Advertising Media Planning
ADV 6305, Kent Lancaster
Project 1
Accountability in Advertising Media Planning and Evaluation
The marketing and advertising press has given considerable recent attention to the importance of accountability in all aspects of marketing communications. In the face of enlarging global markets, growing competition, and the proliferation of mass and targeted media, advertising executives are increasingly being required to show measurable results for research, creative and media resources expended on behalf of products and services.
This project is designed to expose you to some key methods by which accountability can be established in the advertising media decision-making process. It builds upon the principles and methods you've already mastered as well as those described in Chapter 7 of the ADplus™ text. Furthermore, it asks you to apply them using magazine and network television data that have been derived from Marketer’s Guide to Media 1998-99. All reading, data and suggested steps for completing the assignment are available in the Advanced Concepts section of the course website.
You are to complete your analysis using a $2.0 million monthly budget ($24 million for calendar year 2000) against either US adult men or women. Use the following norms on the likelihood of message exposure given magazine or network television program exposure.
Adults 45.6 38.6 31.0Starch Noted Score Norms Gallup & Robinson
Audience 4-Color Page B&W Page 30-Second PCR Norms
When developing flowcharts, discussed in Chapter 5 of the ADplus™ text, use a typical advertising carry-over rate of 18 percent. The carry-over function should favor target audience members who are frequently exposed to messages (power function).
Your work should be summarized in a report organized according to the accountability issues identified below and described in Chapter 7. For each issue, briefly and concisely describe your goals, data, methods and results and discuss implications for media planning. Be sure to cite any material that you use in your report and include full citations in a list of references. Your report is due at class time on Tuesday, March 21.
If you prefer, you may work in small groups of two or three students of your choosing. If you do so, turn in only one copy of your project with all group members listed as authors. All group work is subject to peer evaluation.
1. Time Frame and Ad Carry-over Rate
Use optimization procedures, discussed in Chapter 3 of the ADplus™ text, to develop a continuous yearly magazine schedule intended to effectively reach any one of the target audiences represented by the project data. Demonstrate both naïve and sophisticated approaches to the analysis of this one plan. These should include pooling all yearly insertions in a single ADplus™ analysis in contrast to an analysis based on a monthly flowchart.
2. Frequency Threshold
For both the naïve and sophisticated analyses described above, diagram vehicle and message reach based on frequency thresholds of 1+ and 3+.
3. Message-Vehicle Gap
Again referring to the naïve and sophisticated analyses above, what is the ratio of message reach 1+ to vehicle reach 1+? What is the ratio of message reach 3+ to vehicle reach 3+? Why don't all of the ratios equal the message-vehicle ratio? Which ratio comes closest to the message-vehicle ratio?
4. Forecasting Advertising Effects
What communication effects could be forecasted by the naïve and sophisticated analyses described above? For each analysis explain and qualify your predictions.
5. Audience Spill-Over
Analyze the optimum yearly magazine plan described above against a different target audience. For example, if your original target audience was women, then assess the identical yearly magazine list and insertions as before, but analyze them against men. Again, do so from both naïve and sophisticated perspectives. How does your original optimum yearly plan’s coverage vary with the target audience used to evaluate it?
6. Message Characteristics
How would the naïve and sophisticated analyses of your original magazine plan change if you used black-and-white advertisements instead of full-page, four-color advertisements? Costs and the message-vehicle ratio drop, but how much does overall plan coverage change?
7. Creative Value
Consider what would happen if there was a 10 percent improvement in the message effectiveness supporting your original magazine plan. Analyze the media value of this improvement from both a naïve and sophisticated perspective. How would your analyses and discussion change if there were a 10 percent decrease in message effectiveness?
8. Saturation
What is the estimated vehicle and message reach 3+ of your original magazine plan based on both naïve and sophisticated analyses? How do these estimates change if you optimally spend an additional $500,000 per month ($6.0 million yearly)? Assess the changes in reach 3+ in terms of absolute increases over the previous budget and in terms of rates of change (e.g., [new – old]/old). What do these changes say about the saturation of your target audience due to the magazine plan? How does your answer depend on whether your analysis is based on vehicle or message coverage and on whether your approach is naïve or sophisticated?
9. Media Mix
Using the network television database available on the course website, what would be the effect of optimally spending your original magazine plan cost on network television instead of magazines? What would be the effect if you split the total cost between the two media categories? Which of the three approaches (magazines alone, television alone or magazines and television combined) appears to be most effective? Chapter 3 of the ADplus™ text describes how to mix plans involving separate media categories.
10. Setting Ad Budgets
Using naïve and sophisticated approaches, what is the minimum cost of achieving 50 percent effective reach 3+ against your original target audience with full-page, four-color magazine advertisements and 30-second television commercials? If the recommended budget based on the naïve approach is re-evaluated using a sophisticated approach, what is a more realistic estimate of the naïve plan’s effective reach 3+?
11. Above and Beyond (Bonus)
The ten areas described above suggest only minimal levels of analysis. As your work evolves you will see opportunities for additional analyses and insight. Feel free to pursue these depending on your available time, interest and resources.
For example, you may wish to conduct secondary research of the advertising and marketing press to find examples of increased emphasis on accountability. For any of the ten items above you may want to consider examining alternate target audiences, budget levels, optimization criteria and scheduling patterns. How might your results be affected if you used only Simmons data versus only MRI data?
Any additional work, of course, is optional. It is intended to provide you with an outlet for your energy, enthusiasm and creativity. Obviously, initiative such as this serves to enhance your report, making it particularly impressive.
Above all, enjoy!
Copyright © 1997-2000 Kent M. Lancaster, Media Research
Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Revised: February 22, 2000.