Media Planning | How does it connect with Media Buying?

Are Media Planning and Media Buying the same thing? No, they are not. The first refers to a series of strategies for publishing and monitoring content. The second refers to executing the publication and launch of ads.

This is a common question when creating an online marketing campaign. Therefore, let’s define the two concepts and explain how they come together.

Media Planning

This is a strategy for selecting and scheduling advertisements. Here we identify the media where we will publish our content and the tools we will use. Its objective is to carry out a complete market study focused exclusively on the development and effectiveness of a media campaign.

Some of the steps normally included in Media Planning are:

• Definition of objectives that consider the variables of a campaign.
• Technical market analysis, where SEO tools are used.
• Media selection according to the type of service to be promoted and the audience.
• Budget allocation for a campaign.
• Implementation proposal, where we propose a publication schedule.
• Consideration of a reporting stage to evaluate a campaign.

Media Buying

It is another marketing strategy where we buy media space for our ads to appear. This is the execution stage. Here, we launch, monitor, and analyze ads. Its goal is to get the advertising space within a budget, where the ads can reach the necessary audiences on social media or search engines.

A media buying campaign always includes the following points:

• Setting up a media planning stage before launching our ads.
• Campaign adjustments that take into account budget, demographics, keywords, etc.
• Launching ads once creatives and optimizations have been made.
• Campaign monitoring for ad pricing and engagement.
• Post-evaluation once the ad has ended.

How do we integrate Media Planning and Media Buying?

At RPB Marketing we offer Media Buying as one of our services. In all our ad campaigns we prepare a media planning strategy. This helps us to define objectives correctly for each project. 

It is also useful because it has all the necessary data to reduce any margin of error. Let’s remember that, depending on the platform we use to launch ads, some variables such as CPC or ROI determine the effectiveness of a campaign. That is when Media Planning is important.