Media Solutions: An Effective Tool to Manage Media Spend?

Abstract/ Business Case 

1. Introduction 
   Media accounts for over 35 percent of the marketing spend of most advertisers; it is one of the largest spend categories under marketing. Media planning by agencies is typically managed using Excel sheets, which leads to a lack of visibility to the client. It increases the client’s non-working investment due to higher time required to execute by media planners. Moreover, clients are not able to effectively manage their marketing performance, as their data does not always include media performance. 
    
2. Main 
   Utilizing media solution tools would enable clients to receive better visibility into their spend. The clients needs to first discuss the issues with the agency, and decide if they would like to use a third-party tool or if the agency has an in-house tool. The client needs to check the specifications of each tool, and see that the tools are comprehensive in providing services, such as creating media plans, analyzing media spend patterns, organizing media spend, and ability to connect with publishers and other suppliers.  
    
3. Recommendation 
   Clients should mandate the use of purpose-built, database-oriented media solution tools to enable better control over their media spend. This would enable visibility into their media spend, and enforce better performance from the agencies.