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- Over 70% of marketers now use media planning tools to coordinate campaigns across different platforms.
- Media planning platforms with AI help improve decisions by predicting how well campaigns will do.
- Agencies that use advanced marketing planning software spend up to 40% less time on manual tasks.
- Brands that only use spreadsheets are more likely to have budget problems and inconsistent messaging.
- Tools that allow teams to work together in real-time make campaigns faster and reduce delays.
Marketing campaigns now use social media, email, video, search, and influencer marketing. So, it’s almost impossible to create a connected strategy without advanced tools. Media planning tools and marketing planning software are now key for creating advertising plans based on data that work on different channels. In this guide, we explain what makes a media planning tool truly useful and look at the best choices on the market in 2024. This will help you pick one that fits your business needs. 
What Makes a Good Media Planning Tool in 2024?
The current media world is complex, quick, and full of data. To do well, media planning tools need to do more than just schedule ads. They must act as central places that support the whole campaign process, from research and planning to running and checking results. Here’s what the best tools provide
Centralized Campaign Management
Keeping track of many campaigns across different channels is risky if you do it by hand. Good media planning software provides a single place to see, track, and manage different platforms (from social media to TV) in real time. This gives marketing teams clear oversight.
Collaboration Features
Whether you work with an internal marketing team, agencies, or freelancers, working together is important. Top tools have shared calendars, approval steps, comment areas for materials, version control, and real-time alerts. All of these are made to make teamwork easier.
Target Audience Insights and Segmentation
Good advertising strategy isn’t created without information. The right media planner includes market research, profiles of audience interests, and audience behavior. This helps you target your campaigns closely for better results and return on investment.
Budget Management with ROI Tracking
A good media planning platform lets you set, watch, and change ad spending across channels. It should show you details of your cost-per-click (CPC), views, engagement, and other key numbers. This helps you stay within budget and get better value for your money.
Marketing Automation
Automation makes media planning even better. Marketing planning software should reduce manual work, whether it’s sending reminders to upload creative content, making performance reports, or scheduling ads automatically. This lets teams focus on strategy.
Tool and Platform Integrations
Your media planner should easily connect with CRMs (like HubSpot or Salesforce), ad managers (Google Ads, Meta Ads), analytics software (like GA4), creative tools (like Canva or Adobe Creative Cloud), and even email platforms. The result? A set of tech tools that work together, not separately.
Scalability and Flexibility
Whether you’re running one campaign or handling campaigns across many channels for lots of clients, the best platforms can grow with your business. This includes user permissions, custom reports, support for different languages, and features to manage resources.
The 13 Best Media Planning Tools (and Why They Work)
Here are some of the best software tools for creating and running a strong advertising strategy in 2024. Each tool has a key strength, such as AI to target audiences or very precise budget control.
Bionic
- Price: $995/month for up to 5 users
- Best for: Agencies and mid-sized companies managing many clients or campaigns
Bionic is a strong platform made for media buyers. It helps simplify the complex process of managing ad placements on TV, online, in print, and more. With features like KPI tracking, automated RFPs, insertion orders (IOs), and flowcharts, it’s a complete tool that publishing teams depend on.
What makes it great: Bionic provides unlimited training and customer support. This makes sure teams can get started quickly and work more efficiently without unexpected costs.
SRDS Media Planning Platform
- Price: Contact for pricing
- Best for: Large brands that need detailed media research and targeting data
SRDS is a powerful source of media data. It gathers media rates, contact information, and audience details for TV, radio, online, and print. By putting many media directory functions in one platform, it helps marketers create well-researched plans that reach the most people and reduce wasted spending.
What makes it great: Built-in contact information and placement details give advertisers all they need to quickly create detailed media proposals.
Media Plan HQ
- Price: $45/user/month (minimum 3 users); 30-day free trial
- Best for: Small teams that want to stop using Excel for media planning
Media Plan HQ is an easy-to-use tool that combines campaign planning, creative approvals, and calendar views. Its detailed breakdowns of purchases and status tracking make it good for smaller agencies that often update plans for different channels.
What makes it great: Built-in approvals, creative deadline management, and reports for clients save hours every month on coordination and communication.
