Media planning: Exploration of the media decision making process in the digital environment.

Abstract

Media planning, the role of selecting the most efficient media channels through which to deliver effective marketing communications, continues to be complicated by the ongoing digitisation and proliferation of media vehicles and resulting fragmentation of target audiences. Soberman (2005) believed that this represented an opportunity for marketers to use better quality data to develop more effective media strategies, although noting that targetting remained a difficult and intensive process (pp. 428). Many authors have since confirmed that these changes have reinforced the complex, silo driven, intra-media planning environment, where channel decisions are taken in isolation via unrelated and unconnected media measurement that complicate cross-media strategy and budget allocation (Assael, 2011; Egan, 2014; Havlena, Cardarelli, & De Montigny, 2007; Schultz, Block, & Raman, 2009b; Taylor, Kennedy, McDonald, & Larguinat, 2013). This research evaluates how the underlying media selection decision making processes, such as targetting and effective frequency modelling, are changing, and whether a new planning process framework can be identified to integrate such media decisions and improve delivery and cross-media effectiveness.