Understanding The Basics

MediaPlanHQ is built around 6 core entities that interact with each other to help your marketing team stay on-top of their marketing activities.

Understanding these basics will give you insights on how-to structure the information in your account and help you get-up-to-speed faster.

Let's dive in...

Organizations

Organizations represent the business entities that have the budget to do advertising.

If you're an agency, the organizations are your clients.

If you're a company, the organizations depends on the nature of your business. 

For hotel operators, organizations are hotels.

For retail store operators, organizations are retail stores.

For car dealership operators, organizations are dealerships.

For education networks, organizations are schools.

For health networks, organizations are hospitals.

...

Organizations must not be bound by time and be as permanent as possible throughout time to facilitate budget/expense comparison.

Hotel ABC spent X$ in FY2017, spent Y$ in FY2018 so far, and is planning Z$ in FY2019.

Of course, you may add/remove organizations occasionally to reflect your business structure changes.

New client, Sell an hotel, etc.

Medias

Media represents the stations/program/magazines/etc where you run your ads.

NY Times, ELLE, WCBS, ABC, Google, Patterson, etc.

A media may be independent or owned by a Media vendor.

Media vendors represent entities that sell the advertising to organizations. 

Walt Disney Television, Warner Media, iHeartRadio, etc.

Media vendors may sell advertising from multiple media.

Medias are organized by media categories.

Newspaper, Magazine, Radio, Television, Online, OOH, etc.

Media categories are used mostly for expense categorization and reporting purposes.

How much did we spend on Newspaper in FY2018?

Media sells different formats of advertising space at different rate.

Full Page 4 colours in NY Times at X$ /day

Half Page in ELLE @ Y$ CPM

30 sec. in WCBS @ Z$ /spot

Media Plans

Media plans represent the timeline and budgets for organizations to buy advertising from media. 

FY2018, Q3-2018, etc.

Media plans are bound by time:  They have a start and an end, typically following your business fiscal calendar.

By fiscal year, by fiscal quarter, etc.

Media plans may optionally contains campaigns.  Campaigns are inner buckets that helps to further segment your budget for specific events inside a media plan.

For an hotel operator that wants to track their spending per quarter: Media plan "FY2018" could contain 4 campaigns for each quarter "Q1-2018", "Q2-2018", "Q3-2018", "Q4-2018".

For a retail store chain that wants to track their spending per sales event: Media plan "FY2018" could contain campaigns for major sales "Summer Sale", "Back-To-School", "X-mas"

Media Insertions

Media insertions represents the advertisement an organization buys for a time period at a given rate from a media within a media plan.

Hotel ABC buys a Full Page 4C in the NY Times running on Saturday, June 16, 2018 at 5000$ in the FY2018 media plan.

The media insertion can have multiple running dates with different applicable days/hours and rates.

Full Page 4C runs in the NY Times every Saturday between June 1st and August 31st at 5000$/day.

30sec. runs in WCBS every weekday mornings, 6am-8am, in September at 200$/spot.

The media insertion can split the cost to multiple organizations for joint media buys.

Hotel ABC and Hotel DEF are doing a joint advertisement in the NY Times at 5000$ and will split the cost evenly at 2500$ each.

Projects

Projects represent the work that needs to be done by the marketing team.

A project may come from a media insertion that requires to produce and deliver creative files to the media.

High resolution PDF for the Full Page 4C ad in the NY Times.

Or may be standalone and not be linked to a media insertion.

Or may come from the marketing request system that enables external users to request work to the marketing team.

Hotel director request a new door hanger design for his hotel

Invoices

Invoices represent the invoices received from your media.