“Media planning is the process by which marketers determine where, when, and how often they will run an advertisement to maximize engagements and ROI.
Marketers need to serve consumers with the right message, at the right time, on the right channel in order to see engagements. Media planning is where marketers determine what these ‘rights’ are.”
— Marketing Evolution

This spring, I took a media analysis course. Upon finishing the course, we learned terminologies used in media planning, about the logic of computational advertising, how to use different tools and databases to conduct media planning and created a comprehensive and detailed media plan to solve our client’s problem.

Our professor left it up to us to chose a client, so my group and I decided to create a media plan for Royal Caribbean International. Here’s what we came up with:

UNIVERSITY REPORTER

In order for this class to represent media planning/buying as realistic as possible, our professor had us use 2018 data from University Reporter. You can view the entire report and highlighted information we used here.

THE PROCESS

This project was completed in two different parts.

Part 1 consisted of conducting and analyzing insights and research we found from the University Reporter, Royal Caribbean International’s website, and other sources.

Part 2 consists of our buy for both national and spot media for the entire year.

We used Media Flight Plan software to set goals (based on our target audience and their proven media habits) and use them to compare to estimated performance results based on our media buy.

The difference in theoretical and estimated average frequency had to be no more than 1.5. The difference in theoretical reach and estimated reach had to be within 4%. Our GRP units had to match.

Examples of our media buy for January and February and 2020 goals on the software can be found below:

FINAL MEDIA PLAN

Finally, the end! I know right? I felt the same way about this project. I was so ready to see all of it put together! You can view our entire PDF version of part 1 below. We’re still working on part 2!