Let’s get one thing straight—media planning isn’t just about throwing ads into the void and hoping for the best. In 2025, the brands winning the media game are the ones with razor-sharp strategy, data-backed decisions, and the agility to pivot when the market shifts (which it always does).
So why do so many brands still treat media strategy like an afterthought? According to WARC, brands that invest in a long-term, well-structured media plan see a 38% higher ROI than those that don’t. Meanwhile, a poorly planned media campaign can lead to wasted spend, audience fatigue, and worst of all, zero brand impact.
If your brand’s media plan feels like it was written in 2019 (or worse, on the back of a napkin last week), it’s time for a serious refresh.
Why do most media strategies fail?
Here are the three main reasons why most media plans fail before they even start: outdated thinking, weak foundations, and a lack of agility. These issues aren’t always obvious at first glance – on paper, many plans look solid. But scratch beneath the surface, and cracks quickly appear. If a strategy isn’t built to match how consumers behave today, isn’t grounded in robust data, or can’t flex when the market demands it, the results will be underwhelming at best and disastrous at worst.
Individually, each one of these flaws can weaken a campaign’s potential; combined, they almost guarantee that even the best creative or the biggest budget won’t deliver the impact brands expect. Recognising and addressing these challenges upfront is the first step toward building a smarter, sharper, and more resilient media strategy that actually drives business outcomes:
1. The “Set and Forget” Mentality
A media plan that isn’t built to adapt is a media plan that’s already dead. Consumer behaviour shifts constantly, and if your strategy isn’t flexible enough to adjust in real time, you’re wasting budget on eyeballs that have already moved elsewhere.
✅ Winning Media Strategy: Agile media planning that uses real-time performance data to adjust spend, channels, and creative based on what’s actually working. Each channel has a purpose and defined goals as well as overall campaign goals where each layer of the campaign delivers its part towards holistic and tangible outcome.
🚫 Losing Strategy: A six-month static media plan with no optimisations, no adjustments, and no chance of success.
2. Over-Reliance on a Single Channel or Platform
Some brands put all their eggs in one media basket—pouring everything into Meta, Google, or one “hot” platform. But media consumption is more fragmented than ever. 95% of consumers use at least three digital channels before making a purchase, and multi-channel campaigns perform 250% better than single-channel ones (Source: Think With Google).
✅ Winning Media Strategy: A diversified media mix that is built to deliver specifically on the campaign objectives including media channels such Display, Social, CTV, OOH, Audio, and even emerging platforms like retail media networks.
🚫 Losing Strategy: “We see short-term performance through Google so let’s all invest there.”
3. Ignoring Measurement & Attribution
If you’re not measuring performance properly, you might as well be burning cash. Yet, only 52% of marketers feel confident in their ability to measure cross-channel campaign impact (Source: Nielsen).
✅ Winning Media Strategy: Using multi-touch attribution, incrementality testing, and AI-powered analytics to understand which channels drive real conversions.
🚫 Losing Strategy: Relying on last-click attribution, which ignores 95% of the consumer journey and gives all the credit to the last touchpoint.
How to Build a Smart Media Strategy
Want to stop guessing and start growing?
Here’s the blueprint for crafting a high-performance media strategy that is future proof, one that’s truly aligned to business impact, not just media activity. You’ll also find some useful examples below.
Step 1: Get Clear on Your Business Goals (Not Just Media KPIs)
It sounds simple, but it’s where most brands and even seasoned marketers fall short. Too often, media strategies are built around easy-to-track KPIs like impressions, CTRs, CPMs, or video completion rates.
But these numbers only tell part of the story. They measure activity, not impact.
A truly effective media strategy starts by working backwards from the business goal.
Here are some questions to ask:
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Are you trying to increase revenue by a specific percentage?
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Boost average customer lifetime value?
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Expand into a new market or drive trial among a new audience segment?
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Steal market share from a competitor?
Once the business objectives are locked in, every media decision – channel selection, budget allocation, creative messaging, audience targeting – should ladder up to achieving them.
Example of clear business goals:
Instead of setting a CPM target like “$10 CPM across display,” frame your objective around true business impact.
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Acquire new customers at a cost of less than $50 each.
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Drive a 15% lift in brand consideration among 18–34-year-olds within six months.
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Increase repeat purchase rate by 20% through retargeting and loyalty-focused messaging.
This forces smarter choices. It encourages media teams to optimise not just for maximising impressions but for meaningful outcomes like sales, sign-ups, loyalty, or lifetime value.
Step 2: Map Out the Customer Journey
It’s not enough to know who your audience is. You need to understand how they move, where they spend their time, and what triggers their decisions at every stage.
Smart media strategies are built around a customer-first journey that delivers the right message at the right time, in the right place.
That means mapping every phase of the buying process and aligning your media channels and creative strategy accordingly.
Example of a strategic media journey:
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Top of Funnel (Awareness): Use high-impact, broad-reach channels to grab attention and spark interest – think Video, High-Impact Display, OOH, Cinema.
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Mid-Funnel (Consideration): Shift to channels that enable deeper storytelling and engagement – like Connected TV (CTV), Native Advertising, Podcasts, and Influencer partnerships.
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Bottom of Funnel (Conversion): Focus on direct response and action-driving tactics – Search, Paid Social, Programmatic Retargeting, and Shopping Ads.
The key is precision and creating a seamless journey. Audiences today expect seamless experiences. If your messaging or media touchpoints feel disjointed or random, you’ll lose them long before the purchase decision.
A cohesive, well-sequenced strategy improves brand trust and dramatically boosts conversion rates.
Step 3: Balance Brand & Performance Media
Short-term performance marketing gets instant clicks and will optimise towards short term conversion goals, so if you ignore brand building, your long-term growth will eventually flatline.
There is no secret formula for the right balance of brand vs performance investment. Les Binet & Peter Field’s research claimed that a winning media strategy balances:
- 60% brand investment (awareness, storytelling, OOH, CTV, display)
- 40% performance media (search, retargeting, programmatic, shoppable ads)
Other experts such as Professor Bryan Sharp claim that there are much more complex nuances to the idea split. At Bench Media we think there is no one formula that should be applied. Instead, we look at a range of metrics and the goals of each client, competitors, strength of offering, audience segments, industry and many more to determine the ideal media investment and channel mix. We also constantly evaluate and modify this mix as the campaign progresses.
At Bench Media, we don’t believe in applying a one-size-fits-all rule.
We build custom strategies based on:
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Business stage (startup, challenger, established leader)
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Audience segments and buying habits
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Industry trends and competitive dynamics
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Brand equity strength vs. market penetration goals
We also constantly track performance signals and adjust the brand/performance split dynamically throughout the campaign lifecycle to maximise both short-term ROI and long-term brand equity.
Step 4: Test, Measure & Optimise Ruthlessly
Even the best media plan is just a hypothesis until it meets the real world.
The difference between average and high-performance media strategies? Relentless testing and real-time optimisation.
Modern media campaigns should operate like a live laboratory:
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A/B test creatives, messaging angles, formats, and audiences.
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Use real-time data to shift spend toward top-performing channels, placements, and audience segments.
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Run incrementality tests to separate true business-driving impact from “vanity” metrics like impressions or clicks that don’t move the needle.
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Leverage attribution modelling to understand cross-channel synergies, not just last-click performance.
Final Thought: The Agencies That Get It, Win.
The best brands don’t just “do media buying”, they partner with agencies that live and breathe media strategy.
At Bench Media, we build media strategies that don’t just keep up with the market – they push brands ahead of it.
✅ Need a smarter, more strategic media plan? Let’s chat.
