Today, with the further diversification of advertising vehicles and media, the job of media planning and buying becomes much more complicated and much more significant for advertisers' wellbeing. Now, when even smaller local advertisers have such a variety of different media to choose from, the adequacy of such media planning may greatly affect the success of their overall advertising campaigns. Therefore, many companies before they ever engage into media buying carry out thorough media research planning activities, trying to discover all the peculiarities, benefits and shortcomings of placing their advertisements on different media. Without the precise knowledge of strong and weak sides of every advertising vehicle, advertisers would not simply be able to make proper decisions on media buying. Therefore, let us take a closer look at the process of media research planning.

Some time ago, when such media as television or printed editions were able to reach much more consolidated consumer audiences, the task of media buyers was very easy. They would simply detect which one of these media reached the largest segments of companies' target audiences and correlated it with the price for their advertising space. In this way they would setup the priorities for media planning and buying.

However, now a great number of new advertising opportunities, such as interactive online advertising, internet publicity and media kits, video catalogs, wireless communications, etc. have emerged. Moreover, in the television, radio and printed edition media we can also see some significant changes. Most of these advertising vehicles now reach only some specific segments of target audiences. Such segmentation has both benefits and shortcomings for advertisers, since now they have to do more of the media research planning, and the prices at some of such specialized media advertising are higher than they used to be before. Nevertheless, now advertisers can carry out more targeted ad campaigns, though in order to do it, they need to obtain a more thorough evaluation and analysis of the efficiency of every such advertising media capabilities. Thus, the goal of media research planning is to determine values and efficiency of such advertising media. Nonetheless, the mass coverage and prices of ad spots can no longer be used as the only criteria for the evaluation.

All of these presently used advertising vehicles have their own specific strong sides, which limit and regulate their efficiency. Some of them fit well for more emotional advertising, while the others add to your advertising a touch of glamour and respectability. Some of them provide a high level of interactivity and feedback, while the others enable you to communicate with your consumers in a more personal way. Some of them may reach large segments of your target audiences, while the others provide you with more targeted or b2b advertising. All these special media qualities have to be researched and taken into consideration before you can go ahead and plan a successful advertising campaign.