Microsoft Excel Training for Individuals and Companies

Excel in the Media Industry

Microsoft Excel is still the default application for campaign administration, reporting, and analysis for 8 out of 10 media planners.

It’s hard to think that billions of ad dollars are being managed and evaluated on spreadsheets in a desktop environment in an era of big data, programmatic buying, and multi-channel media optimization. How is this conceivable when advertisers are under pressure to increase their return on investment and the cloud is brimming with enterprise-class data management, ad serving integration, and operational tools?

One cause could be that a large portion of the marketing budget is committed to cost-plus advertising companies. It’s a stretch to claim that these 21st-century Mad Men are rewarded for inefficiency but addressing workflow issues is often a lower priority when entry-level media planners are the ones getting ‘marked-up’ and experiencing the pain.

Another reason for the reliance on spreadsheet solutions is perceived customisation requirements, which result in client-specific media plan formats and templates. Customizing a media strategy for a specific client’s demands is a nice thing, but it’s generally done for a single channel, which limits multi-channel optimization options. Despite the fact that media performance should not be judged in isolation, the interdependence of many channels is sometimes overlooked or overlooked for a variety of reasons.

For starters, many companies are still built in such a way that they rely on the core capabilities of subject matter experts for each traditional channel, rather than having a central hub to manage the media mix. Second, optimization is easy to preach about but difficult to implement. Because there are too many variables to manage without a statistical tool that can rapidly process vast volumes of data, effective multi-channel marketing integration and optimization is unlikely to occur on a desktop platform. The variables include not just the results by channel and their interconnections, but also external factors such as the economy, seasonality, and competition, among others.

It’s no surprise that so many planners are still spreadsheet addicts, given the independence of media departments and the expensive cost and complications of successful multi-channel optimization. Let’s not forget that Excel has its own set of advantages. Excel is among the greatest multi-purpose business applications ever created, and it is as easy as 1-2-3; thanks to Lotus, which should be remembered for its origination and early innovation.

Among the millions of people who use Excel on a daily basis are media planners, financial analysts, operations and sales managers. Here are some reasons why the app has persisted and prospered in a time when cloud-based SaaS and high-tech rivals are exploding:

• It’s simple. Spreadsheet cells are similar to building blocks, having the same fundamental ABCs and 123s labels as the popular toy ABCs and 123s. This allows the user to break down a complicated problem or build a solution one step at a time.

• It’s adaptable. We live in an era of constant commoditization, which has resulted in a higher demand for differentiation. Custom client reporting has become a commodity in and of itself, with many marketers realising that the way the numbers are presented is frequently just as essential as the actual outcomes. Adding new calculations, appending data, and running metadata analysis may all be done on the fly without involving an IT staff.

• It’s clever. Excel delivers solutions. Goal seek, solver, and scenario manager are built-in tools that provide layman answers for decision sciences. With “no linear programming knowledge required,” business leaders, financial managers, and marketers may make smarter decisions and optimise results. If you’re not familiar with these features, consider utilising goal seek to optimise for a single variable to shift your mindset from “what if” to “what is.”

• It’s a visual experience. Excel offers charts and graphs for almost any situation, and they’re simple to create and attach to PowerPoint for client presentations. The presenter’s integrity is occasionally tested by this freedom in visualisation. A modification in the minimum y-axis value, for example, can turn a 5% revenue increase into a skyscraper – so be careful!

• It is transportable. Another advantage of a spreadsheet file is its portability. The spreadsheet designer can collaborate online and share their knowledge and bespoke tools with the rest of the globe. This can be done without the limits of a secure application, but you should be prepared to hand over your intellectual property.

Excel may be utilised for campaign flight optimization and successful administration of online ad expenditures by digital media planners with a little VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) scripting support—but only to a degree. It provides just enough features for basic analytics and pivot tables for on-the-fly data collection and analysis. Even these examples barely scratch the surface of what the software can accomplish for those who grasp it. With all of these tangible advantages, why should there be any doubt about Excel’s future in media planning? With direct mail marketing, the spreadsheet heritage is likely to remain for a long, but new interactive advertising techniques are quickly gaining traction. Excel is not a long-term option for planning online display ads, just as it is not a long-term answer for managing search engine marketing campaigns. If the advertisement, distribution, device, and measurement are all digitised, the process is projected to become programmed in the future.

Because brand marketers continue to drive agencies to cut costs and improve performance, being compensated for inefficiency (due to a cost-plus pricing model) is only transitory. Agencies that adopt systematic ways and new technologies to improve workflow will, predictably, be freed from the labor-intensive spreadsheet solutions that rob interactive media planners of their creative time and strategic thinking.