
presented to the client. That is, in selecting the media vehicles you
•
think will best meet the advertising and marketing objectives, the
•
media specialist needs to figure out which combination of vehicles
•
will do the best job of reaching the target an acceptable number of
•
times
. Computer systems and tools are readily available to help
•
For example, let’s say you were considering two alternative
•
combinations for your media plan for Pillsbury cake mix. The first
•
combination would use monthly insertions in
Redbook
magazine,
•
along with periodic commercials in prime time on the Lifetime cable
•
television network. Another possibility would be to place
continuous
•
Here is how the two schedules might look for the year:
•
And here is how the two schedules would perform against your
•
target of women 25 to 54:
•
So even though you are using far more cable in Schedule Two,
•
the impact on the overall reach is actually less than if you used more
•
magazine advertising, as in Schedule One. In terms of frequency,
•
however, Schedule Two clearly delivers more messages, thanks to
•
Postbuy Analysis
•
What the media specialist must find out once the plan is running is
•
whether the ads ran as scheduled, and how well the plan actually
•
delivered
. For the first part, determining that the ads did in fact
•
run as scheduled, you can turn to various sources, depending on
•
the medium. For newspapers, there are tear sheets, which are provided
•
by commercial services, to showyou examples of the actual
•
ad in the newspaper. Magazines will usually provide copies of the
•
issues in which your ad appears. For television and radio, you
• 12 insertions in “Redbook” 4 insertions in “Redbook” • (53 GRPs) (18 GRPs)
• 400 GRPs in Lifetime 1,000 GRPs in Lifetime • Schedule One Schedule Two
• Total GRPs 453 1,018 • Reach 1+ 50.7% 50.3% • Reach 3+ 54.2% 52.5% • Frequency 8.4 18.8
• should receive affidavits confirming when your spot aired. With
• the Internet, you can easily go online to make sure your ad appears, • or use a third-party service to verify its location and rotation.
• of the contract were adhered to. If you requested being in the food • section of the paper, or the first third of the magazine, is that
• where your ad was placed?
• For broadcast media, the task is usually more complicated because • program schedules are far more prone to being changed. You might • have arranged for your radio spot to air between 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 • p.m., only to find that it came on at 5:30 p.m. or 8:20 p.m. Or, you • could have bought a rotation of spots (ROS, or run of schedule), which
• in theory means that your spots will run equitably in all dayparts. In analyzing • the affidavits you might discover that more than half of the
• In larger agencies or organizations, this postanalysis checking is
• typically done by the media buyers or business service department. • It is more of an accounting than a media function, but ultimately, • the media specialist should know what happened, and why.
• Later on, additional information becomes available to showhow • your ad schedule delivered. This is in the form of syndicated data,
• such as Nielsen for television, Arbitron for radio, Mediamark Research, • Inc. (MRI), for print media, and Nielsen Netratings for the
• The kinds of questions the data can help you answer include
• what percentage of the target was reached by the media (and vehicles) • that you used (reach), and how often, on average, was the target
• exposed to them? It isworth emphasizing again that these terms • refer only to media exposure, and not to actual exposure to the ads • themselves. They should therefore be thought of as opportunities to • see your message. Many advertisers will discount, or “weight,” the • exposure levels to account for this distinction, assuming, for example, • that only half of the people reached by the media vehicle will
• actually see the ad. Or they may only look at the proportion of the • target that is exposed a certain number of times (effective reach), as-• _ _ 9. EVALUATING THE MEDIA PLAN
• Checklist—Evaluating the Media Plan
• 1. Have you performed reach and frequency analyses of the media • plan before presenting it to the client?
• 2. Have you contacted clipping services or the print media themselves • to determine that your ads ran as scheduled?
• 3. Are the postbuys for electronic media available to ensure that • your ads ran as scheduled?
• 4. Do you have access to syndicated data such as Nielsen, • Arbitron, MRI, and Netratings, for analysis of how your media • vehicles actually performed against your target?
