Five Questions to Ask Before Approving a Digital Media Plan
Start with the audience, objective, market, measurement plan, and what role each channel is supposed to play.
Most media plans get approved because they look complete, not because every line item has been pressure-tested. A plan with five channels, a tidy budget table, and a launch date feels finished. Whether it is actually a good plan is a different question, and it usually comes down to five things that are easy to skip past in a proposal deck.
1. Who, specifically, are we trying to reach?
"Adults 25–54 in the local market" is a targeting parameter, not an audience. A real answer names the actual person: what they are worried about, what would make them stop scrolling, and what stage of the decision they are in when they see the ad. If nobody can describe that person in a sentence, the campaign is probably going to be built around the channel instead of the customer.
2. What do we want them to do?
Call, request a quote, book an appointment, sign up, visit a location — the action matters, because it decides everything downstream: what the ad should say, what the landing page should do, and what counts as a win. A plan that cannot name the intended action in one sentence usually cannot measure success in one number either.
3. Where can we reach them efficiently?
"Efficiently" is doing a lot of work in that question. A channel can reach the right audience and still be the wrong choice if the cost to reach them there is out of proportion to what the business earns from a converted customer. This is where market-specific competition matters: two businesses in the same category can have completely different search costs, media availability, or geographic reach depending on who else is bidding in that market.
4. What will we actually measure?
Not "what can the platform report" — what will actually get checked, on what schedule, and what decision it will trigger. A dashboard nobody opens is not measurement. Before a plan launches, it is worth writing down the two or three numbers that will decide whether to keep, change, or kill each channel, and when that decision will be made.
5. What role is each channel supposed to play?
Every channel in a mix should have a job. Search captures people already looking. Display and streaming build familiarity before they search. Geofencing and out-of-home connect a campaign to real-world places. Email keeps a business in front of people who already raised their hand. If a channel is in the plan and nobody can explain what job it is doing that the other channels are not already doing, that is usually the first place to cut.
Putting it together
None of these questions require special expertise to ask — they just require someone to ask them before the budget is spent instead of after. A media plan that can answer all five in plain language is usually a media plan built around the business. One that cannot is usually a media plan built around a channel list.
Talk it through with a strategist, not a form.
Tell us what you are trying to accomplish and where you are spending today. We will help you figure out the right next step.