Stop Missing the Mark with Your Media Strategy

Do you know your audience? Really know them? Can you tell us which magazines they read? Or what time of day they watch TV? Do you know which airlines they fly with most? Or which social media platforms they use?

More importantly – do you know where to meet other audiences like them?

We do.

Industry-wide, media spend is regularly wasted on reaching audiences that are wildly misaligned with brand targets. When we jumped into this space years ago, we found that, on average, only 43% of media spend was having impact on the intended campaigns. The other 57% was essentially “waste.”

The trend has continued and, in examining it further, we noted that the heavy majority of that waste was the result of misalignment in audiences and media. Take a look at this visual. We delivered this graphic after analyzing a recent client campaign. Working with the client’s buying agency and internal marketing teams, we tracked campaign performance, attributed the spend by medium, then layered the results with third-party audience and media data to determine the universe.

The result was shocking to all of us.

The campaign had reached a massive audience – unfortunately, the alignment with the brand’s two target audiences was minimal. In all, less than 12% of the campaign’s reach included the intended audience. The other 88% was highly unlikely to become a customer.

Eliminating wasted spend is easier than typically expected – it simply requires a desire to improve the effectiveness and efficacy of your marketing budgets. We actively help brands, agencies and media companies to identify a clear path. We keep it simple by aggregating data across large, diverse data sets. Then, we translate that data into actionable insights to clearly identify next steps for buyers.