For those who fear advanced automation and AI technologies will soon replace the manual functions of media planning, new research indicates most advertisers and agencies still are pretty old school when it comes to the process, relying on spreadsheets -- not even dashboards.
Eighty-five percent of 250 client and agency execs responsible for managing media planning still use either Microsoft Excel files or Google Sheets, according to findings of an April survey released this week by Guideline, the parent of Standard Media Index, SQAD, Lumina and other planning and buying tools.
Interestingly, clients are even more reliant on spreadsheets to manage media plans than agencies, according to the findings (see above).
Not surprisingly, Guideline is using the findings (see others below) to announce the launch of its own new centralized planning management solution, Guideline Planning, which it says enables media planners to centralize the process of planning, allocating, visualizing, analyzing and optimizing media buys vis more than 20 API integrations with key data sources. See graphic representation below.
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Meanwhile, other key findings from Guideline's survey include:
Hard to understand without knowing the specific questions asked. In particular, the title on the chart says, "using spreadsheets to manage media planning", which is very specific, while the text says, "Eighty-five percent of 250 client and agency execs ... still use either Microsoft Excel files or Google Sheets", which is very non-specific.
I'm not surprised at all that 85% use Excel at least some of the time for some things, not necessarily as their central tool for planning.
It's refreshing to hear that traditional AI (Articulate Intellect) still exists and in what appears to be quite some number.