11 essential steps of media planning for performance teams

Most teams don’t have a media strategy problem… they have a media planning problem. Campaigns underperform not because the channels are wrong, but because no one made the hard decisions upfront before starting with the media planning process: 

• What media channels actually deserve the budget? 
• Which media variables will impact performance?
• What does the paid ad campaign’s success look like?

An effective media plan helps you answer these questions because it aligns your paid media investment with outcomes. Without one, you’re just distributing dollars across platforms and hoping something sticks. 

We put together a checklist with 11 steps of media planning to ensure you nail your advertising performance this year.

Media planning step 1: Get clear on what media planning is—and what it’s not 

Media planning is the process of deciding how to allocate your paid ads budget across multiple channels, audiences, and timeframes to achieve specific business goals. In simple terms, media planning strategy dictates:

• Where your ads appear (channels, platforms, publishers)
• When they run (timing, flighting, frequency)
• Who they reach (audience targeting and segmentation)
• How much you invest in each area (budget distribution and weighting)

Media planning is a strategic process, not just a calendar or a list of platforms. But too often, the media plan process gets confused with media buying. When planning media is skipped or confused with buying, teams end up:

• Making tactical decisions (like bidding or placement) without a strategic foundation
• Optimizing for platform metrics (CPMs, CTRs) instead of business goals
• Spreading budget too thin across channels or targeting the wrong segments
• Measuring “efficiency” without asking if the campaign is actually working

That’s why even after you create a media plan that looks great on paper, it fails to move the needle in reality.

Don’t confound media planning with media buying

Here are the differences between media planning vs media buying:

Aspect	Media planning	Media buying
Purpose	Sets the media strategy and goals	Executes the tactics to fulfill the media plan
Core objective	Marketing effectiveness: what will actually drive business outcomes	Marketing efficiency: how to get the most value for your dollar on execution
Focus	Decides who to target, where and when to reach them, and why	Finds out how to reach your target audience efficiently and cost-effectively
Budget responsibility	Allocates paid media content budget across channels	Negotiates pricing, manages spend per platform or placement
Channel role	Plans which channels to include and their role in the full-funnel media strategy	Buys inventory on selected channels based on the plan
Deliverables	Media strategy, channel mix, KPI targets	Insertion orders, ad placements, delivery reports

Bottom line: Media planners set the direction; media buyers carry it out. If you skip the planning step—or rush through it—you’re not optimizing media. Instead, you’re relying on your marketing instincts.

Read more: Boost results with data-driven media planning 

Media planning step 2: Align media strategy with company goals 

Before you move ahead with any media planning steps, touch a platform, placement, or partner, ask this: What does success look like to the business? And your answer can’t be “awareness” or “traffic.” Those are tactics. 

Strategic media plans are built on business KPIs—the ones your CFO and CMO care about. Examples include:

• Drive $2M in net-new pipeline from a mid-market segment and increase household penetration.
• Increase product trials by 30% in Q2 without raising acquisition costs.
• Improve contribution margin on brand campaigns by 15%.

This step of media planning also defines channel performance metrics. Plan around incremental metrics like iROAS to force clarity. Be ruthless about what you fund—and what you cut. 

Media planning step 3: Choose the right type of media plan

There are six types of media plans with different goals and structures. You should choose the media plan that reflects your product category, sales cycle, and consumer shopping behavior. Here are the most common media plans—and when to use them:

Type of media plan	Definition	Goal	When to use
Continuous (always-on)	Steady, uninterrupted ad delivery throughout the campaign period	Maintain visibility and stay top-of-mind year-round	Evergreen products or long consideration cycles (for example, SaaS or insurance)
Flighting	Periods of intense advertising followed by complete inactivity	Maximize impact in short, high-opportunity windows	Seasonal offers or campaigns with tight budgets
Pulsing	Always-on baseline with periodic spend spikes	Sustain awareness while capitalizing on peak demand	Brands needing year-round presence with peak periods (for example, ecommerce or tech)
Seasonal	Focused media activity around specific times of the year	Capture seasonality demand at peak buying periods	Industries with predictable demand cycles (for example, retail or travel)
Drip (nurture)	Gradual, time-based delivery of messages to guide conversions	Move leads through the buyer’s funnel with consistent touchpoints	B2B or high-ticket B2C funnels (for example, financial services)
Roadblock	Simultaneous, multi-channel ad saturation for maximum exposure	Own attention and dominate a moment across channels	Product launches, rebrands, event takeovers

Note: These aren’t media plan templates. The best media planners blend them. For example, your brand campaign could run pulse advertisements while your direct response campaigns follow a flighting advertising strategy. Choose based on buyer behavior, not internal preference.

Media planning step 4: Pressure test your target audience for advertising campaigns

“Decision-makers aged 25–54” isn’t an audience. It’s a demographic bucket. Real audience planning goes deeper. You need to lead with:

• What’s motivating their purchase right now?
• What signals indicate they’re in-market?
• How does their behavior shift across platforms or funnel stages?

Conduct market research thoroughly to understand your audience. In fact, according to HubSpot’s media planning research, 70% of media planners who conduct market research say it’s the most effective planning strategy. 

