• Reach: The ability of any medium to effectively reach people in any target audience tapers off at any point. This varies by medium, but anyone who has spent time with media modeling via tools like Telmar and IMS will see that, for most media types, there is a point of diminishing returns where it takes a significant increase in dollars to add more reach to the plan within the same medium. For many media types, that level is at 65-70% reach within the medium. Going from 70% reach in some media to 80% reach involves a significant incremental budget.

  And, while reach is being added, most of the weight is going against consumers who have already been exposed to the message an adequate number of times. Adding a second medium can often produce quantum leaps in target audience reach and better distribution of frequency.

  A good exercise if you have your entire budget in one medium is to take 1/3 of the budget and allocate it to the medium of second choice for your category and compare the resulting reach and effective reach results.

• Message distribution: Even the most effective piece of communication loses impact after a certain number of exposures. This is often referred to as burnout. A look at frequency distribution of the campaign will often shed light on the point of diminishing returns against your target.
• Communication characteristics: Different media have varied communications characteristics and relying on a single medium is often limiting. Media building blocks are needed to address many of a brand's goals. An example is when TV is the primary medium but is so expensive that a brand cannot afford TV all of the weeks of the year. For many advertisers, print is often used as the base media to provide continuity. Online has many characteristics of print in this scenario. Portal deals, keywords and other tactics can provide continuity of messaging at lower CPMs than TV. Also, like print, online provides significant weight against the lighter quintiles of TV viewing, reaching that upscale consumer who does not get enough frequency in most TV only campaigns.
• Target lifestyle: More and more media is consumed in an impressionistic manner. People gather bits of data from different sources to construct the whole picture. (See Mediasmith's Anvil from July 15, 2003 for more information on this.) This phenomenon is especially true among younger demographics. The same is true with advertising messages.
• Surround sound is a tactic that is often used to address the above lifestyle realities. With a surround sound strategy, the campaign attempts to reach the consumer at different points in their day e.g., morning radio or TV news, news, business, resource or shopping web sites during the day, out-of-home advertising during the afternoon commute and prime time or late night television. Through a strategy like this, each impression builds on the other by reaching the consumer in a different frame of reference and making each incremental impression more effective.

Both IMS and Telmar have the capability to provide research across all media. Most media people use these vendors to get information such as reach and frequency analyses for one or two media. The powerful optimizers and allocation models within these sources can be of great assistance in finding the right level of interactive within the overall media mix.

For decades, contextual placements have been the hallmark of many campaigns. For example, putting golf equipment ads on golf tournament TV shows and in golfing magazines.

The Web has a great availability of contextual placements. Today, in addition to buying ads from sites that are related to what you are selling, you can buy contextual keywords from organizations like Google and Sprinks who will place your advertising on other sites where there is related editorial.

Listing web addresses in ads (especially print) allows people to more fully explore a company's products, find store locations and get more product or service info. Advertisers often can start the sales process through such a prompt.

As mentioned above, you can reach light consumers of other media, especially television. A simple quintile analysis using MRI or Simmons data will show you this.

The Web is especially effective at reaching people during the day. In fact, it has been established that young, high income, high education consumers' total online media consumption exceeds that of TV. For more on this go to the Online Publisher's Association OPA Media Consumption Study from January of 2002.

Another factor is that the Web can reach people when they have actually started the buying process (i.e., looking for a car, planning a trip, buying a house, etc.). Much of this market is served either by search or by "in-market" sites, defined as the places on the Web that a given category of buyers go to for information prior to making a purchase. For example, in the automotive arena, The Kelly Blue Book site, Edmunds.com, AutoWeb, AutobyTel, Cars.com or MSN Auto are all scoured by many who are shopping for a new or used car or truck.

Standards are important. In the early days, the Internet industry had so many factions that standards were elusive. Today, there are many industry efforts working towards standardization. Groups like the ARF's Online Media Council (full disclosure, Dave Smith is chair of this council), the Media Ratings Council, the AAAA's, the IAB, the OPA, iMedia and other organizations are contributing to standards.

Some examples:

• The MRC, AAAA's and IAB announced on 9/24/03 their collaboration on the issuance of new, more detailed guidelines for interactive advertising campaign measurement (impression definition). See MediaPost's Media Daily News of 9/24/03 for the full story.
• The ARF continues to work with the research companies (UCMs), the third party ad servers (SCMs) and the media reporting companies like Telmar and IMS to study related issues and encourage standards. (See Online R/F and GRP series articles within MSN Agency Relations).
• Ad units: The major sites have worked with the IAB to standardize ad unit offerings. The Universal Ad Package is the latest example of this.
• Best practices: For more information on best practices work, click on best practices within the MSN Agency Advantage for a wealth of information and studies.

Many of the companies listed in this article are resource rich. If you do nothing but follow the links in this article and check out the resources on the various sites, you should have enough resources to last you a lifetime in the media business. Of course, there are other sites too.

Next month we'll get into the topics of ROI, payout and media efficacy.

With help from the expert, David L. Smith, we provide regular updates on developments in online reach/frequency. He'll help you understand the issues and how they affect your online media decisions.

		David L. Smith is President and CEO of Mediasmith, Inc. David L. Smith is a nationally known expert in the areas of new media application, media strategy and media planning. A thirty-nine year veteran in the advertising media management arena, Smith has a major involvement in national committee work to establish and refine standards in metrics, business practices and financial issues for Interactive advertising with organizations such as the AAAAs, IAB, OPA and the ARF. He currently chairs the Online Media Council for the ARF. A University of Washington graduate, Smith is married with a twelve-year-old son; plays guitar; and is a gourmet Chinese cook. He is an active member of the Board of Directors for the San Francisco Boys Chorus. You'll find him at the office early most mornings unless he is traveling with his family.
	Karen T. McFee is Executive Vice President of Mediasmith, Inc. Karen T. McFee has twenty-five years of experience in advertising media management with Foote, Cone and Belding, Ketchum Advertising and Hawk Media. As Executive Vice President of Mediasmtih, Inc. Karen has become a recognized expert in optimizing the execution of media to secure the best of what's available for the client. Her account experience includes retail, food, business-to-business, apparel, travel, entertainment, media and technology with broad expertise across all media categories. Karen is a graduate of Northern Illinois University, is married with one child, and enjoys travel and photography in her free time.