Background

MediaRadar is an ad intelligence platform designed to help agencies, media & ad tech companies increase revenue.

Media planners and buyers can easily access timely and actionable cross-format advertising data, monitor clients’ competition and uncover new advertising opportunities.

See how a Media Director at a Chicago-based content marketing company that serves national brands uses MediaRadar’s advertising intelligence for their clients.

Challenges of a Media Planner

Media Planning can be an exciting role—the market moves quickly and the process of developing a competitive, data-based strategy can be thrilling for the analytically-minded.  

But those same stimulating challenges can also be stressful. Media Planners often find themselves without effective tools to navigate quickly shifting markets. At the same time, they have to manage client expectations, convince clients why their spending will be effective and manage the various moving pieces of multiple campaigns. 

In order to wisely allocate ad dollars, Media Planners need to quickly and seamlessly access industry and advertising data.

Media Planners typically depend on multiple industry newsletters, publications and internally-developed research resources, often with less than ideal results. Reading through this mix of industry insights also eats up a planner’s time and is not their primary responsibility.

When it comes to competitor data, traditional agency tools for researching multi-media ad intelligence tend to be clumsy and complicated. Many of these tools still depend on outdated spreadsheet exports and force planners to conduct time-consuming manual research on outdated and inefficient UIs. While other solutions offer expensive tools that are difficult to learn and provide data from 6-8 weeks ago—an eternity in the world of media. 

Solutions

MediaRadar offers Media Planners a fast  and intuitive advertising intelligence platform, where they can analyze a brand’s media mix across a variety of formats. Insights are available on the platform quickly, enabling the user to truly keep up with what’s happening in the market and help their clients react in near real-time.

MRMB offers:

• A Fast and Frictionless UI: Save time with presentation-ready insights
• Accurate and Up-to-Date Analysis: MediaRadar is updated daily with fresh data
• Multimedia Insights: Understand where competitors are spending, including across podcasts, specific social platforms and emerging formats
• Depth of Market: We track 10,000 categories, including the most niche markets out there, and millions of brands.

“I really like the MediaRadar system. It makes a lot more sense and it’s very visually appealing.” – Media Director at a content marketing company serving national brands

AN OVERVIEW of the media planning process:

Step One: Establish Foundation with Clients

• Media Brief
• Form Objectives
• Identify research and tools

Step Two: Assess Key Drivers

• Target Audience Strategy 
• Competitive Analysis
• Assess media marketplace

Step Three: Create

• Strategies and Tactics
• Allocate and Optimize
• Evaluate tradeoffs
• Address contingencies
• Communicate recommendations

Step Four: Measure and Learn

• Assess Performance
• Undergo Feedback LoopThis process typically happens quarterly with some variation across formats (i.e. TV takes place via Upfronts). MediaRadar is used frequently across these stages, but mostly in the initial planning stages of a campaign.

Results 

We interviewed a Media Director at a Chicago-based content marketing company serving national brands. 

This Media Director found MediaRadar to be incredibly useful for their team, especially from an integrated marketing perspective. In the beginning stages of working with a client, they could identify industry trends and the buying behaviors of competitors. 

Media Planners are able to quickly create timely and accurate reports that include:

• Competitor or product category spending overviews
• Changes in Advertising Investments (month-over-month and year-over-year)
• The distribution of ad dollars across media formats
• Creative and messaging

This Media Director told us they were able to sit down with clients and say, “this is what your competitors are spending, so you’re being overtaken in the market in pure impressions and dollars spent.” 

Understanding how much competitors are spending is the first step in making an informed media plan.

“We either want to follow them in certain channels so that we can compete with them, or we make the recommendation to go to these other channels, typically digital channels so that we can dodge them,” they explained.

Ultimately, the solution to gain more reach is to spend more ad dollars—but brands typically press their agencies to do more work with less money. With comprehensive reporting that can be quickly downloaded as a PDF, agencies can justify their budget recommendations to their clients.

In their past experiences, this Media Director used Kantar’s Advertising Intelligence platform and complained that it had an outdated and frustrating UI. It was so complicated that he would need to contact the business rep and threaten to cancel the contract if they didn’t directly pull the data for them. He also commented their data also lagged behind considerably, so making informed decisions was difficult in an ever changing marketplace.

They appreciated MediaRadar’s well-organized dashboard and intuitive UX, making it easy to do a “gut check” on industries and competitor spend with minimal effort. They could also dig deeper into the data as needed with no complications. 

What You Should Expect

Are you an agency looking for the most efficient way to access advertising data across product categories and brands?

With MediaRadar, you can:

• Do Your Job in a Fraction of the Time – The days of creating complex and time consuming reports are over. MediaRadar provides the information needed to make informed and strategic decisions for your clients.
• Create The Perfect Media Mix By Format For Your Clients – See where and when any brand is buying their ads in near real-time.
• Monitor Primary and Emerging Competitors in Your Market – Compare a brand’s media mix to the competition’s. Do you want to go head-to-head or buy ads with different media partners?
• Easily Determine the Right Media Partners and Vendors – Instantly see any brand’s advertising investment by month or year-over-year insights. MediaRadar will show which platforms are being used by similar brands and when those brands are buying.
• Uncover New Media Formats That Are a Good Fit -The advertising landscape is constantly evolving. MediaRadar is agile and adapts with the market to provide the most complete understanding of any advertiser’s message. 

We know you’re busy. 

We’re not in the business of giving you data you can’t use. 

What we are in the business of, is offering you actionable insights that you can deliver in client-ready formats. With our fast and easy-to-use interface, you can dig deep into the data you need to build and manage effective campaigns.

And the best part is—it’s free.