Compared with traditional media, online media pros have to use more of what little time is available when planning a particular campaign.

When I first started in media planning, I was planning print and broadcast, and at that time, while the internet existed as an advertising vehicle, it was still just a twinkle in the eye of the beholder.

For a print campaign, the planning would start at least four months before the first page was scheduled to run. You worked nine-to-five each day going through proposals and putting together flow charts, merchandising calendars and the like. The processes of print planning and buying are so well established now that there is little in the way of surprise and everything goes fairly smoothly, leaving little to the imagination and requiring little serious mental and physical energy on the part of the planner or buyer.

Back then, for broadcast, our planning cycles could be up to nine months out. You gathered costs, ranked programming, determined the appropriate ratings levels to achieve your communications delivery goals (i.e. reach and frequency) and then you bought the stuff. In a couple of weeks, you could have a plan done, approved and bought and would have spent 10 million dollars during a phone call. As far as that client was concerned, your work was done until it was time to post it. 

In traditional media, much of the time planners and buyers have a great deal more time to get things done and prepped for a campaign. But more often than not, online media planners and buyers are given just a couple of weeks to get a plan together, from the first call from the client through to the first banner being served. While they should be given more time, online still frequently gets the short shift, either because it's done with computers that clients think are all just a matter of keystrokes, or because it is an advertising afterthought.

Because of this, online media planners and buyers have to use more of what little time is available for planning and buying media for a particular campaign. If you've got only two weeks to get a campaign up and running and you've only just gotten the media brief, the time you do have between the receipt of the brief and the loading of creative into your third party ad server of choice is spent thinking about how to best produce an online campaign, or how to solve your client's communications challenge.

If you are a client, the next time you think your agency might not be doing enough for you, or if you feel that the person working on your business might not be giving you the time and attention you feel is needed, review the following list:

1. The shower: This is the most common place where folks working on your business think about your business. The problem is that the time spent there isn't very long, but it is solitary and focused. Also, the friction on the skin relaxes the mind, the water temperature promotes water's self-ionization properties, and letting the body absorb a bit more oxygen is what's needed to get the brain working.
2. Commuting: On the train or the bus is another fine time to think about what needs to be done for the campaign, if you aren't going to read. You can zone out and contemplate new ideas or reflect on tasks.  David Ogilvy once advised that the best ideas come from the subconscious, and in order to have an active subconscious, you need to feed it. So, maybe reading something other than your client's marketing objectives is a good idea after all.
3. In other meetings: This may not seem like the best time to be working on media planning, but there are so many new things to keep up with, and we have to attend something like four times as many meetings as your typical traditional media planner. So, you take the time you have, which again, is every moment in a short schedule of moments. More than once I've written down a list of comprehensive communications concepts, site lists for RFPs or phone calls that need to be made while in a meeting.
4. 11 p.m. to 1 a.m., 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. and the minutes in between: This is my least favorite time of day to be thinking about media planning and buying, but it is often an inevitability. At first, it's near the end of the day, after working, working some more, having dinner, and then a glass of wine or a drink or two to chill out. But then it is while you're in bed trying to fall asleep. Then it's when you wake up to go to the bathroom and can't help but start working on your client's problem. And when you wake up… there's the client's business, sitting right at the top of mind!

Online media planners are always working on a client's business, in or out of the office. With cellphones and BlackBerries, they are able to communicate their ideas and thoughts to their team or their client at all times. It could be that the difference between online media planning and traditional media planning is simply Parkinson’s Law in action, which states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."

So, planning national broadcast TV takes nine months because you have nine months. And online takes two weeks because you are given two weeks.  But let's face it, it takes a reach/frequency run and a calendar to plan network TV, even though it can be done in a few hours. Online needs a lot more time but doesn't get it. The online planner is taking every moment he or she can get. 

Media Strategies Editor Jim Meskauskas is vice president and director of online media for ICON International, Inc. an Omnicom Company. Read full bio.