Media planning was once employment managed by many other titles on television and advertising agencies. Through the years, however, advertising and media use is becoming more difficult and media planning has turned into a specialist position on its own. Media buyers in small agencies might be likely to manage from rate cards and advertising contract negotiations to picking media formats and supplying important market information. Bigger agencies, however, can make use of media planners to get the best media platforms for companies to attain their advertising and media objectives, in addition to continue-to-date with market trends and developments.

Within this new separation of tasks, media buyers could be distinguished from media planners by their reliance upon prices information (rate cards) and contractual terms, while planners have been in the business of developing media strategies that exploit appropriate formats. There’s some overlap for the reason that both need information on the right track audiences to obtain the maximum exposure for his or her clients.

Based on Entrepreneur.com, media plans consist of three components:

• Defining the marketing problem.

• Converting the marketing needs into realistic media objectives.

• Developing appropriate media strategies.

A (very) comprehensive article on Admedia.org states that media planning is composed of four components:

• Setting media objectives that support and therefore are consistent with advertising and marketing objectives.

• Creating a media technique to meet individuals objectives.

• Developing a step-by-step tactic to implement the process.

• Develop evaluation methods to look for the effectiveness from the plan.

Media buyers are worried mainly with advertising costs. They appear at such things as rate cards to find out ways to get the most cost effective deals for his or her clients in line with the structure supplied by planners.

The very best advertising solutions are determined when media buyers and planners interact to build up strategies that consider location, timing and media formats and balance all of them with costs and budgets. Together they are able to weigh the effectiveness of various media formats, devise strategies which include a suitable mixture of stated formats and see the best way to allocate your budget. For instance, it may be ideal for any relatively small business to invest 50% of their advertising budget on local newspapers, 20% on local radio, 15% online and yet another 15% on direct marketing.

Bigger companies, especially individuals which are national, may fare better to invest 40% of the budget on television, 20% online, 15% on radio, 15% on print and 10% on direct marketing.

Basing advertising decisions purely on census and rate cards is really a factor of history. Now developing and applying well considered advertising and media campaigns is nearly a science (although a not entirely accurate one) with increased variables and things to consider than a single would think.