How do media affect our life?  How does it change our life-style?  These are the question of the media planning and buying trends.  Media planning is a way to determine how to utilize the time and space to place the advertising message before an audience where form communication can be television, radio, billboards, online media.  Sometimes, mix of media can be used.  Most of the advertiser budget is used for media planning.  With all other industries, advertising and media are directly affected be the economy.  A good economy means incredible spending in many categories.

The Planning field of media has gone through metamorphosis because of the expansion of the new media such as electronic billboards, the Internet and interactive media.  Media employees are now directing marketing strategy rather than only working in background.  Media buying has become blurred as client just hires an agency for media planning as to develop its won idea.

The major function of a media planner is to get the advertising message to the target audience as efficient as it could.  So, it always looks for the critical point which is known as aperture.  It is better to expose the product to customer when interest and attention are high.  Research by the company helps to the point of interest and the opportunity to be explored.  Some of the important factors are likely to be sales geography, timing.  What is best place or best timing to set the message before the target audience are important issues.

Duration of advertising depends on factors like schedule and budget, use cycles and competition.  The advertiser should rely on short schedules of advertising with stronger level message.  Use of buying cycles can be used for efficient advertising.  For example, ads of movies can be given of weekend, when people go out for movie theater.  When other competitors have their voice in media, then it is a good time to raise the own voice, so that competitor does not gain upper hand in targeting new audience.

To develop media strategies, media planner use a selection process to chose the best alternatives to find the target audience.  Retail scanning is the one way to find out which group wants what.  When people shops especially in the super stores, the bar code of product are electronically scanned and people’s profile are also recorded against their membership card.  Sometimes people are surveyed to track what extend an ad worked.  From all this information a database can be built from which ad group can be target.  Mix market modeling can also be used to diversify the target group.  Using various information and factor like budget and timing, a media planner can correct decision.

The internet is becoming great place for advertising where tremendous amount of potential are presents.  In internet, the user can send instant feedback, comments.  Rather then waiting to weeks or months to measure success of an ad, meaningful result can be found within a day.  Even the amount of viewer can be measured quantitatively which gives perfect results rather than assumption and can change whole process of advertising.  Accurate audience measurement also helps the advertiser to show how strong their ad is.  The geographic location is an important factor in advertising.  There is no point to invest heavily in weak sales area.  The media planner must keep in mind target population, distribution of product, strength of brad, media cost and company sales, etc.