A friend of mine who still works in the advertising world mentioned was venting yesterday about the lack of standards in digital communications planning within her team. She came from a 'traditional' media planning background and was raised amidst GRPs, reach and frequency, and cost per rating points and CPMs. As digital planning exploded, she was amongst the first who took on the online medium in her recommendations.
What she is frustrated about is the lack of discipline and standards in digital communications planning as we all had in 'traditional' media planning.
In traditional media planning, we could - through the use of third-party research - come up with GRP/reach curves and efficiency curves. We could somehow make projections on what levels of reach would a certain GRP level achieve - and put a dollar value to such achievements. We could even put a dollar value to "creative executions" - buys that go beyond GRPs, 30s ads, and FP4C ads through valuation techniques. In 'traditional' media planning, there was the discipline imposed on us by the numbers.
In digital communications planning, the numbers - at least it seems - are not enough.
We lack a standard currency on which we could trade. We lack normative databases on how much delivering 1'000 audiences would be within a medium - and what the most optimum level is.
This may sound like a "return to the past" - and perhaps, sounding too traditional. It may also sound like this is an attempt to put into old leatherskins - traditional media planning leatherskins - these new emergent media.
I would argue that it isn't.
We still need the discipline.
At the end of the day, we're still managing investments - and a certain form of discipline is necessary.
It doesn't have to be GRPs, reach and frequency, and CPMs. These metrics in and of themselves are limited - and any seasoned marketeer and media planner would tell you that these metrics do not encapsulate the entirety of the media planning process.
But these are the basics - and in digital communications planning, we need to get back to the basics and build on them.
Sure, we've talked of the long-tail and pay-per-click planning method. Long-tail makes it difficult to capture the number of people who see a certain, unknown website and therefore its impressions and its CPMs. Pay-per-click makes it difficult to project what will work and what won't. But these do not make measurements and predictive methods impossible.
A return to basics is necessary for the digital communications planning world to move forward and rise up to the occasion. A return to basics - audience measurements, audience exposure optimization, cost-efficiency checks and benchmarking, GRP/reach projections - are necessary foundations to build on. A return to basics does not mean that we simply get stuck there - we need to move forward. A return to basics means a return to discipline, structure, and rigor in our approach to planning - an establishment of the foundations from which we can leap and grow.
