Distinctiveness in media planning is the key to unlocking ROI

Flora Paterson

In an era of increased economic uncertainty and media fragmentation, marketing budgets are under ever more scrutiny to demonstrate a return on investment. This pressure extends to media planners, tasked with crafting campaigns that drive not only short-term sales but also contribute meaningfully to long-term brand success.

Yet according to research carried out by a team at Oxford University, using Kantar’s BrandZ campaign database, 80% of media campaigns underperform against their stated objective (Beyond the Pair, 2022). Whilst multiple factors contribute to this: trading deals influencing channel selection, the influence of biased forms of digital attribution (e.g. last-click) and a general over-reliance on heuristics and convention on the part of planners (i.e. defaulting to the same channel splits year in year out); one of the most overlooked factors in the prioritisation of reach over everything else.

THE PITFALLS OF REACH ONLY PLANNING

Reach has long been favoured by planners because of its simplicity – it is clearly communicable, measurable and scalable. In the face of increasingly complex planning inputs – from multiple measurement strategies (MMM, experiments and digital attribution) to audience nuances and varying brand objectives (e.g. awareness, brand association, retention, customer acquisition) - reach can offer a sense of clarity.

But focusing purely on reach produces media plans predominated by low CPM channels like paid social and online display, which offer the bonus of straightforward digital attribution. But too often these perceived benefits don’t hold up to scrutiny. The landmark Profit Ability 2 study in 2024 showed that whilst Paid social’s share of budget has increased significantly (+31% between 2017 and 2024), its ROI has actually declined (-5.9% over the same period) – a disconnect that suggests planners may be optimising for what is measurable or easy to justify, rather than what’s effective (Profit Ability 2, 2024). In summary, prioritising reach can reduce media planning to a simplistic exercise in buying theoretical eyeballs, rather than a distinctive strategy grounded in real world impact and effectiveness. It produces media plans that reach the vast majority of the advertiser’s target audience, but certainly no guarantee that this mass reach will translate into desired business outcomes.

THE NEED FOR DISTINCTIVE MEDIA PLANNING

Brands focus on distinctive campaigns rather than maximising reach consistently outperform peers due to the benefits that distinction brings – better pricing power, increased saliency and superior long-term growth (Kantar, 2024). Whilst creating distinction can seem like a daunting task, it doesn’t always require a radical creative overhaul or bold repositioning. Distinction can be unlocked through smart, contextual media planning. A good example of this is the recent Quaker Oats Deliciously Ugly campaign that used contextual audio placements and day parting to bring to life their humorous campaign, centered around the ugly truth that oats don’t always look visually appealing. Audio provided a perfect environment to deliver this message, cutting through with humor in a more conventional ad space. With audio currently underleveraged compared to its effectiveness potential, as shown in Beyond the Pair (Beyond the Pair, 2022) this is a clear case of media distinctiveness delivering brand value, without relying on scale.

OUR APPROACH TO DISTINCTIVENESS

Delivering distinctive campaigns is a primary focus at Cream. Our aim for each brief is to align media strategy to a brands specific business context, audience nuance and ROAS requirements. This ambition has led to the development of our Cream Channel Planning Tool. Our proprietary tool incorporates inputs from a range of industry sources – attention data from Lumen, channel coefficients from Kantar, channel cover curves from Touchpoints, as well as tailored marketing objectives, audience segmentation and sector-specific (or where possible, client-specific) ROAS data. This integrated tool enables us to calculate the optimal media mix tailored to a brand’s specific need, leading to more distinctive campaigns and stronger business success. When using the channel planner, the Cream team can adjust the input parameters and weights on the fly – the MMO computes an optimal channel plan in <2s – providing near-instant feedback on how decisions impact media recommendations.

But we also ardently believe in the limitations of algorithmic planning. Increasingly, the best media planning will come from teams that have access to these tools, but don’t surrender entirely to their logic. Marketing effectiveness and media planning are complex problems operating in the real, human world, the best results will always come from expert, human planners who can leverage tools, alongside their own experience and ingenuity.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

In an industry where more and more campaigns underperform, reassessing how we plan, and measure media is important for business growth. Reaching target audiences will always underpin media strategy, but planners need to advocate for a more nuanced approach. Spending more time considering the impact of an impression, the contextual position we put it in and how the audience will engage will lead to more distinctive campaigns which are proven to be more effective in the long term.

Flora Paterson, Client Director