Top 4 tips to create a safe, solid media plan

Advertising can have an enormous impact not just on a brand’s image but on people's lives

There are numerous awards created to recognize advertisers’ creativity and the impact they make on audiences, but if those ads run in environments that don't reach real humans, the time and effort spent on creating meaningful campaigns is lost.

Here we look at four tips to creating a media plan that includes foundational assurance to reach real audiences and make an impact.

1.) Know your partners

While programmatic technology has made it easier for marketers to buy advertising at scale and with greater efficiency, the complexity of the ecosystem has created transparency challenges that can make it hard to determine where your ads are running. Fortunately, the industry has developed solutions to learn more about who’s involved in every transaction.

The IAB Tech Lab creates tools and resources to make it easier to learn more about your selling partners. Ads.txt and app-ads.txt are files housed on publishers' websites that list all authorized sellers of a publisher’s inventory. Sellers.json lists all authorized sellers transacting on an exchange. Buyers can cross-reference these files to make sure authorized sellers are listed on both.

The organization also recently launched the IAB Tech Lab Transparency Center, an online resource that aggregates company data from across the supply chain to help buyers and sellers learn more about the industry standards and compliance programs their digital advertising partners adhere to. By accessing these resources, buyers can gain insight into their partners and direct their investment towards those that offer greater transparency.

2.) Buy quality media

Several organizations have created programs to identify publishers that have taken steps to provide transparency, offer quality local journalism, and integrate industry standards and best practices into the buying process.

The Alliance for Audited Media’s Digital Publisher Audit is an in-depth, continuous audit of a publisher’s website traffic and business practices to verify that the publisher is effectively minimizing ad fraud risk. This new assurance solution addresses fraud at the publisher level and complements other industry initiatives like ads.txt and sellers.json. All AAM-audited digital publishers are included on the AAM Audited Domain List, which can be downloaded from AAM’s website or found in the IAB Tech Lab Transparency Center.

The Local Media Consortium is an association of local newspapers, broadcasters and online news outlets committed to quality journalism. The LMC Local News Advertising Inclusion List includes thousands of local media advertising opportunities for national brands.

The Trustworthy Accountability Group sets standards that promote greater supply chain transparency and includes organizations from across the industry including brands, agencies, publishers and tech providers. The TAG Registry lists members that are committed to increasing trust in digital advertising.

Accessing these resources can help buyers create inclusion lists and prioritize quality publishers in DSPs.

3.) Use multiple anti-fraud solutions

While the industry has developed several tools to give buyers greater insight into their media partners and transactions, and to detect and mitigate fraud, it’s important to integrate multiple solutions into your buying process to maximize protection of your investment. Different industry solutions address fraud from different angles to add friction to combat fraud.

Partnering with an MRC-accredited fraud detection vendor is a great start. Combining it with other solutions such as working with audited publishers and cross-referencing ads.txt and sellers.json files helps cover multiple risk areas.

4.) Select meaningful KPIs

It’s also important to decide what KPIs to are truly important to your objectives and incentivize to reach those goals.

High numbers of impressions and clicks might give the appearance of engagement, but since bots are programmed to mimic human behavior, clicks don’t necessarily translate into genuine interactions. Bots can’t make purchases or sign up for product demos, which is why it’s important to include KPIs that determine real human engagement like conversions and sales. If you build a media plan that values conversions over clicks, you can optimize your campaign by basing your media buying decisions on metrics that matter and invest in partners that will deliver results.

While a brand’s creative might be the part of the campaign that catches attention, striving to create a safe, secure media plan is just as important. By incorporating industry solutions to identify quality media and minimize fraud, your campaign will have a greater chance of reaching real people, delivering ROI and making the impact it deserves.