Media planners determine the best advertising placements for brands to reach their target market. They assess demographics and programming to avoid problematic ad placement situations and consider brand image to position products in the marketplace. No special training is required, but people skills and the ability to accurately identify demographics are critical.
A media planner is an advertising professional who specializes in determining the best placements for advertisements. Media planners work with their clients to develop a media strategy that positions their brand well and reaches the appropriate target market. Some media planners work for advertising agencies, some as independent consultants, and some for companies that specialize exclusively in media planning services.
No special training is needed to become a media planner, although a college degree in advertising or a related field can be beneficial. Many media planners learn on the job, starting at low positions and gradually working their way up as they gain experience and demonstrate competence. People skills are critical to this job, as is the ability to accurately identify demographics and the ability to get to the heart of a company’s mission and products to determine how the company could be best positioned for maximum sales.
Television owners may have noticed that advertising tends to follow certain patterns. Ads for feminine hygiene products and erectile dysfunction drugs, for example, do not appear on children’s programs. Promotions for sporting events tend not to appear on soap operas, while perfume ads are rare on baseball broadcasts. This is because media planners have assessed the demographics that enjoy these types of programs and determined which types of programming would be most appropriate for the products they are marketing.
A media planner does more than just determine what types of demographics would be most interested in specific products. They also think about the specific programming that will be displayed with their ads, which may require a media planner to review scripts and media screen shots as part of their job to identify potentially problematic ad placement situations. For example, an asthma medication ad may not be well received if it runs during an hour-long medical drama featuring a patient dying of severe asthma. Likewise, an ad for a company that markets to a conservative demographic should not run during a program that presents a liberal position on an event or situation, as this might offend the demographic the company is trying to reach.
A media planner must think beyond basic demographic needs and consider brand image. While many products can be marketed generically to a large group of people, such as teenagers or middle-aged men, narrowing down to a specific demographic of interest can sometimes yield better results. Media planners think about how their brands should be positioned in the marketplace, what kind of messages they want to send with advertising, and what kind of media programming their ads would best match.
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