Bionic just released new software that enables you to build your own custom media planning system. You can now easily customize Bionic’s media investment management platform to meet the unique needs of your organization, your clients, and each of your campaigns.

Best of all, you can do all this without breaking the rules of running a diligent media buying operation. That’s because Bionic comes pre-built with all the transparency, accountability, and control you need for proper media governance.

With Bionic, you get the best of both worlds: flexibility and control.

The ‘Standard Media Plan’ is Extinct

Back in the days before digital, media plans all looked pretty much the same.  The media vehicles, the quantities, and the rates varied, but there was a standard set of data in each plan: flight dates, vendor, product, the number of spots, gross rating points, reach, frequency and total price. Media plans were simple and standardized.

Today, however, media plans are very different.  Digital advertising has introduced entirely new metrics and KPIs.  The complex media supply chain has introduced myriad costs to track. Every new media channel requires a different workflow.  With all this variability, you need more flexible ways to input and store data, and you need a reliable system to get that data where it needs to go.

Today’s media plans are like snowflakes: no two are alike. Every campaign has unique objectives. Every advertiser has individual needs. Every advertising agency has its own standards and procedures.

Yesterday’s Media Planning Software is Obsolete

Unfortunately, most media planning software is one size fits all. It was built for a simpler time when all media plans were standard format. These old systems don’t allow you to adapt to each new situation. They try to force you into a solution that simply doesn’t work anymore. This lack of flexibility is the main reason why many media planners turn to Microsoft Excel to create media plans.

Media Planning in Excel is Obsolete

Excel gives you flexibility, but its greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. When using Excel, you end up with a mess of inconsistent spreadsheets scattered throughout the organization. This will never pass a media audit because it lacks the transparency, accountability, and control required of media buying in the Post-K2 world.

Bionic Gives You Both Flexibility and Control

Unlike traditional media planning software, Bionic enables you to customize your media plans to exactly fit the needs of each client and each campaign. Unlike Excel, Bionic provides transparency, accountability, and control and gives you a squeaky-clean database of standardized media investment data.

Go Beyond Basic Media Planning with Bionic

With Bionic, you get more than basic media planning software – you get a full-fledged media investment management system right out of the box, which includes media planning, project management, and performance monitoring. In addition, Bionic gives you the ability to customize the interface to meet the unique needs of your organization, each of your clients, and each of your campaigns.

Bionic enables you to:

  • Customize Costing Structures – You can set up and itemize media costs to provide complete transparency of the entire media supply chain.
  • Customize KPIs – You can establish your key performance indicators, automatically calculate your goals, and break it all down into a daily plan.
  • Customize Workflow – You can set up custom workflows to ensure that no important tasks are overlooked.
  • Customize Media Plan Data – You can extend the media planning interface with any number of custom fields which can then be fed into your proprietary media analysis database.
  • Customize Naming Conventions – You can specify how to automatically construct placement names and Tracking URLs.
  • Customize with Structured Data Types – You can add fields with structured data types such as money, dates, numbers, and picklists.
  • Customize with Unstructured Data – You can also add unstructured text fields for any other media plan data you want to store and share through your media investment database

No Tools or Special Skills Required

Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a computer scientist to create your own custom media planning system with Bionic. In fact, no special skills are required to customize the software.

With Bionic, you get a powerful administrative interface that guides you through creating your custom system. In your advertiser settings, you can indicate which of your customizations apply to each of your advertisers.  In your campaign settings, you can modify your customizations to fit the needs of each situation.

You can also create reusable customizations through campaign templates.

Open Your Media Planning Makerspace Today

If you are already using Bionic, you have automatically received the upgrade that comes with your subscription. For strategic guidance, contact your consultant. For software support, contact Bionic Customer care.

If you are not yet using Bionic, you can learn more about the software, get pricing, see a demo, and request a trial on our website here: https://www.bionic-ads.com/agencies/

Webinar Recording

On July 23, 2018 at 2:00 PM Eastern, Casey McClay and Joe Pych held a webinar for customers showing off this new functionality. You can watch a recording of the webinar below.