Marketing Objectives and Media Strategy

Introduction

Media planning is not the mechanical purchase of advertising space or impressions. It is a strategic process that connects what an organization seeks to achieve with what audiences must think, feel, or do, and with the media environments most capable of producing those outcomes. A media strategy therefore begins before channel selection. It begins with business diagnosis, market segmentation, communication objectives, audience definition, and a theory of how communication can influence behaviour.

The central managerial problem is translation. Senior management may seek profitable growth, customer retention, market share, or brand value. Marketing managers convert these ambitions into market objectives. Communication planners then specify the changes in awareness, associations, consideration, preference, trial, purchase, usage, or advocacy that communication should influence. Media planners translate those communication requirements into audience, timing, channel, investment, reach, frequency, and measurement decisions.

This chapter develops that translation process. It integrates segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP), funnel thinking, reach–frequency planning, brand-versus-performance planning, and the construction of a strategic media brief. It also considers attribution limits, privacy, platform governance, and the changing role of artificial intelligence.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, students should be able to:

1. Distinguish business, marketing, communication, and media objectives.
2. Apply STP and customer-journey frameworks to media strategy.
3. Define target audiences in strategically useful and measurable terms.
4. Assign roles to paid, owned, earned, and shared media.
5. Explain reach, frequency, effective frequency, impressions, and gross rating points.
6. Construct a media strategy balancing brand building and performance activation.
7. Develop a coherent strategic media brief with KPIs and evaluation methods.
8. Critically assess attribution, optimization, privacy, and ethical risks.

1. From Business Goals to Media Decisions

A business objective expresses the economic result an organization wants. Examples include increasing revenue by 8 percent, improving contribution margin, entering a new market, or reducing customer churn. A marketing objective specifies the market mechanism expected to contribute to that result, such as increasing penetration, raising purchase frequency, or improving retention among profitable customers.

A communication objective identifies the response communication is expected to influence. It may involve mental availability, brand knowledge, perceived value, consideration, preference, intention, or action. A media objective defines the delivery conditions under which communication should reach the audience: who should be reached, how many should be reached, how often, when, and in which environments.

These objectives are related but not interchangeable.

The hierarchy prevents a common error: treating media metrics as business outcomes. Impressions, clicks, and completed views are delivery measures. They can be useful leading indicators, but they do not automatically demonstrate profitable growth.

A useful causal chain is:

Business goal → marketing strategy → communication task → audience definition → media role → investment and scheduling → measurement → learning and adjustment.

The chain is not perfectly linear. Research may reveal that the assumed audience is wrong; media data may show that a creative message fails; sales data may reveal distribution constraints. Strategic planning is therefore iterative, but each iteration should preserve logical connections between levels.

2. STP as the Strategic Foundation

Segmentation

Segmentation divides a heterogeneous market into groups that differ in needs, motivations, behaviour, or response to marketing action. Common bases include demographic, geographic, psychographic, behavioural, needs-based, value-based, and occasion-based variables. Graduate-level planning should avoid assuming that demographic categories are automatically meaningful. Age may correlate with media use, but need state, category involvement, and purchase occasion may better predict response.

A useful segment should be identifiable, substantial enough to matter, reachable through appropriate media, sufficiently differentiated, and compatible with the organization’s capabilities. These criteria are strategic rather than purely statistical. A segment that can be modelled but cannot be reached economically may not be useful for planning.

Targeting

Targeting involves selecting priority segments and deciding the degree of concentration. A mass strategy seeks broad category or brand penetration. A differentiated strategy serves several segments with tailored propositions. A concentrated strategy focuses resources on a narrow segment. Programmatic buying may enable fine-grained delivery, but technical addressability does not by itself justify excessive fragmentation.

Targeting should include both current customers and future potential customers. A narrow retargeting pool can produce efficient short-term conversions while neglecting new buyers and future demand. The planner must distinguish a trading audience—those most likely to act immediately—from a growth audience—those whose future mental availability and preference should be developed.

Positioning

Positioning specifies the distinctive meaning the brand seeks to own relative to alternatives. It should identify the frame of reference, target audience, relevant need, point of difference, and reasons to believe. Media cannot repair an incoherent positioning. Its role is to place a meaningful proposition in contexts and moments where the audience is receptive.

A positioning statement might take the form: “For time-pressed urban professionals who want nutritious meals without complex preparation, Brand X is the meal service that combines verified nutrition with reliable delivery, because its menus are designed by registered dietitians and delivered in scheduled time slots.” The media strategy then asks which audiences, contexts, and formats can make this proposition distinctive and credible.

3. Communication Objectives and the Customer Journey

Communication objectives should describe a change in an audience, not merely an activity. “Run a social campaign” is an executional objective. “Increase aided awareness among non-customers from 35 percent to 45 percent” is a communication objective, provided the measurement method and time period are specified.

