ADV 3480: Media Strategy and Planning Comprehensive Review

Comprehensive practice vocabulary flashcards covering the core principles of media strategy, audience profiling, media mix selection, exposure level calculations, timing, and campaign management from ADV 3480.

Paid Media

Advertising that involves a paid placement where the media charges a price to carry a message, including traditional channels and paid digital media (desktop and mobile display and paid search), while excluding unpaid social, organic search, and earned media.

Media Planner

The advertising team member who evaluates business and communication goals, develops media objectives and strategies, and determines the optimal combination of media channels to reach the target audience.

Media Buyer

The media specialist who negotiates advertising rates with media companies, purchases planned media placements, and monitors campaign delivery to achieve the lowest cost and widest reach.

Media Fragmentation

The redistribution of audiences across advertising media as choices proliferate, occurring across horizontal channels, vertical options within a medium, demographic age habits, and divided multitasking attention.

Connection Planner

An agency role with a 360-degree touchpoint view spanning interactive, guerrilla, live, and experiential channels beyond traditional broadcast and print advertising.

Multitouch Attribution

An analytics methodology that redistributes conversion credit fairly across all contributing media channels (including TV, radio, print, and digital) rather than crediting only the final click.

Strategic Knowledge Expert (SKE)

The stakeholder within a client organization—frequently a C-level executive—who possesses the organizational authority to define high-level business objectives.

Advertising Objectives

Communication goals designed to move consumers along a continuum by specifically changing audience Knowledge, Attitude, or Behavior.

Media Objectives

Measurable statements of what a media plan is specifically designed to accomplish, grouped into Audience & Delivery, Cost & Efficiency, and Strategic & Tactical execution.

Pareto Rule (Media Planning)

The media strategy observation that approximately $70\%$ of a brand's sales come from about $30\%$ of its customers (the heavy users), updated from the historical 80/20 rule for fragmented markets.

Target Audience Profiling

The process of identifying and describing target consumers across four core dimensions: Demographics, Geographics, Psychographics, and Behavioristics.

MRI-Simmons Index

A relative measurement indexing consumer subgroup likelihood against a general population average benchmark of 100, calculated as: $\text{Index} = \left(\frac{\%\,\text{Across of subgroup}}{\%\,\text{Across of total}}\right) \times 100$

% Down vs. % Across

A syndicated data convention where % Down represents the vertical percentage of all users accounted for by a specific demographic segment, while % Across represents the horizontal percentage of that demographic segment who use the product.

Product of Factors (POF)

A weighting formula that balances group population size, usage level, and index to identify true sales potential: $\text{POF} = \text{Subgroup Population} \times \text{Usage Level} \times \left(\frac{\text{Index}}{100}\right)$

Strategic Impression Ratio (SIR)

A strategic weighting calculation determining how impression delivery—rather than media spend—should be split between distinct target groups in a single media plan.

All Category Volume (ACV)

The percentage of a product category's total retail dollar volume sold through retail store locations that actually stock and carry a specific brand.

Category Development Index (CDI)

An index evaluating category sales strength within a specific spot market relative to population: $\text{CDI} = \left(\frac{\%\,\text{of U.S. category sales in market}}{\%\,\text{of U.S. population in market}}\right) \times 100$

Brand Development Index (BDI)

An index evaluating a specific brand's sales strength within a market relative to population: $\text{BDI} = \left(\frac{\%\,\text{of U.S. brand sales in market}}{\%\,\text{of U.S. population in market}}\right) \times 100$

Media/Potential Index (MPI)

A spot-market selection index combining local market category sales potential (CDI) with local media cost efficiency (MCI): $\text{MPI} = \frac{\text{CDI}}{\text{MCI}}$

PRIZM

A leading Claritas cluster analysis tool that classifies every United States neighborhood into one of 66 demographic and psychographic consumer lifestyle segments.

Utility Theory of Buyer Behavior

The behavioral theory positing that consumer purchases satisfy a motivational hierarchy composed of rational utilities (performance, price, convenience) and emotional utilities (image, status, avoidance).

Google's 10/20/70 Rule

A media budgeting allocation framework dedicating $70\%$ of funds to proven core media, $20\%$ to promising channels being scaled, and $10\%$ to experimental initiatives with defined metrics.

Image Transfer

The psychological process wherein lower-cost audio or digital media placements prompt the audience to mentally recall high-impact visual imagery established previously via television or video ads.

Viewable Impression

The digital ad measurement threshold requiring that at least $50\%$ of an ad's pixels render on a screen for at least 1 second for display ads or 2 seconds for video ads (Media Rating Council standard).

Gross Impressions vs. Target Impressions

Gross impressions count all exposures across broad populations ($P2+$ or Households), while target impressions count exposures exclusively within a defined demographic audience (e.g., Women 18–34).

