The media planning fight is not over

ADOTAS — Is traditional media planning becoming obsolete in the age of data and targeting algorithms? That depends on whom you ask.

In Ad Age’s recent article, “What to Expect from the Next Gen of Digital Display,” Rich Karpinski portrays a Wild West-style land grab afoot. Mr. Karpinski sees ad networks, agencies, publishers, and brokers staking out each other’s traditional stomping grounds and jostling each other aside in the effort to take up new territory. Reinforcing the idea that roles are in flux, some networks are predicting that their targeting capacity will increasingly supplant agencies’ planning function.

Both of these visions for “what comes next” show how networks have been successfully moving in on media planning—traditionally an agency strong suit. But don’t count agencies out just yet. .
When it comes to successful planning, agencies still play a critical role that targeting algorithms can’t touch

Certainly, in the current landscape, agencies need to maintain flexibility to operate their businesses – from planning, to day to day operations, to sourcing inventory, to utilizing data – while always balancing value and quality. Partnerships based on total transparency and data ownership may drive us to view inventory as anything from a commodity to a high-value relationship.

Here’s where agencies still have much to offer: While networks offer mass reach, traditional media planners can offer a nuanced evaluation of sites’ content, design, and placement. Savvy brand managers understand that this sort of critical evaluation of context can make the difference between a campaign’s success and a nightmare story of targeting gone wrong. When they collaborate with vertical ad networks, or even form their own vertical ad networks, agencies can deliver relevance as measured by real people—not just their numerical stand-ins.

As Jack Rotolo says in Mr. Karpinski’s piece:

“Content remains one of the more critical factors advertisers evaluate in looking to place their ads; they want to be in contextually relevant areas… Clearly, some advertisers are looking for performance-based advertising. But there’s a whole other arena of advertisers that are really trying to align themselves and create a market position around a brand. They are very selective about the types of environments they are going to get into.”

To date the online world has had a certain amount of disregard for traditional offline branding strategies, but that will soon have to change as well. I predict brands will begin to fight back by building out their own networks within their categories and mining revenue from inventory they are currently ceding to outside players. Karpinski and others seem to agree, noting that “[new] ‘demand-side’ networks run by the large ad holding companies/agencies — VivaKi’s Audience on Demand or Havas’s Adnetik, among others — are emerging to assert the power of the buy-side…”

As offline brands start to take Internet advertising more seriously, we will see an even greater need to build out more integrated and high-value marketing strategies that require brand safety, quality content, and guarantees of contextual relevance. Data-based targeting will continue to expand, but traditional media planning will continue to be of value.