Nowadays, people of marketing and media consume in several ways, which means that media planning tools are no longer optional for those who want to reach their audience in different channels.
I have found that traditional branches such as television, publications and radio can still be valuable for certain companies, but are more than ever needed on online platforms such as e -mail, social media, influencers.
This means that comprehensive media planning software is important to maintain what you do and determine how it works.
But where do you start? To help, I have summarized a list of the most important tools, software and templates for essential media planning that are used this year to expand your audience.
13 important media planning tools
- Drift Kings Media Media Planning Template (presented resource)
- Bionic media planning software
- SRD’s media planning platform
- Media plan HQ
- Media tool
- Quantcast
- Basic machine+
- Proximic by Comscore
- Nielsen
- Drift Kings Media social media software
- Scarborough from Nielsen
- MRI Simmons
- Monday.com
1. Drift Kings Media Media Planning Template (presented resource)
Price: Free
Drift Kings Medias paid media template Can help you follow your expenses for paid media when your messages go out and how much income you get from every source.
With this media tool you have access to diagrams that adapt automatically when you add your editions and ROI information. This resource is free – Get your copy now.
Key features
- Available in Google Sheets – no registrations or apps required
- Enables a complete adaptation based on your requirements
- Designed for simple persecution and reporting from month to month
What I like: You can use this template to compile monthly data from your media efforts. With this media planning tool you can see which paid media channel is best suited for your company and achieve the best results for your end result.
Best for: Small teams and solo preneurs who want a user -friendly document to plan and report efforts.
2. Bionic media planning software
Price: $ 995/month for up to 5 users
Bionic has some of the best media planning tools. They offer companies flow diagrams, iOS and RFPS, trade, reporting and dashboards through customers.
For regular updates, agencies that use the software receive current planning tools to carry out and organize their campaigns.
Key features
- All-inclusive prices means that you do not have to pay for every function
- Cloud-based platform
- Intuitive interface
What I like: Bionic is a cloud-based media planning tool. With this tool in minutes you can be into operation with unlimited training, support and data backup at no additional costs.
Best for: Agencies and medium -sized organizations with complex advertising requirements.
3. SRD’s media planning platform
Price: Contact to pricing
The most important instrument in media planning is data and SRDS offers companies some of the best data acquisition tools. Thanks to your first -class software for collecting data, you will collect your media on all platforms. I couldn’t specifically demonstrate this, but it receives consistently high ranking lists.
Key features
- Ability to compare and evaluate advertising options
- Ability to connect directly to media representatives
- Simply find it easier to find the media used by their target markets
What I like: You have access to extensive data records, the public statistics and demographies. In this way you can select the right platforms and messages to address certain target groups.
Best for: Agencies and larger organizations that use many different advertisements and channels.
4. Media plan HQ
Price: 30-day free trial version; $ 45/user per month (at least 3 users)
Media Plan HQ is a great tool for media planning that is not based on spreadsheets. A real-time interface pursues data, placements and budgets without relying on Excel. The organized interface makes it easier for you to manage projects, to pursue your Marketing Roi and share all data with your team and your stakeholders.
In addition, it helps you to break down your media purchases according to the media, categories, campaigns and shops/locations. This means that you can receive the reporting and persecution with seamless insertion order development.
Key features
- Creative project management
- Marketing calculation validation
- Marketing demand forms
- Unlimited media plans, organizations and media providers
- Unlimited creative memory, free upgrades and free e -mail support
What I like: There is a lot to like here. I come from an agency world and I think it’s great that it is a collaborative all-in-one platform that combines project management with media purchase. Since you can work with team members without all back and forth communication in emails, the reduced complexity means that the platform can grow with your requirements and your team.
Best for: Small creative teams or departments and agencies.
5. Media tool
Price: Contact to pricing.
Mediatool is a collaborative marketing platform with which companies can plan media to aim whoever they want. You can use implementable findings, work with your team members and develop effective advertising campaigns in order to highlight them.
Key features
- 20 integrations and count
- Monitoring of the campaign data and persecution
- Offers a platform that you can use for a single source of media data
- Helps improve productivity with efficient workflows
- Simply adjust and scale your needs
- AI integration offers Momin a chat in GPT style media data knowledge
What I like: The platform is efficient, easy to understand and easier to use than other media software – it is intuitive and offers a central place to manage media data.
