Optimising Your Product Packages and Media Plans

When working on proposals for media agencies, publishers face significant costs in pitching for work. The competitive tender process means that for every proposal submitted, there is a high likelihood that it will not be chosen, leading to sunk costs in terms of time and effort.

Understanding Win Rates

Publishers typically operate with a win rate of 10-25% for proposals. This may seem low, but visualising the probability of success helps clarify why:

Number of Publishers Briefed	Likelihood of Budget Being Pulled	Prospective Win Rate
1	40%	60%
2	30%	35%
3	20%	20%
4	15%	14%
5	10%	12%

This table assumes that as more partners are briefed, the likelihood of budget cuts decreases, based on the expectation that larger briefs indicate more confirmed budgets. In contrast, when a brand or agency briefs only one publisher, the budget may be less certain and the request more exploratory. While this isn’t always the case, it illustrates how publishers consistently face the risk of losing briefs due to budget reductions or cancellations.

These figures illustrate the value of improving your conversion rate. Small improvements to your proposal can significantly increase your chances of securing a campaign.

Optimising Your Media Plan

To make your media plan as effective as possible, focus on:

Clearly Showcasing Value

Itemise and showcase all inclusions and media deliverables
Highlight key performance metrics, such as dwell time benchmarks
Provide a transparent breakdown of the media value your proposal offers

Ensuring Clarity and Consistency

Unlike standard media formats, branded content lacks universal benchmarks or standardisation from publisher to publisher; making it difficult for media buyers to clearly understand what they are buying or what’s included.
Use clear, standardised descriptions across all proposals; for example clearly labelling the product – i.e. brand focused article, VS editorial sponsorship
Ensure first-time buyers and irregular branded content purchasers can easily understand your plan with clear descriptions of products and inclusions.

Providing Complete Information

Buyers integrate your media plan into a larger master media plan at campaign level.
Missing details or irrelevant information may lead to your proposal being dropped in favour of a publisher competitor or result in content spend/your allocation going to other channels with an upweight.

Media Plan Checklist

Your media plan is the representation of your sales proposal and what is signed off so you want it to be as clear and comprehensive as possible. To optimise your proposals, review your media plans against this checklist:

Have you included all media deliverables?

Impressions from content pieces as well as impressions from traffic drivers
Content views (article reads, video plays)
Clear distinction between guaranteed and expected deliverables

Are all inclusions itemised?

This means itemising all add-ons and inclusions such as; Homepage tiles, surrounding display, email inclusions, etc.
Ensure clarity in quantities/volume, timelines, and any special notes or call outs the client needs to understand
Itemisation in your media plan enhances perceived value and provides clarity on deliverables and far better advertiser experience

Do you clearly articulate pricing and added value?

Rate card pricing is a key factor in media proposals, especially for agencies focused on trading media efficiency. A higher rate card value enhances perceived value of ‘bang for your buck’ with advertisers making your proposal more competitive. Ensure both rate card and client rates, along with any added value, are clearly outlined in your media plan.

Include both rate card pricing and discounted client pricing
Highlight any added value to differentiate from competitors

Are there live links and specifications?

Branded content as a channel has a myriad of different names for the same product as publishers articulate their formats and naming conventions themselves

Ensure buyers can visualise the formats included in your proposal, including content examples
Provide spec sheets for required content and imagery that they need to provide

Have you included an expiry date?

Prices, inventory, and availability fluctuate—ensure your proposal has a 2-4 week expiry

Do you use a template for consistency?

Ensure you have a standardised template table for media plans in all sales materials, such as pitch decks.
A consistent template helps maintain clarity and alignment across all proposals.

Once your media plan template is set, use it consistently for all proposals to streamline the sales process. To save time and reduce manual errors, use Avid’s Campaign Builder tool with the automated and downloadable media plans option, allowing your sales team to focus on selling.

Optimising Your Deliverables

Assessing whether your media plan is competitive depends on understanding how buyers prioritise elements such as impressions, content views, added value, inclusions, and publisher titles.

Furthermore the nuance of content makes assessment of performance difficult.

Consider this;

One publishers has 50,000 articles views at an average of 3 minute dwell times, the other publisher has 100,000 article views at 1 minute dwell time, which is better? They likely amount to the same amount of time spent consuming the content but in very different ways.

This demonstrates that there is no one way to optimise media plans. With this in mind, we have built out the below guide, highlighting the different levers you can pull to optimise deliverables based on what will be the most competitive option for advertisers. This guide is here to support your sales team and help them understand what levers can deliver to advertiser expectations best to drive win rates.

To boost your proposals competitiveness, consider:

Increasing Deliverables

Expanding Inclusions

Adding homepage tiles, email inclusions, or display placements can increase total impressions
Owned assets provide high-margin impressions without additional costs.
Remnant inventory, such as display impressions are low cost to deliver, and can be added as value to make a proposal more compelling, particularly to increasing impressions and reach

Enhancing Traffic Drivers

Increasing the performance and click-through rates on traffic drivers boosts content views without additional spend, whilst it won’t increase impressions, even a 1% to 2% increase in CTR’s will make a significant difference to your content views.
Improving user engagement reduces bounce rates and enhances time spent on content

Increasing Media Spend

Allocating more budget to paid amplification increases impressions and content views
More investment in amplification ensures stronger campaign reach and performance

Reallocating Budget

Adjusting your paid amplification vs. inclusions mix can help align with buyer priorities
If impressions are a key KPI, shifting budget from static inclusions to amplification may improve competitiveness
Swapping out lower-performing inclusions (e.g., a $3.5K email newsletter) for stronger amplification can enhance proposal impact

Reducing Margin on Paid Amplification

Lowering the markup on paid distribution increases media spend efficiency
A lower margin results in higher content views and impressions, improving perceived value
If your margin on ampflification is 50% and you reduce it to 40%, your paid budget increases by 20%
Adjusting the baseline margin across all campaigns or applying reductions selectively for larger packages can enhance competitiveness

Bounce Rate Optimisation

Reducing the traffic that bounces when audiences are visiting your site, will also improve your campaign deliverables. When publishers have high bounce rates this can have a marked difference on your deliverables, as well as your margin if you’re choosing to save the costs VS reinvesting the paid budget into higher deliverables.

Bounce rates directly impact the efficiency of traffic-driving campaigns:
For example, if a publisher has a bounce rate of 40% – they are only driving article views for 60% of the traffic that they are sending there as 40% do not count as a view.

If on a $15k campaign a publisher is spending $3k on amplification at a $0.50 CPC then the publisher would have driven 6,000 clicks to the article, but have only 3,600 of this clicks count as an article view.

Bounce Rate	Lost Clicks	Article Views	Client CPAV
40%	2,400	3,600	0.83
30%	1,800	4,200	0.71
20%	1,200	4,800	0.62
10%	600	5,400	0.55

By improving bounce rates (e.g.,through better UX, content quality, or targeted traffic), publishers can increase their reported article views without investing additional spend.

Check out our best practice article on How to Approach A Proactive Amplification Strategy And Build Scaleable Packages For Your Sales Team