The End of Media “Planning”

I think it’s time media planning should finally die — or at least evolve beyond recognition.

In a world where attention is fragmented and consumers act before they think, the traditional approach to media planning isn’t just outdated — it’s actively counterproductive. It’s a relic from an era when people watched the same shows, visited the same websites, and followed a linear path to purchase.

Today, the job isn’t to “plan” media. It’s to design systems that listen, adapt, and influence in real-time. This requires rethinking everything– from briefs to budgets.

1. Campaigns Are a Lie We Tell Ourselves
We still talk about campaigns like they matter. We build launch dates, media bursts, wrap-up reports. But the reality is that most consumers don’t see the start or end of a campaign. They see fragments — an ad in the middle of a podcast, a TikTok remix, a review on Reddit. They interact with brands not in bursts, but in drips.

Campaigns are a fiction of control while the current reality is chaos. The better model is always-on influence ecosystems — where brands don’t speak at people, but exist in the fabric of culture, tech, and daily decision-making.

2. Planning Assumes Stability — But Consumers Are Shape-Shifters
Some still build plans based on audience segments: “urban millennials,” “affluent parents,” “eco-conscious Gen Z.” These segments are comforting but useless. The same person can act like four different consumers in one day — frugal in the morning, indulgent at night, eco-warrior over the weekend, impulse buyer during lunch.

We simply cannot pretend static personas are the reality. We should embrace behavioral fluidity, taking into account digital and behavioral signals. We need systems that respond to mindsets — not static segments — guided by signals like time of day, mood, weather, interests and search intent.

3. Buying Attention Is Cheap. Earning Memory Is Hard.
The advertising industry has become addicted to what’s measurable: CPMs, ROAS, click-throughs. But the real job isn’t exposure. It’s encoding memory to build association with Category Entry Points.

Most media plans optimise for the moment. Few optimise for the moment that matters later — when someone is in the aisle, in the app, or in the mood. Great advertising creates mental associations, not just short-term clicks.

This means we need to stop obsessing over performance dashboards and start planning for long-term and mid-term mental availability.

Instead of constantly asking “Did it convert?” we need to ask- “Will it be remembered when it counts?”

4. Media and Creative are siblings waiting to be reunited!
The wall between media and creative has become dangerous. Today’s most effective work doesn’t separate “where it appears” from “what it says.” The message is the media.

Media environments shape perception: A brand on LinkedIn says something different than that same brand on Discord. A pre-roll on YouTube is not the same as an Instagram story. The future of advertising is bringing back the contextual creativity we once had in the offline channels (ie. OOH vs. Print vs. TV) but apply it to all the platforms we are now on.

Media must be the bridge between data, platforms and creatives.

5. Forget Channels. Build Influence Loops.
Consumers don’t go through a funnel, they are constantly in a messy loop of discovery, distraction, delay, and decision. A tweet might trigger a YouTube search. A friend’s Tiktok might lead to a purchase on Amazon three weeks later.

Brands need to think like influence engineers: mapping the micro-moments, conversations, and nudges that shape choice. This requires orchestration, not sequencing. Distribution, not interruption.

In Conclusion
People don’t owe brands attention. The best strategy going forward? Be useful. Be entertaining. Be unforgettable.

In a world where media is infinite and attention is finite, our job is no longer to plan media. It’s to design adaptive systems of influence — systems that work even when we’re not watching, that compound over time, and that leave a trace in the consumer’s mind,

The future of media isn’t about reach or frequency. It’s about influence. We shouldn’t try to fill in a media plan, we need to build a system of influence.