Mediatool
- Price: Contact for pricing
- Best for: Mid-sized companies that want one main source of campaign information
Mediatool is used in many countries and acts as a live strategy document for tracking performance. It has detailed user permissions, allows live feedback, and uses AI to predict results. This helps teams make changes based on data during a campaign.
What makes it great: Built-in AI helps speed up getting media insights and spot performance trends quickly.
Quantcast
- Price: Free 30-day trial; contact for full access
- Best for: Performance marketers who want insights that can grow and cookieless tracking
Quantcast handles predictive planning with real-time analysis using AI and machine learning. It watches sites without using cookies and helps advertisers target audiences based on what they intend to do, page content, and how they engage. It also respects privacy.
What makes it great: Its planning tool, Quantcast Planner, lets marketers test how campaigns might perform across different groups, devices, and platforms before spending any money.
BasisAutomate+
- Price: Contact for pricing
- Best for: Large internal marketing teams that need joined-up media action plans
Basis makes it simpler to buy and manage media across platforms. It helps plan media, manage placements, track campaign KPIs, and create detailed performance reports, all from one platform.
What makes it great: It can bring together paid search, direct digital buys, and programmatic buying in one simple interface. This provides huge scalability and saves a lot of time.
Proximic by Comscore
- Price: Contact for pricing
- Best for: Marketers who focus on privacy and contextual targeting
As cookieless solutions become more important after 2023, Proximic offers contextual and predictive advertising. It uses real-time page analysis and machine learning.
What makes it great: It lets ads appear in safe places for brands while reaching relevant audiences without tracking individual users.
Nielsen Media Planning Suite
- Price: Contact for pricing
- Best for: Companies running campaigns across TV, online, and OTT
Nielsen is still a very trusted source of data for media effectiveness. It helps with comparing against competitors, building audience profiles, and planning reach and frequency across different media types.
What makes it great: It offers modern features to measure multi-touch attribution while still providing very detailed data for traditional media.
Scarborough by Nielsen
- Price: Contact for pricing
- Best for: Marketers serving regional and local target markets
Scarborough looks closely at data at the city and local area level. It tracks trends like sports viewing or spending habits. It’s very useful for dealerships, retail chains, medical groups, or service businesses running local campaigns.
What makes it great: It provides very specific, local targeting options that can greatly improve conversion rates in a region.
MRI-Simmons
- Price: Contact for pricing
- Best for: Brands that need detailed audience interests and lifestyle groups
MRI-Simmons is excellent because of its ACT platform. It lets marketers deeply examine audiences’ values, social concerns, reasons for buying, and habits. It’s ideal for creating audience profiles that go beyond basic details.
What makes it great: Its performance data has driven campaign decisions at big brands like Spotify, Dell, and Clorox.
Monday.com
- Price: Free for 2 users; Paid plans start at $9/seat/month
- Best for: Small teams creating media trackers and campaign boards from scratch
Monday.com isn’t just for media planning, but it’s flexible enough to create custom workflows for budget tracking, creative timelines, content scheduling, and rollouts across platforms.
What makes it great: It’s used across different departments, which makes it great for smaller businesses that want a marketing planning tool and project manager in one.
How to Choose the Right Media Planning Software
When you look at these choices, ask yourself
- What are the biggest problems for your team right now—working together, getting insights, or staying organized?
- Are you managing lots of campaigns at once or focusing on fewer, bigger ones?
- Do you need audience insights to guide your strategy, or is running campaigns smoothly your main issue?
- How ready are you to grow? Will your current tool handle 2x or 10x growth in campaigns?
Most importantly, make sure to try out or get a demo of every media planning product you are seriously considering. Marketing planning software is not one-size-fits-all. Trying it yourself will quickly show how well it fits your work style and goals.
Final Thoughts: The Best Tools by Use Case
For SMBs
Affordable, flexible tools like Media Plan HQ, Monday.com, and Mediatool help smaller teams stay quick and in control.
For Agencies
Complex, multi-channel management is best handled by Bionic, SRDS, and Quantcast, especially when quick changes and reporting are needed.
For Enterprises and Global Brands
Solutions like Basis, Nielsen, and MRI-Simmons are great for alignment across teams, integrations in different regions, and analytics for executives.
Whether you work alone or manage global advertising strategy, the right tool will lead to better decisions, smoother operations, and higher return on investment.
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