The classic funnel represents movement from awareness to knowledge, consideration, preference, intention, purchase, repeat purchase, and advocacy. It is useful as a planning heuristic, but it should not be interpreted as a universal sequence. Customers may enter at different points, move backward, or purchase with little conscious deliberation. Low-involvement categories often depend on memory availability and physical availability rather than extensive consideration.

A contemporary journey framework may include:

• Discover: the person encounters a category or brand cue.
• Understand: the person learns what the brand offers and why it matters.
• Evaluate: the person compares alternatives or seeks reassurance.
• Act: the person searches, visits, registers, buys, or requests information.
• Experience: the person uses the product or service.
• Return and recommend: the person repurchases, remains loyal, or advocates.

Each stage implies different communication tasks and evidence. Discovery may be assessed through reach, awareness, or distinctive asset recognition. Evaluation may require brand association, consideration, or search quality. Action may be assessed through incremental conversions, qualified leads, or sales. Experience and loyalty require product, service, CRM, and operational measures in addition to media data.

The hierarchy-of-effects tradition is valuable because it forces planners to articulate an assumed mechanism. However, it can become misleading when treated as a rigid staircase. Advertising effects may be simultaneous, delayed, indirect, or moderated by prior experience, category involvement, creative quality, social influence, and distribution.

4. Defining the Target Audience

A media target audience should be defined at four levels:

1. Market identity: who the people are, such as category buyers, lapsed customers, or prospective business decision-makers.
2. Need or motivation: the problem, desire, barrier, or occasion relevant to the proposition.
3. Behavioural and value characteristics: purchase frequency, customer value, funnel status, or propensity.
4. Media and contextual behaviour: where, when, and how they consume information.

The target should not be described only as “adults aged 18–54.” Such a description may be necessary for buying systems, but it is strategically incomplete. A stronger definition might be: “Adults aged 25–44 who purchased a competing meal-delivery service in the previous six months, value convenience and nutritional transparency, and commonly search for weekday dinner solutions on mobile devices.”

The planner should also specify exclusions. Children, existing high-value customers, employees, or people outside serviceable delivery areas may require different treatment. Sensitive attributes such as health status, ethnicity, religion, or financial hardship require particular caution; ethical and legal standards may prohibit their use for targeting or require explicit safeguards.

Audience sizing must be interpreted carefully. A platform’s addressable audience is not identical to the population with a genuine need, nor to the number who will actually see an advertisement. Definitions, deduplication, consent, identity resolution, and data quality all affect estimates.

5. Media Roles and the POE System

Paid, owned, and earned media are distinct but interconnected.

A media strategy should assign jobs rather than simply list channels. For example, online video may build broad memory structures; search may capture active demand; retail media may influence shoppers near purchase; email may support retention; public relations may supply third-party credibility; and a brand website may provide detailed proof and conversion infrastructure.

Channel selection should consider audience fit, context, attention quality, creative suitability, scale, cost, measurability, brand safety, and the possibility of incremental reach. A cheap impression is not necessarily valuable if it is poorly viewable, irrelevant, or duplicated excessively with other channels.

Brand building and performance activation

Brand building seeks to strengthen future demand by increasing mental availability, distinctive associations, trust, and preference. It often requires broad audiences, emotionally engaging creative, continuity, and sufficient time for effects to accumulate. Performance activation seeks a more immediate response, such as a sale, lead, app installation, or store visit. It often uses intent signals, response-oriented creative, landing pages, offers, and rapid feedback.

The distinction is analytical rather than absolute. Brand activity can generate immediate sales, and performance activity can influence brand perceptions. The managerial danger is short-termism: optimizing only what is easily measured can divert investment toward existing demand while weakening future demand creation.

A balanced plan asks:

• What proportion of the problem is lack of awareness or preference?
• What proportion is friction at search, checkout, price, availability, or trust?
• Is the category purchased frequently or infrequently?
• Is the brand under-penetrated or mainly seeking loyalty?
• What time horizon does management require?

Budget allocation should follow the diagnosed growth constraint, not a universal percentage rule. In some situations, broad reach is essential; in others, distribution or conversion design is the binding constraint.

6. Reach, Frequency, and Delivery Planning

Reach is the number or percentage of the target audience exposed at least once during a specified period. Frequency is the number of exposures among reached individuals. Impressions are total ad exposures, including repeated exposures to the same person. If reach is expressed as a percentage of the target population, average frequency is:

where F̄ is average frequency, I is total impressions, and R is the number of unique people reached. Units are exposures per reached person. If reach is represented as a proportion of the population, impressions must be divided by the corresponding reached population count, not by the percentage number alone.

Gross rating points (GRPs) express total exposure relative to the target population:

Equivalently, when reach is represented as a percentage, GRP is impressions divided by target-population size, multiplied by 100. GRP is a delivery measure; it does not indicate unique people, attention, persuasion, or sales.

For a target population of 1,000,000, a plan generating 2,400,000 impressions has 240 GRPs. If 600,000 unique people are reached, average frequency is 4 exposures per reached person and reach is 60 percent. These calculations assume consistent definitions and deduplicated audience measurement.

