Media planning guidebook, titled "2025 Unified Media Planning Playbook," published by IAB
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released its "2025 Unified Media Planning Playbook," a practical guide designed to help advertisers navigate the complexities of cross-platform video planning in today's highly fragmented media landscape, which includes connected TV (CTV), online video (OLV), social video, and free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST).
The playbook addresses challenges such as:
- Fragmentation of platforms: Each video channel operates in separate data silos with distinct identity systems, making unified planning difficult. The playbook emphasizes embracing a "patchwork" approach by stitching together multiple modular solutions like customer data platforms (CDPs), clean rooms, and identity graphs rather than expecting a single turnkey solution.
- Measurement complexities: Due to inconsistent and siloed measurement standards across platforms, marketers are advised to combine A/B testing, marketing mix modeling (MMM), outcome-based analysis, and hybrid key performance indicators (KPIs) to get a clearer picture of campaign effectiveness.
- Privacy and signal loss: The end of third-party cookies and identifiers necessitates a strategy shift toward relying more heavily on first-party data, contextual targeting, and privacy-compliant data collaboration techniques (e.g., clean rooms).
The playbook provides a framework and actionable roadmap for brands, agencies, and publishers to build smarter, more integrated campaigns by:
- Explaining how to unify targeting, identity resolution, and measurement with interoperable data solutions
- Standardizing internal KPIs and creative specifications despite industry inconsistency
- Offering guidance to future-proof advertising strategies amid evolving privacy regulations and technology
Overall, the IAB's 2025 Unified Media Planning Playbook aims to cut through the noise of fragmented video channels and offer a pragmatic, technology-enabled approach to unify planning, measurement, and execution in a complex, privacy-centric media environment.
However, it's important to note that the playbook does not provide specific details about how it plans to address the challenges mentioned, nor does it provide a timeline for when advertisers can expect to see results from implementing its recommendations. Additionally, the playbook does not specify which industries or types of advertisers it is designed for.
In the face of interoperability remaining a work in progress due to the fragmented nature of video channels, the IAB's playbook serves as a valuable resource for advertisers seeking to navigate the complexities of today's media environment.
- The playbook encourages advertisers to adopt a "patchwork" approach of integrating customer data platforms (CDPs), clean rooms, and identity graphs as multiple modular solutions to tackle the fragmentation of platforms in today's media landscape.
- Marketers are urged to employ A/B testing, marketing mix modeling (MMM), outcome-based analysis, and hybrid key performance indicators (KPIs) to address the measurement complexities, offering a clearer understanding of campaign effectiveness.
- The end of third-party cookies and identifiers calls for a strategy shift towards relying more heavily on first-party data, contextual targeting, and privacy-compliant data collaboration techniques, as outlined in the playbook.
- With technology constantly evolving and privacy regulations changing, the IAB's 2025 playbook offers guidance to future-proof advertising strategies, helping brands, agencies, and publishers create smarter, more integrated video campaigns in a complex and privacy-focused media environment.