Target Rating Points (TRPs)

The total volume of advertising impressions delivered against a specific target audience, indexed to the size of the target universe: $\text{TRPs} = \frac{\text{Total Target Impressions}}{\text{Target Universe}} \times 100$

Gross Rating Points (GRPs)

The sum of all ratings points delivered against a broad, non-targeted audience base, typically calculated against total Households (HH) or Persons 2+ ($P2+$).

Rating vs. Share

Rating measures the percentage of the entire target universe tuned into a show, whereas Share measures the percentage of people with their television actually turned on (PUT/HUT) who are watching that show.

Reach

The horizontal measurement representing the unduplicated number or percentage of different individuals in a target audience exposed to a campaign message at least once.

Average Frequency

The vertical measurement representing the average number of times reached individuals are exposed to an ad message: $\text{Average Frequency} = \frac{\text{Total Target Impressions}}{\text{Cume Reach Impressions}} = \frac{\text{Rating Points}}{\text{Reach}}$

Modified Sainsbury Method

A mathematical formula used to estimate combined unduplicated reach across overlapping media vehicles: $\text{Cume Reach} = R_1 + R_2 - (R_1 \times R_2)$

Modified Ostrow Method

A media optimization method that systematically scores 25 market, message, and media factors to generate a base score and determine an optimal effective frequency range across a campaign's duration.

Effective Reach

The percentage of a target audience exposed to an advertising campaign within a defined effective frequency bracket (between an ideal minimum and maximum exposure threshold).

Frequency Capping

A digital programmatic ad setting that limits the number of times a specific ad impression is served to an individual user or device over a given period.

Pass-Along Readership Weighting

The standard print media practice of discounting secondary pass-along readers to $50\%$ value when computing total readership and cost per thousand ($\text{CPM}$).

Sales Curve

A chronological tracking of brand or category retail sales week to week, month to month, or season to season, indicating when consumer demand peaks and ebbs.

Purchase Cycle

The average timeframe, typically expressed in weeks, between purchases for a medium consumer in a given product category.

Continuity (Scheduling Pattern)

A steady, uninterrupted 52-week advertising schedule used when category sales volume remains fairly even throughout all weeks of the year (each week between $1.0\%$ and $2.5\%$ of annual sales).

Flighting (Scheduling Pattern)

An alternating scheduling strategy characterized by heavy bursts of advertising activity separated by hiatus periods with zero advertising, triggered when weekly sales dip below $1.0\%$ or exceed $4.5\%$.

Pulsing (Scheduling Pattern)

A hybrid scheduling approach that maintains a continuous advertising baseline throughout the year and layers heavy flighting pulses during peak sales periods when sales volume ranges between $1.5\%$ and $4.5\%$.

Resource Allocation Multiple (RAM)

A pulsing allocation ratio used to determine the share of rating points that should be concentrated in high-demand pulse weeks: $\text{RAM} = \frac{\%\,\text{of Total Rating Points in Pulses}}{\%\,\text{of Annual Sales in Pulse Weeks}}$

Lead / Parallel Application

An intraduration ad scheduling approach where advertising weight directly mirrors the shape of the sales curve while running slightly ahead of anticipated demand.

Counter Sales Curve Application

An advertising deployment pattern that schedules heavy advertising pressure during traditionally slow or lean sales periods to generate counter-cyclical demand (typical in travel and tourism).

Micro Front-End Loading

The execution tactic of concentrating media impressions during the early days of a week (Monday through Wednesday/Thursday) and during earlier dayparts of the day (e.g., morning drive).

Lowest Unit Rate (LUR)

The federal statutory mandate requiring broadcast television and radio stations to charge political candidates their lowest commercial ad rates during the 60-day window leading up to a general election.

Media Flowchart

A master visual document displaying a complete campaign schedule across weeks, including flight dates, media vehicles, rating points, impressions, and period budgets.

Make-Good

Free replacement broadcast airtime or publication space provided by a media vendor to an advertiser to rectify a schedule discrepancy, missed spot, or preemption.

Affidavit of Performance

A certified legal statement provided by a broadcaster or publisher attesting to the exact dates, times, and specifications of advertisements that ran.

Post-Buy Analysis

A formal audit conducted after a media schedule completes, comparing contracted audience delivery estimates against actual third-party ratings data (such as Nielsen).

Return on Objectives (ROO)

An evaluation framework measuring whether a completed campaign achieved its promised non-financial communication metrics, including audience delivery, reach, frequency, and brand resonance.

Insertion Order (IO)

The formal contract executed between an advertising agency and a media company authorizing specific ad insertions, dates, rates, and mechanical specifications.

Demand-Side Platform (DSP)

A programmatic software platform that allows media buyers to manage, purchase, and optimize digital ad inventory across multiple ad exchanges via a single interface.

Daypart

A designated broadcast time block (such as morning drive, daytime, early fringe, or prime time) used by stations to price and schedule commercials.

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

A financial efficiency metric that calculates gross revenue generated per dollar spent on advertising: $\text{ROAS} = \frac{\text{Revenue Generated}}{\text{Advertising Spend}}$