Media planning turns business goals into a channel-by-channel roadmap for paid investment. In practice, that means moving through a clear sequence:

• Define the objective and conversion path. Be explicit about the outcome you want and the steps users take to get there. Clarify primary and assist goals.
• Size and prioritize audiences. Use first‑party data, market research, and platform insights to quantify total addressable reach, overlaps, and saturation risk.
• Select channels and formats. Match intent and attention. Search captures demand, social and video build demand, display and audio reinforce, and emerging channels test new reach. Choose formats that fit creative assets and consumption patterns.
• Budget and flighting. Allocate by expected marginal return, seasonality, and pacing. Decide always‑on vs. bursts, set minimums for learning, and reserve test budgets.
• Targeting and brand safety. Layer geo, demo, contextual, interest, and lookalikes. Establish inventory quality rules, exclusions, and frequency caps.
• Measurement and experimentation. Define KPIs and how they will be measured. Set holdouts, incrementality tests, and learning agendas before launch.
• Alignment with buying and creative. Lock trafficking, naming conventions, tracking, and asset specs so buying executes exactly what the plan intends.

The output is a documented plan that anyone on the team can execute and audit: channels, budgets, timing, targeting, formats, creative needs, KPIs, testing plan, and governance.

Quality media plans share a few traits that buyers should look for:

• Objective clarity. The plan states what success looks like and how it will be proven.
• Evidence‑based channel mix. Channel choices are backed by audience and performance data, not preference.
• Right‑sized budgets. Spend levels meet minimum thresholds for learning and statistical confidence.
• Reach and frequency discipline. Caps and cross‑channel coordination minimize waste and overexposure.
• Creative fit. Formats and placements match the story you can tell with available assets.
• Test-and-learn baked in. Clear hypotheses, guardrails, and decision criteria for scaling or cutting.
• Operational readiness. Trafficking, UTM standards, pixel health, and data permissions are verified before launch.

Ask to see the plan's assumptions, data sources, and version control. A good plan reads like a living document that can be optimized as results come in.

Set expectations early with the metrics that matter and the traps to avoid:

• Core metrics by objective. Awareness: reach, cost per reached user, frequency, video completion rate, lift. Consideration: CTR, engaged sessions, qualified site actions. Conversion: cost per acquisition, conversion rate, return on ad spend, incremental lift.
• Planning benchmarks. Define minimum weekly impressions to hit target reach and maintain frequency, platform‑specific learning budgets, and target CPA/ROAS bands based on historicals or analog cohorts.
• Attribution and incrementality. Decide when to use platform attribution, analytics modeling, MMM, or geo/lift tests. Prioritize decisions on incremental impact, not last‑click alone.
• Common pitfalls. Spreading budgets too thin, ignoring audience overlap, over‑optimizing to cheap clicks, skipping brand safety, and testing without statistical power.
• Governance. Document exclusions, negative keywords, blocked categories, privacy compliance, and change logs. Make accountability visible.

A disciplined approach to metrics and governance keeps plans honest, comparable, and ready to scale.