Is your Bracket Busted? Did it happen Thursday or Friday? Maybe it wasn't until the weekend. Do not feel like you are alone, because you aren't -- the perfect bracket is no longer out there.

As with picking our basketball bracket, in the media world we research, study and implement the strategy that, based on the information, is going to performing the strongest. Truth be told, media folks are not futurists like Faith Popcorn. We would like to say that our media "brackets" are always perfect, but they are not.There are unexpected things in the world that can change the outcome of something we thought would gain results. Sometimes it's a half court buzzer beater that gets you from out of no where. 

We are sure there are millions of people wishing they could make changes and take their new learnings from the first two rounds of March Madness and implement those for the next rounds. In the media world we are constantly learning throughout the entire media process. The learning during the campaign is where "optimization" can be implemented. 

Optimization is that "buzz" word that came around during the boom of digital, where optimization is its bread and butter. In its simpliest terms, optimization is analyzing response (user behavior, actions and interests) across digital channels then implementing changes based on that analysis to make the campaign more effective and more efficiently deliver against goals.  As an example: if we see that the 300x250 banner on desktop is performing above standard and Pre-Roll video is not, we can shift allocation into delivering more 300x250 impressions and decrease impressions to Pre-Roll video.

But today, we look to optimize across all media channels, because as the saying goes, your plan is only as good as your weakest link. The idea to wait for a campaign to finish before learning from it is a thing of the past, when optimization was just an idea and not something done. In many ways, Digital opened up our eyes for the need to optimize across Broadcast and Radio; in the end, why should they not be held to the same standards as digital? 

So for us, media planning and buying is always a learning process. You must fine tune a campaign to deliver the best overall results. Tweet: "You must fine tune a media campaign to deliver the best overall results."http://www.goodmediaideas.com/blog/busted-brackets-and-optimization We've worked on clients where every media plan we did was completely different than the last; each time taking learnings from the last. A good media partner understands the importance of learning from every single campaign they do. This is just smart marketing, and more strategic marketing. There are some hard nuts to crack sometimes, but we just keep pulling out a bigger hammer to try and crack it. 

At the end of the day, media campaigns can always be changed to continue to refine what is working and what is not to deliver the results you are looking for; to be close to perfect. A good media agency knows that this is not a "set it and forget" world we live in and results depend on strong optimization and constant learning.