2. 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 mix. Consumer response could end up being greater or less than anticipated; product improvements could necessitate additional promotional efforts; new channels of distribution could become

3. 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 __ times will be over soon, suggesting that consumer spending will improve. What often happens is that consumer confidence in the economy remains low for longer than such optimistic forecasts, leading people to continue their restrained purchasing habits. This has a marked effect on the manufacturers of high-ticket items such as cars and electronics. It also impacts general eating habits, causing people to eat out less and stay home more.

4. 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 can later be compared with actual results on reach and frequency, to see howwell the plan actually performed, which is crucial information for preparing next year’s plan. The second type of evaluation is

5. 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 levels considerably higher? How well is your commercial message being recalled nowthat you have switched dollars out of magazines and into radio? These kinds of questions can best be answered by talking to some of the consumers you were trying to reach.

6. 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 make these kinds of analyses simple and fast.

7. 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 messages on cable, with occasional ads in the magazine.

8. 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 the extra cable weight.

9. 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 Schedule One Schedule Two

10. 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. In each case, the media specialist must check that the terms

11. 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 messages were aired between midnight and 6:00 a.m., or some other inappropriate time. It is then incumbent on the station to explain what happened and, in all likelihood, offer some type of make-good, in the form of either free ads or financial compensation for the cost differences between ROS and the overnight period.

12. 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 Web. Each service provides the ratings and audience delivery of media vehicles to help you determine whether, in fact, you met the goals of your plan. Other companies can access this data also, acting as third-party vendors of the information.

13. 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 suming here that people will require several opportunities to see or hear your message before they in fact will do so.

14. 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? 5. Do you have ideas on how your media plan can be improved for next year?