Media Planning Vs Media Buying: Which Is More Important?

Media planning and media buying are associated with negotiating, purchasing, and strategically placing ad placements. Though both media planning and media buying are interrelated activities, their core functionality differs significantly. In this article, this difference would be discussed and later on a value judgment would be passed regarding their relative importance.

People in media planning are involved in planning the ad placements that would help the company in reaching a new audience and improving its existing customer base. During the planning process, various factors are taken into consideration, such as the type of product, the targeted audiences, campaign goals, and so on.

Media planning is one of the foundational step leading towards developing a successful media ad campaign. The activity of media planning helps the organization in reaching the final decision regarding the implementation of ad campaigns. During the planning process, the decision is reached regarding the type of medium to be used to deliver the intended message to the targeted audience.

For a media planning to be relevant, the planners must have the basic understanding of the basic motivation of the consumer motivation and behaviour. In addition to this, the planner must also give consideration to the resource spending limits.

Media buying is an act of buying paid media space and time slots for placing your ads. Media buying is a specialized skill and hence to make it run smoothly, the assistance of media buying agency becomes necessary. A media buying agency helps the firm in acquiring ad space in newspaper, television, magazine, and other mediums.

As can be seen from the above discussion, both the activity has its own specific purpose. Both of these tasks are not antagonistic but rather complementary. Without the implementation of media planning, the media buying process will most likely be a failure. On the other hand, there is no point in doing media planning if the company is not willing to engage in the process of media buying. It is due to this reason, it can be said that neither of the activity is more important than the other. Both of them are equally important in fulfilling the eventual goal of reaching a larger audience.