Developing media plans can be incredibly difficult because they often leverage a plethora of tactics that help to accomplish a variety of objectives, and in some cases, they can have very complex targeting or tracking strategies. But even the most strategic and well-thought-out media plans can face relatively simple and straightforward issues that can become significant setbacks. That is why the Integrated Media & Data team at Vladimir Jones developed a Media Plan Checklist—a tool that proactively addresses any potential pitfalls or curveballs before they become more serious and impactful. Below are a few examples from VJ’s Media Plan Checklist of things to look out for:
Test Campaign and Ad Setup Before Presenting Your Media Plan
The last thing you want to do is present a media plan and strategy to a client only to discover later that some of the components are not actually feasible. This can lead to clients wondering if you truly vetted the items in the media plan, and can result in you having to scramble to make last-minute pivots and adjustments. Here are some of the things you can set up and test proactively:
- Test Campaign Setup - You can create campaign shells/drafts in most ad platforms to test whether or not your proposed campaign setup is possible. Some ad platforms are not capable of targeting all audiences—or all geographies—so testing your campaign setup before presenting to the client is a great way to avoid any future curveballs.
- Test Creative/Ad Setup - If you already have access to the creative you will be using in the media plan, it never hurts to test this creative in ad platforms to ensure that it doesn’t get flagged or rejected for violating any policies. Even creative units that “seem” fine can sometimes be mistakenly flagged by ad platforms, so proactively testing that creative can allow you to get a head start on any creative review conversations with platform support teams.
- Test Search Ad Setup - Even ads that don’t rely on image or video creative, such as text-based Search ads, can still have components that can get flagged and rejected. For example, including a trademarked term in your Search ad may result in that ad being rejected and you being forced to go through the process of submitting an appeal. Testing your Search ads ahead of time can help you identify any trademark-related issues, expedite the appeals process, and reduce the number of surprises that could be sprung on the client after media plan launch.
Test Targeting Strategies
For complex media plans that target a variety of geographies and/or audiences, or for media plans for clients in regulated industries (banking, health care, etc.) that have a variety of regulatory restrictions, it’s imperative that you test these audiences and targeting approaches to avoid running into any issues after launching. Here are a few things to consider or test proactively:
- Targeting Users in Europe - The European Union has robust laws and policies in place that protect user privacy and the security of personal data, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). If you’re going to be targeting users in European markets, these laws limit the amount of data you have access to—in particular, website activity data through Google Analytics. In your media plan, it may be important to remove any estimated website results from European audiences or to temper expectations about the ability to see the full gamut of data from these audiences.
- Regulated Industries - If you’re going to be setting up campaigns for a client in a regulated industry—such as banking or health care—it’s important to know that you may not have the ability to leverage certain targeting features such as age, gender, ZIP code, or lookalike/similar audiences. Proactively setting up the campaign draft and indicating that the campaign will be for a “special ad category” can help you discover the targeting limitations that would otherwise only become apparent if you’re setting up the campaign after getting client approval. You absolutely want to avoid a situation in which you have a certain targeting strategy and then discover that you need to revamp it shortly after the client approves the media plan (which you would also need to rethink).
Think Critically About Setup Structure
The media plan and strategy are very important, but if you are also going to be reporting results to the client, it will be crucial to ensure that the plan and campaigns are set up in such a way that allows you to have effective reporting. Does the client want to see results on a market-by-market level? Or to see how different audiences performed? If you address these questions early on, you’ll be able to set up your campaigns in a way that allows you to answer them when reporting occurs. Here are a few things to consider:
- Results by Market/Geo - Many clients will want to see how each market is performing within the media plan. Did one market lead to stronger performance than another? How much spend occurred in one market compared to another? It’s crucial to understand that not all ad platforms can break down results/conversions to the market level due to privacy restrictions (Meta), so if you want to compare the number of purchases between markets, you may want to set up unique campaigns or ad groups for each market.
- Results by Audience - Similar to market-level reporting, some ad platforms require that audiences be set up in separate campaigns or ad groups in order to see the performance of each audience. Additionally, if you are interested in how different audiences performed on the website, you’ll have to ensure that the UTM-tagging strategy is tailored to each of those audiences. Otherwise, they will potentially pull through into analytics as a single audience.
- Results by Conversion Action - If a client is tracking multiple conversion actions, they will almost certainly want to see the quantity of each type of conversion they received. Although most ad platforms are capable of optimizing and tracking multiple conversion actions, some ad platforms (LinkedIn) do require that you indicate all of the conversions you want to be tracked during the campaign setup process. This means that if you skip that step, you will likely miss out on conversion reporting.
Whether you’re testing if a certain campaign setup is possible, testing to see if all your ideal audience targets can be reached, or thinking through the ideal campaign setup that will result in the correct level of reporting data being available, proactively addressing these items will help you avoid any potential pitfalls and curveballs after you launch your media efforts—and any tough conversations with your client.
