The Digital Media Planner profession is based on planning increasingly engaging strategies and campaigns for Internet users. The task of this professional, in addition to developing an effective communication strategy, also deals with the planning of advertising spaces and advertising campaigns on the web as well as constant monitoring of the distribution and effectiveness of the campaigns.
It is now clear that companies can no longer do without digital communication experts. The Copernican revolution that digitization is bringing within companies is enormous, we often don’t understand all its aspects or perhaps we tend to minimize them or not realize it, this revolution is so pervasive, indeed we tend to take note of it and change our behavior.
The digital transformation will predominantly affect the ability or otherwise, of a company to create a business, imagine its role in the market, and relate to the public in a winning way, and to do that, you need to focus on the audience in its individuality and communicate with each of these individuals. Even for good communication you need to have a strategy: with the Digital Coach® Digital Strategy Course, you will have all the tools you need for an intelligent and innovative digital strategy.
Interview with a digital media planner
To get a more complete picture of this profession, we interviewed Claudia Sambataro, Digital Media Planner of OMD. In this interview dedicated to the figure of the Digital Media Planner, we will touch on the following points:
- what do you need to be a digital media planner;
- what are his skills;
- what kind of tool you use;
- the professionals with whom it relates;
- his training;
- what is the average salary?
What is the Digital Media Planner?
The Digital Media Planner is a figure who acts as a connector within a Digital Media agency. The term itself refers to planning media campaigns on digital platforms. If we had to describe him to people who are not part of the digital world, he is the one who plans online advertisements and beyond, in reality, he has many functions; he is a figure who collaborates with many other people, which is why there is not only planning but a phase that starts almost from the beginning at a strategic level and then arrives at a post-analysis at the end of the campaign.
The five distinctive stages are as follows:
- It almost always starts with a brief with the client in which you decide to plan a campaign.
- The roles of a Digital Media Planner are established based on performance and the type of strategy you have shared with the client, what type of campaign to run, and which publisher to use (online newspapers, advertising, YouTube, and other social platforms); then based on the type of customer, decide how to allocate it.
- Then we go to planning which is often also done by optimizing costs, being able to be present for customers, and having maximum performance.
- The actual planning is done in Excel, to then arrive at telling the customer what planning is; if the customer approves the plan, the flow with the trafficker begins, for banner tracking.
- After this phase we go to the live shows, always monitoring everything, and we tell the customer how the campaign went and what are the points on which perhaps we can push more, or points on which it is better to avoid planning, such as the players that are no longer performing, etc.
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What are the skills of the Digital Media Planner?
To be a Digital Media Planner you need to have skills in both certain platforms and a certain type of personal approach and predisposition; in reality, the figure of the Digital Media Planner must be multitasking as well as a very curious person. Working in the agency and following even more clients, one must understand that each of them is different and therefore one must also have practical and technical skills, which must be used on certain platforms above all to see how they perform; the important thing is to know how to use them.
Then there will be some figures, who are the Specialists, who will consequently take care of the practical side of running the campaigns. Knowledge must be multiple, transversal, and continuous.
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What kind of tools do you use in your work?
The tools of a Digital Media Planner are many; Basically, Excel and PowerPoint are used for presentations, after which, depending on the type of customer you follow, certain platforms are used. For example, if you follow clients who have KPIs related to visibility then certain platforms monitor all this data; if, on the other hand, you want to see the sessions and the length of time spent on the page, you will use Google Analytics, obviously it all depends on the type of customer.
There are also platforms linked to the Google Advertising program, where having access you can always monitor them and be able to use them, the important thing is to be flexible enough and have a technical approach.
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Which professionals do you interact with?
The work of the Digital Media Planner is teamwork: this is an important thing to say for anyone who wants to take up this profession. The spirit of sharing is fundamental, being a job that affects so many areas of communication. In reality, there is a real need to collaborate with more specialized people, also because they can teach you and because in any case, it is a job that needs continuous updating.
The planning team with which we collaborate most within the agency are the Specialists, who are responsible for implementing the YouTube, Facebook, etc. platforms.
- The Programmatic Specialists are those who use the platforms to activate programmatic campaign deliveries;
- The figure Trafficker is another important figure with whom we collaborate a lot, precisely because he provides tracking to be able to give the Digital Media Planner feedback, and therefore carry out subsequent analyses.
Outside the agency instead, we have:
- The various Players including the famous accountants of the advertising agencies with whom you have ongoing relationships;
- customers, where you can decide whether to have more or less contact.
Furthermore, among the other skills of the Digital Media Planner is that of accounting, therefore knowing how to better manage relationships with others.
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How to train to become a Digital Media Planner?
I attended the classic universities, but I don’t have digital training at an institutional level, in reality, it is a passion that I have always had and consequently developed as a self-taught person. I did a master’s degree and got my bachelor’s degree. Now I think it’s different, the generation has changed compared to mine, there are degree courses also linked to the digital phenomenon; among colleagues, the training that is most popular at the moment is training related to marketing, from there you continue taking courses and then you learn the trade in the field, being a very operational job.
However, I think that in addition to the courses, there must also be one’s aptitude: they are very demanding jobs that also oblige you to train and update yourself often, also because, in a private environment, work can take some time, as in all digital professions, so you have to be a person who likes it.
How much does this professional earn on average?
The figure of the media planner is also linked to the seniority level, therefore the more experience one has, the more the salary increases. There may also be a difference where this type of work develops more, where it goes from a minimum of $23,000 per year up to even $30,000.
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Browsing through the online job offers, it is evident that today’s companies have an ever greater need for communicators, marketers, and storytellers and that the digital world is now the most used terrain by companies to communicate with their target. The figure of Digital Media Planner is essential in an agency that deals with Digital Media; as you may have already seen in the interview, however, it is a complete profession, where curiosity and the necessary updating, as well as continuous training, are essential for knowing how to fill this role.
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