Thanks to a heads up from the Association for Downloadable Media I read a great article by Jim Meskauskas, iMedia Connection. He writes about media planning and buying and this one is titled, “Your outdated planning process and how to fix it.” He gets right to the point in the subtitle:

The way audiences use media has changed, but agencies’ planning processes have not. Here’s how marketers need to adapt for the platform-independent future of media consumption.

Platform independent media consumption. Interesting term we’re hearing more of lately. The old platforms are not working so well. Look at what’s happening with newspapers. So what does he think of today’s media buyers and planners?

Today, media planners and buyers still focus on determining the right platform for carrying messages, the currency for placing that message and the metrics for determining the success or failure of that platform. The audiences that planners and buyers wish to reach, however, do not think of their media consumption this way. Thus, much of the planning landscape is being neglected by the discipline’s practitioners. They end up measuring the potential of a platform rather than the content associated with an ad message. In short, planners and buyers are measuring forests without knowing anything about the trees that are in them.

He also has an interesting new way to define what we have been calling podcasting.

Portcasting

“Portcasting” is the term I use for what in the past would have been called podcasting. Because the near-future of media usage is based on its portability, “port” is the operative descriptor for the media being “cast.”

It’s a good read and I appreciate your thoughts on it. If you’re in the agency business consider this last excerpt:

If they hope to maintain relevance in the coming years, agencies must find a way to address the meaning of platform-independent content and the need for real cumulative media effectiveness measures across platforms.

I think some of this will be included in my social media breakout session at the upcoming NAMA conference.