Best for: Medium -sized companies with a variety of complex advertising requirements.
6. Quantcast
Price: 30-day trial version; Contact to pricing
If you use Quantcast, you have insights with data from over 100 million websites. The tool uses AI so that users can better predict how their media influence their target group. Due to the continuous bombing of advertisements for products and services, this function is of essential importance.
Getting started is easy – a credit card is not necessary to set up an account. Your intuitive platform leads you through the process step by step.
Key features
- Filtering of the audience sources location
- Supports Cookieless and Omnichannel Advertising
- Used data from third-party providers and AI to create real-time audience knowledge
- Easy to exist to existing target groups
- Insights into the customer trip
- Intuitive interface and extraordinary documentation
What I like: Quantcast is fantastic to understand the behavior of your audience. It offers your audience real-time knowledge based on your ads and media. This can help you to better understand and create ads that you appreciate.
Best for: Marketing professionals who want to simplify their existing media planning -Martech Suite.
7. Base machine+
Price: Contact to pricing
Basis Technologies offers an all-in-one advertising platform that optimizes media planning, execution and analysis. It is a great solution for teams that want to be more efficient and strategically more focused without settling in tedious tasks.
Key features
- Automated planning, performance and measurement
- Reduces operational complexity and manual work
- Single platform for integrating all advertising efforts
What I like: If you carry out several advertising campaigns, it can feel chaotic. With basic technologies you can integrate all of your ads and media in one place over several platforms.
Best for: Marketing professionals who want to simplify their existing media planning -Martech Suite.
8. Proximic by Comscore
Price: Contact to pricing
Proximic is a Comscore platform with which marketers can achieve their target groups of the size despite the challenges of modern advertising. Proximic offers options for media buyers who aim at target groups and media sellers in order to maximize monetization, solutions for both sides of media equation.
Since we primarily focus on media planning and marketing, I concentrate on the solution for media buyers who are supposed to improve the range by creating foreseeable audiences for whom no personal identifiers are required.
Key features
- AI-operated context-related targeting improves the range
- Fulfills the data protection requirements for consumers by eliminating ID-based goals
- Content stargeting to ensure that your advertisements appear together with branded retailers
What I like: In the world after the cookie, in which signal loss is a major problem for advertisers, I think it’s great that you have a AI-controlled solution to make it easier to achieve existing and new target groups.
Best for: Growing organizations with considerable advertising needs and advertising agencies.
9. Nielsen
Price: Contact to pricing
Nielsen is a well -known name when measuring the audience. It mainly serves for television indicators, but you can use it for other metrics across platforms. With a number of solutions under categories of measuring the audience, media planning, marketing optimization and content metadata, it is pretty much the power plant of a media planner, which makes it easier to get a comprehensive view of your audience.
Key features
- Audience segmentation
- Competitive intelligence
- Consumer knowledge
- Scenario
Note: Since Nielsen offers a comprehensive suite of solutions for media planners and marketers, the list of the most important functions is quite long if you take into account the measurement of the audience, marketing optimization and content metadata. While this could be quite advantageous solutions for marketers, I only focused on the media planning solutions from Nielson.
What I like: Nielsen has an advanced target group segmentation and competitive intelligence that shows them the overall picture of the media landscape. This media planning software can help your brand stand out from your competition.
Best for: Large organizations.
10. Drift Kings Media social media software
Price: $ 15/month/seat marketing -hub starter; $ 15/month/seat starter customer platform; $ 800/month (3 seats) for Marketing Hub Professional; $ 3,600/month Marketing Hub Enterprise (5 seats).
Drift Kings Media Social Media Software is the best option for those who want to plan media especially for social media. You can publish all media on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or another social media platform. You can also see how your audience converted from social media in CRM.
Key features
- Centralized location for the planning, structure and management of social media campaigns
- Monitoring of social mention
- Message of social media marketing
What I like: It can be time -consuming to constantly update your social media to see how many people have interacted with their ads. This platform helps you to save time and effort if you continuously refresh your social issues. I also think it’s great that Drift Kings Media’s social media management software offers weekly knowledge and ai-generated recommendations with which you can keep the content up to date that is most likely to promote commitment.
Best for: Small businesses and solopreneurs, especially those that Drift Kings Media use as CRM.