Next, test audience elasticity before spending big and implementing their steps in media planning advertising. For example:

• Can you expand to include lookalikes without diluting performance?
• Will layering on an additional behavioral trait improve lead quality or just raise CPMs?

Media planning step 5: Understand your advertising competition 

Planning in a silo is a great way to get buried. You need to know:

• Who else is bidding on your audience, and when?
• What formats are they using?
• Are there CPM spikes you should avoid—or exploit?

Media planning tools like Google Analytics, Semrush, Similarweb, and even raw creative scraping via Meta’s ad library can show you:

• Top placements per competitor
• The timing of their bursts
• Channel saturation

The job here isn’t to copy your competitors. It’s to find the strategic whitespace they’re ignoring. For example, if your main competitor owns Q4 with high-budget CTV, maybe you outflank them with a roadblock-style digital takeover in Q3 when CPMs are lower and attention isn’t split.

Media planning step 6: Create your media channel mix 

Every channel in your mix should have a job—and “generating impressions” isn’t it. Think like a portfolio manager. Each media channel should earn its spot based on its:

• Role in the funnel (awareness, consideration, conversion)
• Reach and marketing efficiency 

To plan your media mix, you need to:

• Avoid channel redundancy: If paid social and display are both targeting the same audience with the same message, you’re cannibalizing attention—and spend.
• Account for diminishing returns: At a certain spend level, every channel hits a ceiling. The goal is to identify when the next $10K yields $0 in incrementality.
• Model for cross-channel halo effect: Prioritize channels that create a brand lift. For example, when YouTube spend increases, does branded search efficiency improve?
• Remember your audience preference: Getting the mix right isn’t just about chasing shiny new platforms. Nielsen’s 2025 Global Media Planning Report found that despite the rise of streaming and CTV, traditional TV still plays a significant role in global media consumption. Smart media planners don’t pick sides—they blend channels based on audience behavior and campaign goals.

Red flag: If your channel mix looks the same every quarter, you’re not planning—you’re repeating.

Media planning step 7: Schedule and flight your media campaigns with purpose

An important aspect of your media planning process steps is to understand timing is one of the most powerful levers you have. Every campaign should answer:

• When is the audience most responsive?
• When are competitors most active?
• When does the product or offer have peak relevance?

Dynamic flighting ensures you don’t burn budget during low-intent periods or overexpose audiences early.

Media planning step 8: Allocate the media budget 

Budgeting isn’t about dividing dollars evenly—it’s about prioritizing what drives impact and protecting for agility. Here’s how seasoned planners approach it:

• Core allocation: 70–80% to channels and campaigns validated by data (MMM, iROAS, etc.)
• Test reserve: 10–15% carved out for experiments—new channels, formats, or targeting groups
• Flex budget: 5–10% held for real-time reallocation based on in-flight performance

This lets you capitalize on what’s working and walk away from what’s not—without going through bureaucratic budget requests mid-quarter. To get better allocation ideas, use Keen’s MMM platform:

Remember: The cheapest inventory is often the most expensive if it doesn’t perform.

Media planning step 9: Avoid basic media planning mistakes

To drive a successful media campaign backed by your plan, make sure you’re not:

• Copy-pasting last year’s plan without revalidating the mix
• Chasing low CPMs instead of optimizing for outcomes
• Planning in silos—creative, analytics, media should co-own the plan
• Trusting platform-reported metrics as the whole truth
• Using outdated metrics instead of iROAS and incremental lift

Media planning step 10: Leverage marketing tools to boost your media planning process 

You can’t plan modern media in spreadsheets alone. Strategic media planning and placement leverage insights from different marketing strategy software:

• First-party CRM data (demo requests, time to close, and more)
• Platform audience insights (LinkedIn job titles, GA4 affinities)
• Post-campaign media attribution analysis (who actually converted?)

If your tech stack doesn’t help you decide, it’s just reporting. And increasingly, the industry is moving beyond manual planning altogether. As of August 2024, according to eMarketer’s survey, 19% of U.S. digital ad buyers were already using AI for media planning and buying—while another 38% were actively evaluating it. That means over half the industry is shifting toward automation and simulation.

Don’t worry if you need to use multiple tools. A media planning platform like Keen allows you to integrate with them seamlessly:

Read more: The role of AI in media planning

Media planning step 11: Use Keen for your media mix modeling

Media mix modeling used to be out-of-reach for small and medium businesses. But platforms like Keen have made MMM accessible for SMEs.

You already know that traditional media attribution isn’t enough. Most media planning tools will tell you Facebook drove the conversion rates if it had the last click—even if CTV, influencer, and branded search played a bigger role.

Now, you have the power to act on what’s actually driving performance—not just what platforms claim. With Keen’s media planning solution, you can:

• Simulate “what if” shifts 
• Forecast iROAS per channel
• Find your media mix’s efficient frontier (where incremental gains drop off)

If you’re still guessing, stop. Plug your current plan into Keen and see what it could really be doing.

Ready to approach your media planning process in a smarter way? Request a demo with Keen and see how it works.