Ejura Audu – PAU/SMC/FT3/100016

Advert Planning and Audience Analysis

1. Identify at least two differences between traditional media planning and modern
planning.

Media Planning is defined as the process of selecting Media time and space to
disseminate advertising messages in order to accomplish marketing objectives.

Traditional Media Planning refers to media planning that uses traditional media of TV,
Radio, billboards magazines, fliers etc.

Modern Media Planning

2. “Media objectives usually consist of two key components.” Identify and discuss in not
more than one paragraph.

Media Objectives usually consist of two key components target audience and
communication goals.

Target Audience goal defines the people whom the media plan attempts to influence
through various forms of brand contact (Brand contact is any planned or unplanned form
of exposure to and interaction with a product or service).Communication goal defines
how many of the audience the campaign intends to reach

3. The target audience is often described in terms of demographics and psychographics.

Discuss in no more than one paragraph.

Target audiences are heterogeneous in nature and should be categorized to fit the company’s
marketing and advertising objectives. A marketer may select a target audience based on his
analysis of the market situation, having identified the potential avenues for boosting sales
increase, but the individuals in his target audience, apart from being in different demographic
states (married, single, urban dwellers, rural dwellers, middle income, lower income, etc.),
are also in different psychographic states (preferences, behaviors, beliefs, etc.). This makes it
necessary for Psychographics is a generic term for consumers’ personality traits, beliefs and
attitudes, personal interests and shopping orientation. For instance if a target audience of
females between the ages of 18 and 25 are 5 million, they will have various individual
differences, meaning; a number could be married, single, divorced, single mothers etc., at the
same time, have different traits, behaviors, beliefs and shopping patterns.

4. Explain briefly what is meant by “allocating the adspend by geography” when a company
sells nationally media planners must allocate advertising by geography. This means
advertising either nationally or region by region on the bases of geographic concentration
of sales. There are two ways of assessing geographic concentration of sales. BDI and
CDI. BDI stands for Brand Development Index and it measures the concentration of sales
of the company’s brand in that region. While CDI stands for Category Development
Index and it measures the concentration of sales of the product category (across all
brands) in that region.

Media planners use BDI to measure a brand’s performance in a given market in

comparison with its average markets where the brand is sold.

5. How important is the term when to advertise in media planning. Philip Jones realized that
there is a particular exposure that generates the highest proportion of sales. Erwin Ephron
further developed and named the concept ‘recency planning’. This is based on the fact
that advertising is most effective if it is timed to when a consumer is in the market to buy
the product or service. Recency planning therefore suggests that one exposure within a
purchase cycle should be set as close to the actual purchase moment as possible as this
has the potential of affecting buying decisions most. For instance, back to school
materials advertisements are most effective when schools are about to resume, after
schools resume, the effect the advertisements have over buying decisions would have
reduced significantly. This explains the ‘when to advertise’ in media planning.

6. Coverage, Reach and Frequency are terms frequently used in media planning. Briefly
explain what each term stands for. Coverage refers to the number of copies a magazine or
newspaper has in circulation or the number of households tuning into a given television
 or radio channel. Reach is referred to as the number of people exposed to a media
material or content. It is expressed in terms of percentages (without the percentage sign)
and it measures the accumulation of audience over time since the number of people
exposed to media content increases over time. Frequency is a measure of repetition of
exposure of media content to an audience and it is expressed as gross rating points
divided by reach

7. What makes word-of-mouth advertising special? give at least three reasons

Word-of-mouth is an unplanned form of brand contact, unplanned because, advertisers

normally do not plan for word of mouth. It is special because:

1. Most word of mouth brand contacts occur through peoples’ circle of influence; i.e.,
friends, family and associates and this has the potential to influence buying decisions
most. If my aunt advertises a product to me by word of mouth, I am most likely to
buy because she is in my circle of influence and I trust her. They are more influential
as they raise little or no suspicion in the mind of the buyer.

2. Word of mouth is usually face to face and therefore interactive; this gives the buyer
the opportunity to interact with the seller or the sellers’ agent and adds some form of
attachment to the product as. Also, the seller or producer gets the opportunity to
receive direct feedback from the consumer.

8. The expression media objectives, media strategy and media tactics are key expressions

in media planning. What is the meaning of each

• Media objectives are specific goals set in the light of marketing and advertising
objectives. For instance, Etisalat sets an NGN 2bn (two billion Naira) media budget
to reach young and upwardly mobile Nigerians through the media. This is a Media
objective.

• Media strategy refers to ways or modalities designed to implement media

objectives. In the example above, Etisalat could further propose to place their
products in areas and regions where those groups of Nigerians are found, e.g. Malls,
corner shops located in urbanized neighborhoods in the major cities and towns of
Nigeria.

• Media tactics are the individual activities designed to realize media strategy, the
adverts, the sweepstakes, sales promotion etc., all targeted at increasing the number of
young and upwardly mobile Nigerians’ subscription with Etisalat, following the
example cited above. It is also interesting to note that setting media objectives and
creating media strategy are primary tasks of media planners while creating media
tactics are primary tasks carried out by media buyers.
9. Continuity, flight and pulse are scheduling types in media planning. Define each.

• Continuity scheduling spreads media spending evenly across the months. This
means that if the media spending is NGN 24million (twenty four million Naira), then,
each month would get an NGN 2million (two million Naira) media spending
allocation. This method ensures steady brand exposure over each purchase cycle for
individual consumers; it also takes advantage of volume discounts in media buying.
Continuity scheduling usually requires large budget and may therefore not be
practical for small advertisers.

• Flight scheduling alternates advertising across months, advertising heavily in

certain months and not advertising at all in other months.

• Pulse scheduling combines the continuity and the flight scheduling methods.
Here, the brand maintains a low level of advertising across all months but spends
more in selected months. For example, British Airways will maintain low level
advertising throughout the months in Nigeria but during Easter, Sallah, Christmas and
other holidays, they increase their advertising spending.