How to raise the ceiling of media planning in 2025

First a sigh of relief that fundamentally the job of a media planner remains the same, to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time and in the right context. In fact, is becoming more and more exciting and important to navigate the consumption of media across demographics in the UK.

Hearing that the potential headroom for continued and rapid change in the younger generation in media consumption is now limited is music to my ears. Using IPA TouchPoints we have been able to keep up with their recent changes in consumption. However, I think the industry has been so consumed by keeping up that we have moved a little too far away from what makes for an effective plan for this audience. I am excited to hear that this year we can refocus our efforts towards the “right message and in the right context” which is where the all-important effectiveness of advertising can be improved.

Growing audience of the 55+

While a useful comparison to 16-34, 55+ is a broad audience pool with huge variance within the group. Not least because this age group is now 39% of the adult population vs 35% in 2015. This variance means that it is likely that we will continue to see these more distinct changes in media consumption as over the coming years, more and more of this group will contribute to more digitised media consumption, while the proportion who still favour more traditional channels will become smaller. What is most important for me as a planner is to remember and acknowledge that this cohort needs to be dissected at a more granular level when thinking about media. Using the broad audience for targeting purposes will likely mean that a media plan will currently skew to more traditional channels, ageing the media plan. At OMD we take this detailed view on focussed audiences further and spend proper time understanding choices, identity and opinions.

Diversity by design

Our Diversity by Design planning process, coupled with our proprietary research programme “The Real Britain Series”, shine a light on underrepresented and misrepresented audiences. Whether that be “Growing Old Disgracefully”, which showed the commercial opportunity, nuances within the lived experiences and importance of proper representation of 55+s through to "Decoding the Diasporas: Africa & the Caribbean"; a project which celebrated the duality, richness and power of Black culture in the UK.

We are passionate about constantly learning about all corners and intersections of the UK population and it is through TouchPoints that we are able to understand the implications for media and context for media plan delivery.

With increasing content and channels the need for attention driven media planning has never been more important. And what constitutes attention for different audiences and platforms varies. A key to getting to the most effective plans will lie with those who are able to get their hands on the data to determine these measures of attention.

Dead AV times

Thinking specifically about AV, all platforms are now delivering more and more content. We are seeing an increased number of minutes spent on platforms, but not watching content. This choice paralysis is eating into “commercial” minutes and ultimately how much content is being watched. It will be exciting to see how media owners respond to this, changing the structure of their platforms perhaps powered by AI (there I mentioned it, now we have the “c” word AND AI) and thinking about how ad formats may evolve to drive attention in these current dead times.

It is of course, more and more obvious that measurement across channels will unlock the next generation of media planning. As this document mentions on several occasions, the amount of time spent with video, audio and news hasn’t changed, it’s the technological transformation within channels that has allowed for diversification of consumption. We have already seen Barb change methodologies for planners to be able to understand more about AV viewing on the big screen and onboarding the newer subscription VOD players.

The future of planning will be led by the industry’s ability to measure and plan using cross device and cross platform data, with the industry backing Project Origin let’s hope that their ambitions can be realised in order for us media planners to be able to raise the ceiling of media planning in 2025.

Rhian Feather is Chief Planning Officer at OMD UK

The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and were submitted in accordance with the IPA terms and conditions regarding the uploading and contribution of content to the IPA newsletters, IPA website, or other IPA media, and should not be interpreted as representing the opinion of the IPA.