Evaluating the performance of the campaign against objectives that each channel can offer.

Managing Media Outcomes

As this function is where the money is spent, the buyer is responsible also for ensuring that throughout the process the budget levels are not exceeded. Also the plans clearly spell out a certain level of reach and frequency, through the process of buying a campaign, the buyer must remain true to delivering these limitations and expectations. Once all the activity has been booked, specific steps are taken to track all the activity that was booked to ensure it appears as requested and that it has delivered against the performance expectations.

Monitoring needs to take place as soon as possible after activity has appeared in order to rectify any potential issues. A television campaign for example may not be delivering the goals expected as a certain program has rapidly declined in performance during your campaign period. The sooner a problem is identified, the sooner a solution can be found. Likewise if a commercial didn’t go to air as booked, then compensation can be negotiated and a replacement spot can be scheduled as soon as possible. There can be many variables that influence the final results and the buyer needs to be aware of the changing conditions in order to improve the situation.

Example situation:

If 100 Tarps were bought and expected to be delivered for a TV schedule in a given week and three spots were placed in News during the week, each expecting to deliver 10 Tarps each (i.e. Total 30 Tarps), yet in the monitoring process it was noted that the three spots collectively only delivered 15 Tarps, this would result in the week of activity underperforming by 15%. In such an instances it would be the job of the buyer to negotiate compensation for the under delivery and then investigate options to possibly reschedule any further activity out of this program and into another program, if they felt that the trend identified was likely to continue.

Bought 100 TARPS

Actual 70 TARPS + 15 TARPS = 85 TARPS

Underperformance 15%

When the buyer makes their booking, each placement is recorded on a computer system and from here the finance department has the relevant information to generate client invoices.