• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, November 3, 2003

The worlds of online and traditional media planning collided Monday morning over what would seem to be the most fundamental elements of media planning - the media mix - and the takeaway was that as close as the two disciplines have gotten, they still are worlds apart. In fact, the discussion - a panel on media mix modeling during Ad:Tech New York's opening day - began with such new age media planning terms as "integrated" and "synergistic," but concluded on a note that was decidedly less than integrated.

"I think we've come up with a very fundamental concept called disintegrated media planning," surmised Erwin Ephron, partner of Ephron, Papazian, Ephron and a leading authority on the conventional world of media planning.

Ephron both challenged the traditional agency mantra du jour of "integrated communications planning" and chided interactive approaches to integrated media planning for falling into a "TV planning" trap.

He said the communications planning approaches were still a "mystery" to him and claimed that interactive media that attempt to develop integrated media approaches "end up doing it on television's terms." Ephron, of course, was referring to TV dominant conventions such as reach and frequency, which he implied still drive overall media mix planning.

Two leading interactive media planning gurus - Modem Media media director Karen Anderson and MPG/Media Contacts group account director David Song - challenged Ephron's view, arguing that for them and their clients things like reach and frequency are irrelevant.

"It's all about the dollars. It's not about the GRP [gross rating points]," said Modem's Anderson.

"It doesn't necessarily mean reach and frequency. It doesn't necessarily mean GRPs," concurred MPG's Song, adding that his agency's approaches to media mix planning are designed around "business solutions."

Song alluded to "proprietary tools" for collecting the data that establishes those solutions. "We have hired a regression scientist," revealed Song, adding that it was "formulas" developed by such scientists "that's how we get to a media mix."

Song conceded that such ROI models might lead to very different mixes of media, even among interactive shops using ROI models. "I'm sure our ROI model is very different from what [Modem's Anderson] is doing with media mix," he said.

In the end, Ephron agreed that it was up to marketers to determine what the goals of their brands are and to set media budgets for implementing those goals, but that it was up to ad agencies to determine which media could best fulfill them. He said major markets are beginning to realize that "TV can't do it alone" and that they are growing more open to new mixes of media to deliver returns on their media investments, though he did caution interactive media concerns on who they should be approached: "You can't go in there and say, 'We perform like television.'"