Adjust Your Media Planning with Ever-Changing Consumption

I once worked for a guy who loved to say, “Change is good. We should all kiss change on the lips!”

But as a media director faced with the constant whirl of changes in the media industry, it’s not always easy to get cozy with change. Media influences our lives virtually every waking minute of each day (for those of you that sleep with your smartphone, make that 24 hours a day). This obsession with media and proliferation of media choices creates constant shifts in media consumption, both offline and online. And because people now graze through media throughout the day, the media campaigns we recommend to our clients require much more analysis. Media as a whole has evolved into an incredibly powerful entity.

Source: http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2010/08/key_trends_in_m.html

This pervasiveness may lead some planners to believe that it’s easier to reach people today than it was a decade ago — and all they need are a few good digital tactics to get the job done. On the contrary — consumers are selective, but not exclusive with the media they use. And to complicate things further, the average person also combines online and offline media, consuming more than one at any given moment.

With healthcare reform taking a front seat in news and politics these days, let’s consider news content as an example of how media has changed.  News is one of the largest segments in media today and one of the fastest changing in terms of daily consumption habits:

• People rely on more than six media sources for news. Compare this to just two sources a decade ago.
• People combine online and offline media to stay current. While people have their preferred media, they don’t necessarily discriminate between media options. Instead, people are more concerned about getting accurate information, right when they want it.
• News is portable. Long gone are the days of making time for the 10 pm news. Of the 80% of people who have a cell phone, 33% get news alerts on their handhelds.
• News has become personalized. Many people follow only specific subjects, instead of taking an unbiased review of the latest information.
• News is social. Tweets, blogs, Facebook updates… the list goes on. Consumers today want to contribute to, not just receive, current events.

The consumer is in control of what media they use and how they use it. And beyond a more granular approach to audience analysis, successful media planners are immersed in daily or weekly optimization and reporting of metrics and ROI so that we can prove we actually reached the target audience. Long gone are the days of simply placing a commercial on television or a Flash banner on an ad network and calling it a day.

Change is inevitable and strategists adjust. So go ahead and give change a kiss on the lips… or at least shake hands with it.