4 quick thoughts on this chart and on the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) Touchpoints « Making Sense » 7th edition which was released this week.
1. Quite a lot of the report understandably talks about trends and the key differences between 2025 and a decade ago. I get it; as an industry we’re obsessed with change and trends. But not many of us get briefs that say « can you plan this as if it was still 2015? » so I’ve removed that bit and just focused on today.
2. Look how much stuff there is! No single dominant slice. My colleague Richard Kirk (or it might be James Parnum or possibly both) often says this a golden age for media planning and you can see this in the chart. With no single medium to very obviously take the lion’s share of budget the role of the media planner becomes ever more important. But not in isolation. Because…
3. Brilliant integration between media, creative, creators and production has never been more important. Because when you look at some of the bigger slices you see that they have very different « dress codes ». If your media plan suits a certain dress code but you turn up dressed in another it’s not going to work. Media planners need to not only respect the creative idea but embrace it and think creatively about where and how is best works (and vice versa of course)
4. TIME SPENT WITH MEDIA IS A FALSE GOD. Sorry to shout and sorry to only mention it on point 4.
It’s definitely interesting to look at (hence this post) but it’s one of many things that contribute to what actually matters for advertisers which is effectiveness. For example we know that TV is a highly effective medium to place advertising and build brands. And much of that is due to the context in which people watch it. And this really matters.
In fact so much of what makes media plans effective comes down to context which is much harder to measure than time spent but not everything that matters can be measured.
Thank you Simon Frazier and team for the fascinating report and to Peter Buckley for his post yesterday that made me aware the report was out.