Essential Media Planning Tools for Teams and Agencies
Media planners have a lot on their plates. It is difficult enough to develop robust and streamlined media plans and set the right KPIs. Media planners are tasked with executing campaigns on strict budgets, scheduling, posting media, and analyzing campaigns for insights.
Keeping track of all these moving parts is a complex process, especially for large projects and multiple clients. Luckily, as more teams rely on media in their marketing efforts, many tools have been created to combat these challenges. These are called media planning tools. Some are used in other categories, but these specific tools and software are frequently used in a modern media professional’s toolset.
What Are Media Planning Tools?
Media planning tools are platforms (or software) that take elements of the media campaign process and integrate them into a single platform to support a functional workflow. The goal of using these tools is to make it easier for your team to execute and report on media plans.
Media planning tools come in all shapes and sizes. No matter the size of your agency, you can find one that works for you. Most media planning tools help organize and delegate tasks, create budgets, schedule media, publish media, and analyze campaign performance. There are also many niche tools - specialized for certain parts of the media planning process.
The Best Media Planning Tools & Software
As advertisers invest more budget into building media strategies and launching more efficient digital advertising campaigns, more technologies have become available to enhance these processes. However, half the battle is finding the right media planning tool that fits your needs.
We compiled a list of 14 of the best media planning tools to streamline your process.
Media Planning Tools for Paid Acquisition and Automation
These four tools are for you if you want to utilize technology to automate your media planning processes.
This is home base. Google Ads is your hub to field targeted ads and paid search, manage your campaigns, and measure success. This tool helps you target customers you want to connect with and filters out those you don’t.
GaleForceMedia is a cloud-based platform designed to streamline every aspect of media planning and buying. This platform has various tiers of features for different team needs. GaleForce integrates well with Nielsen and Comscore planning tools.
Mediaocean automates planning and buying workflows and provides paid social campaign management, billing, and payments tools. Mediaocean has consistently been named an industry leader.
This is a unique marketing automation platform built specifically for agencies. This product provides media planning tools and gives your team access to a CRM system and multiple reporting tools.
Media Planning Tools for Workflow Management
The five tools below are particularly useful for team management. They are used to delegate tasks within the media campaigns process.
Allows your team to create and assign tasks, outline projects, and manage marketing campaigns. This is a great platform to stay organized while managing a media project.
Media Plan is made to eliminate spreadsheet and email chaos by organizing all of your spreadsheets, threads, and files into a singular infrastructure.
Wrike allows teams to communicate through detailed planning and performance features. This tool has a very affordable plan for all types of teams and currently has over 20,000 customers.
Opal’s goal is to plan and visualize your organization’s marketing efforts within a single platform. Opal is used by many large companies like Target, Starbucks, and Microsoft.
This tool is great if you work with multiple media vendors. Bried Bid streamlines communication with vendors, consolidates contact lists, and assists in submitting media campaign proposals.
Media Planning Tools for Data and Analytics
These five tools provide in-depth and real-time insights if you want to be more meticulous with analyzing and reporting media campaigns.
This tool provides in-depth data about media campaigns and is custom-made for media agencies.
This tool is a new addition to the long list of Comscore Solutions and allows cross-platform integrations and access to granular data sets to help you understand the true impact of your media plan.
Nielsen creates a space to make your client a part of the creative process. The platform provides features like media scheduling and an analytics center.
Joinr unifies Google and Facebook ad data to deliver a singular data set for accurate insights automatically. It was built to rescue the 99% of marketers that waste hours trying to unify ad data themselves. Joinr blends data sources at the touch of a button and automatically synchronizes every three hours, giving teams more time for the things that matter.
Has multiple features for those who want to dive deep into media planning processes. Features include media plan templates, flowcharts, online RFPs, KPI performance monitoring, and client dashboards.
FAQs About Media Planning Tools for Agencies
Who Needs Media Planning Tools?
The most common application for media planning tools is to improve workflow at media and marketing agencies. As teams are executing media campaigns, these tools help them stay organized, manage projects, and gain valuable insights all from one spot.
Although these media planning tools are usually created for media agencies, more are being adopted for simple marketing efforts by organizations of all sizes. It seems that, nowadays, any organization with the slightest media presence has some kind of media planning tool that they are using.
What Are the Benefits of Using Media Planning Tools for Teams and Agencies?
One of the biggest challenges when working with media planning tools is finding the one that is best for you. There isn’t a foolproof formula to finding the right tool for your team. It’s a lot of trial and error. With the correct tools, your media process becomes…
More Simplified:
Using tools to plan, budget, schedule, and analyze media campaigns makes sure nothing slips through the cracks.
More Analytical:
Many media tools provide a plethora of data that help you make informed decisions for your media campaigns. Metrics include page views, cost per click, demographics, impressions, conversions, and more. This improves efforts in real-time.
More Controlled:
Media planning tools let you know the status of your media projects during every step of the process and provide information like project statuses, ad run dates, and even flow charts of your ad schedule.
More Budget-Friendly:
Media planning tools have multiple financial metrics and templates that help you stay within the parameters of your budget. These metrics include planned campaign costs, actual costs, and the remaining budget. This ensures you make the most of your budget and get the highest coverage.
More Accelerated & Diversified:
Taking advantage of media planning tools reduces stress. Your team can worry less about the many elements of the media planning process. The right set of tools allows you to focus on bigger goals. Speaking of bigger goals, many tools include a diverse array of content features to assist you in testing out new media methods like newsletters, billboards, and banner ads.
Are you ready to explore the benefits of working with a digital media agency partner? Then, get in touch with Pathlabs to learn how we can become an extension of your team.