11. Scarborough from Nielsen
Price: Contact to pricing
Scarborough is another name from Nielsen in media planning. It is the tool for media planning, with which they can be geared towards public knowledge by locals from your region. It is perfect for region -specific ads and advertising campaigns.
Key features
- Market -specific consumer habits
- Cross -platform consumption
- Insights into aspiring and growing segments
What I like: You can profile consumers much more than with standard demography. You will see your shopping behavior, media consumption and lifestyle. You can continue to restrict it by people, the specific sports or what you stream on devices.
Best for: Local companies or companies advertise in certain geographical markets.
12. MRI Simmons
Price: Contact to pricing
MRI -Simmons focuses on consumer knowledge and analyzes that make it easier for media buyers, marketers and advertisers to understand consumer behavior and make data -controlled decisions. There are three outstanding media planning tools, each covering somewhat different aspects:
- catalyst is the main platform for media planners, which focuses on the analysis of consumer behavior.
- Activate campaign goals (act) Helps marketers to gain insights from the data and use them for campaigns.
- Branded catalyst Offers a tool for analyzing brand positioning and perception.
The companies that use MRI Simmons include Spotify, Coca-Cola, Dell and more.
Key features
- Usable reports and dashboards together
- Visual stories for a quick analysis
- Interactive quick reports
What I like: MRI-Simmons is a powerful segmentation tool with which you can find new target groups and follow trends. If you know your new audience, you can anticipate your behavior and attitudes and find the best ways to market your products or services to you. I love the integration of all three tools for a comprehensive approach for media planning and marketing.
Best for: Medium -sized companies at the company level.
13. Monday.com
Price: Free for up to 2 seats, limited functions; $ 9/seat/month for basic; $ 12/seat/month for standard; $ 19/seat/month for Pro; Contact for company prices.
Monday.com is an All-Encompassing tool with which you can plan your media and implement your audience in the best possible way. You can also use the task management functions to check your task list.
I used Monday for so many different types of projects, including content planning and management, ticketing systems, project management and creation of an internal marketing agency -and that is the tip of the iceberg.
Some options for how it can be used for your media planning:
- Campaign planning and management.
- Content and asset audits and cataloging.
- Media purchase and budgeting.
- Task management.
- Media plan tracking.
- Reporting – internally and for customers.
- Automation.
- Integration with media tools.
Since Monday is not specially designed for media planning, it is important to deal with a solid understanding of what you should do for you. It is an incredibly powerful and versatile tool – but without a solid plan it can be overwhelming.
If you choose this, make sure that you find out how you work, and then work with Monday or sketch your application with generative AI to get advice on the structure of your boards. In addition, you can select one of the templates on Monday and use it as a starting point.
Key features
- 200+ integrations
- Over 200 templates in different categories, including marketing, sales and much more.
- A central hub for data
- Comprehensive automations
- Several views, including table, calendar, Gantt diagram and more.
- Forms for data input and marketing/media inquiries
- Adaptable dashboards
What I like: It is an affordable instrument for media planning. Large companies such as Hulu, Canva and NHL use it to name just a few. I love how easy it is to use and adapt it. And between the support on Monday, the automation and the help of generative AI help, I found that it can do almost everything you need.
Best for: Companies of all sizes from solo turenders to companies that do not need the development of the audience and the target group and/or have a separate department for these lists.
Bonus resource: The paid media course of the Drift Kings Media Academy
The paid media course of the Drift Kings Media Academy is a great introduction to the media planning software.
It is perfect for all budgets and can enable you to develop paid media strategies and use the media on the consumer’s journey.
Plan your media strategy
While I realized that many of these media planning tools hide demos and pricing behind their sales team, this article should help you restrict you after functions and simplify your decision -making process.
As for the next thing? First decide which channels you want to use – from traditional advertising to social media. Secondly, think of your media planning objectives a tool with which you can keep several moving parts and data up to date, or would you like to find detailed insights from the audience (or both)?
If I used these decisions as objectively, I recommend visiting the above media planning instruments again to select which best matches your plan and either carry out your free test versions for a spin or plan demos with your sales teams.
Regardless of the media planning you choose, it should make life easier and enable you to focus more on strategy and less on busy work.
Note from the publisher: This post was originally published in April 2020 and updated for completeness.