Digital Media Strategy Combined with Sustainable Budget Efficiency - Here's How It's Done!

In this article, you will learn about the key factors to consider when developing a digital media strategy and what particular emphasis should be placed on. Since it's not conducive to distribute budgets - regardless of it being large or small - indiscriminately, it explains how you can use your budget sustainably and efficiently.

What is a media strategy?

The media strategy includes the media measures that you implement to achieve communication and marketing goals in a predefined target group. It is the basis for the success of brand communication and the foundation for media planning and media buying.

What are the preparations and implementation of a digital media strategy?

The media briefing of the customer (in the case of agencies) serves as the basis for developing the media strategy. The following briefing contents are necessary for developing an effective media strategy:

• Situation analysis: Market, consumers, media spending, competitors
• Marketing goal: e.g. product launch: target market share 7% after one year
• Communication goal: e.g. assisted brand awareness 60% after one year
• Product
• Marketing target group
• Planned marketing activities (timing)
• Existing or possible advertising materials
• Key learnings from the past
• Maximum budget

The product plays an important role in developing the media strategy:

• The type of product is decisive for when and how often a product should be advertised. For example, a seasonal product vs. FMCG that is used regularly.
• The product life cycle helps determine the necessary advertising pressure.
• The complexity of the product helps determine the media channels.

Furthermore, it's important to have an in-depth understanding of the target group in terms of consumption and consumer behavior. Descriptive features include:

• Demographic profile (gender, age, social class, education, family size, ...)
• Psychographics (attitudes, lifestyle, ...)
• Geography
• Users, buyers, influencers
• Consumption of other products or brands

This primarily involves the following questions: "Who do you want to address?", "Where do you want to reach the target group?" And "When do you want to address the target group?".

Key learnings from the past, existing market knowledge and analysis from common market media studies such as b4p or MA should be included here.

To develop the media strategy, a media target group must now be derived from the marketing target group. This can be used for operational media planning. The derivation is possible through common tools, such as b4p or in social media the Business Manager.

Need for a digital media strategy

Digital media fulfill different functions. Brands with large sales, broad user base and high advertising budgets, whose basic media are classic advertising channels such as linear TV, print or OoH, use digital media for contact class optimization, increasing the incremental net reach and for annual advertising presence, i.e. on social media (GAFAs) and through activities in search engines.

Media strategies without a digital part are hardly found today. This would also not make sense, as the younger target group is classically difficult to reach.

A common challenge, however, is determining common performance values of the used media across all advertising channels and reducing contacts in the high contact classes.

For sustainable budget efficiency of the media strategy, the programmatic approach often offers solutions.

Programmatic Advertising is the use of software-based real-time systems, rules and algorithms. These are intended to automate and optimize the purchase and deliver data-driven, targeted and relevant advertisements to consumers.

There are a lot of advantages, for example, the following:

• Audience Frequency Cap There is the possibility of a cross-channel, campaign and marketer frequency caps.
• Cross-Format Display, video and native formats can be combined along the customer journey.
• Control Budget and bid strategy can be adjusted for each stage.
• Effective reach Increased relevant reach by avoiding unnecessary multiple contacts (FC).

It's important to understand that a programmatic approach is not primarily used in non-performance ads to buy cheap bulk goods through "open auctions". The aim is more to optimize the quality of the media plan. The focus should be on preferred or even better guaranteed deals.

There are various platforms, DPS's, to book the media for the programmatic approach. One of the largest is from Google DV360, which is part of the Google Marketing Platform. OMR Reviews provides an overview of the software.Google Analytics 360 (GA360).

Digital media strategies offer new opportunities.

Thanks to digital media, it is possible for brands with a small user base, special target groups, regional distribution, or small advertising budgets to implement a sophisticated media strategy with sustainable budget efficiency.

Meanwhile, the selection of media is very large with ATV, CTV, VOD, Display Ads, DOOH, Podcasts, Search, App Stores and Digital audio channels and offers its own solutions for all advertising objectives.

Almost all target groups, no matter how special, can be addressed and reached precisely. Even digitally controlled TV campaigns are possible thanks to ATV and CTV for many target groups - also regionally controlled.

Especially with purely digital media plans, a programmatic approach can increase budget efficiency.

An important criterion for the correct media plan is the distinction between performance ads (directly measurable, short-term advertising effect like click, app install, online purchase etc.) and awareness ads (medium/long-term advertising effect like brand building, image change etc.)

The precise definition of the target group is extremely important in digital strategies, as contacts outside the target group (scatter losses) also occur, which cause the same costs as contacts within the target group. In addition, these are missing within the target group to achieve the necessary performance values. Scatter losses are particularly dangerous for the success of the overall campaign in the case of smaller and sharper target groups. In digital media, all contacts are paid - also the useless ones.

This is a major difference from the classic media. There, in addition to the paid contacts in the target group, further unpaid contacts are achieved outside the target group. These are scatter gains, especially with products with unspecific users.

Reach is not the same as reach

It's not just the quantitative reach that's considered, because the quality (attention, attention) is influenced by many factors and is therefore also an important criterion for sustainable budget efficiency:

• What percentage of the ad is in the visible area?
• What percentage of the screen is taken up by the ad?
• Is the sound on or off?
• How big is the screen?
• How long will average consumers spend looking at the ad?
• Is the ad viewed by humans or a bot?
• How big is the ad clutter?
• Is there positive framing?
• Is the placement brand safe?
• Is the advertising medium viewed alone or with other users?
• What is the view-through rate for videos?

These factors are crucial for the success of the means used and are therefore elemental in implementing a digital media strategy.

In the digital world, data accuracy is often promised, which then also needs to be verified. Independent verification of the relevant KPIs: fraud, brand safety, viewability, viewtime, view-through rate, and target group match through third-party verification (e.g., Meetrics, Nielsen, IAB) is therefore absolutely necessary for sustainable budget efficiency.

For each of these values, a target value to be achieved should be defined during planning and purchasing in order to determine the real TKP for the campaign. This TKP is then of course also binding for the delivery of advertising materials or the purchase of advertising materials. For example, if only 60% of the purchased ads are delivered within my target group, but a target group reach of 85% was agreed, the missing 25% will not be paid. This applies to all agreed target values.

The key takeaways to digital media strategies

Advertising should always be based on a business objective. The focus should be on effectiveness (has the campaign achieved its goals?) and not on efficiency (could it have done this cheaper?), because it helps no one if at the end of the campaign 10% were saved but the campaign has not achieved any of the goals. So it’s still 90% of the budget that’s "burned".

It's important to set the right metrics in the campaign or media plan and track them regularly. In addition, reviews of the results are absolutely necessary to generate learning for future activities.

Adequate physical distribution within the relevant distribution channels is a must for launching advertising to build mental distribution.

Likewise, the media purchase should be programmatic because this is the most effective way to check and optimize the reach, the target group and the frequency of contacts.

For a clear presentation of the campaign results, dashboards are suitable, which can be created easily and simply with the Google Data Studio and thus show the values of the campaign up to date in the look and feel of the brand. You can find reviews on Looker Studio at OMR Reviews.

In addition, third-party verification tools are suitable for measuring the campaign, various options for measuring and monitoring campaigns are presented on OMR Reviews.

These measurements include the delivered impressions, the brand safety, the visibility, the viewtime, the view-through rate, and the target group match.

If you set these points and derive your media target group sensibly beforehand, nothing stands in the way of a successful digital media strategy with sustainable budget efficiency.