Effective frequency refers to the number of exposures judged necessary, under particular conditions, to produce a useful communication effect. There is no universal threshold. It depends on creative strength, complexity, involvement, clutter, prior knowledge, purchase cycle, media environment, and audience receptivity. A “three-plus” reach metric can be a planning convention, not a law of advertising.

Reach and frequency involve a trade-off under a fixed budget. Increasing frequency among a narrow audience may improve reinforcement but reduce the number of potential buyers exposed. Increasing reach may create shallow exposure if creative is complex or the product requires explanation. The correct balance depends on the communication task and marginal response, not on a simple formula.

Cost metrics support, but do not replace, strategic judgment. Cost per thousand impressions is:

Here media cost and impressions must refer to the same placement, period, currency, and impression definition. CPM compares delivery cost; it does not compare audience quality, attention, incrementality, or business value.

7. Timing, Sequencing, and Budget Logic

Scheduling may be continuous, flighted, pulsed, or always-on with periodic intensification. Continuous activity supports memory and demand capture in stable categories. Flighting concentrates activity in selected periods. Pulsing combines a baseline with heavier support around seasonal or commercial events.

Timing should reflect buying cycles, seasonality, competitive pressure, inventory, creative wear-out, and operational capacity. Advertising demand before stock availability can waste investment and damage trust. Similarly, increasing media during a period when customer service cannot cope may create negative brand effects.

A media budget should be justified through objectives, expected response, historical evidence, experimentation, and financial constraints. Common approaches include affordable budgeting, percentage of sales, competitive parity, objective-and-task, and marginal-return budgeting. Objective-and-task is generally more strategically transparent because it starts with required outcomes and the activities believed necessary to achieve them. Nevertheless, it can create false precision when response assumptions are weak.

Incremental response is central to evaluation. If total sales rise after a campaign, the increase may reflect advertising, seasonality, price promotions, distribution, competitor weakness, or existing demand. The relevant question is not “What happened after exposure?” but “What additional outcome was caused by the activity compared with a credible counterfactual?”

8. KPIs and Measurement Architecture

A good KPI is linked to an objective, has a defined population and time period, can be measured consistently, and supports a decision. A measurement architecture should include several levels:

For direct-response campaigns, a basic conversion rate is:

The numerator and denominator must be defined consistently. A platform-reported conversion may include view-through exposure, modeled users, or a selected attribution window; a transaction database may record only completed purchases. These figures are not automatically comparable.

Return on ad spend is commonly expressed as:

ROAS is not profit. If the relevant decision is profitability, contribution margin and other variable costs must be considered. For example, a campaign can produce a high revenue-to-ad-cost ratio while losing money after product, fulfillment, discount, and service costs.

Attribution models—last click, first click, linear, position-based, time-decay, and data-driven—allocate credit; they do not prove causality. They are especially weak when channels interact, when users are exposed across devices, or when conversions would have occurred without advertising. Geo-experiments, holdout groups, matched-market tests, brand-lift studies, and marketing-mix models can provide stronger evidence, although each has assumptions and implementation costs.

9. Constructing the Strategic Media Brief

A strategic media brief is a decision document that aligns client, agency, creative, analytics, and media teams. It should contain:

1. Business context: the commercial problem, opportunity, constraints, and time horizon.
2. Marketing objective: the market behaviour or growth result required.
3. Communication task: the audience response communication should influence.
4. Target audience: identity, need state, behaviour, value, exclusions, and estimated size.
5. Positioning and proposition: what should be understood, felt, or remembered.
6. Reason to believe: evidence that makes the proposition credible.
7. Media roles: the job assigned to each channel and how channels interact.
8. Investment and timing: budget, phasing, geographic scope, and commercial events.
9. Creative implications: format, context, sequencing, adaptation, and landing experience.
10. KPIs and method: definitions, data sources, baselines, targets, and evaluation design.
11. Governance: privacy, brand safety, accessibility, approvals, and escalation procedures.

A strong brief includes “must nots” as well as “must dos.” For example, a campaign may not target minors, use unverified health claims, appear beside unsafe content, or optimize toward low-quality leads. Such constraints protect both the organization and the audience.

10. Illustrative Case: FreshPath Meal Delivery

Background

FreshPath is a fictional meal-delivery company operating in three metropolitan areas. It offers nutritionally labelled meals delivered in scheduled evening windows. The company has strong satisfaction among current customers but weak awareness among prospective buyers. A competitor dominates paid search during weekday dinner planning.

Problem

FreshPath’s management initially proposes shifting most of the budget into search and retargeting because those channels show the lowest cost per acquisition. However, the customer base is ageing, new-customer growth is slowing, and retargeting reaches a relatively small pool. The strategic question is whether to maximize immediate conversions or build broader future demand while preserving efficient activation.

Analysis

Research identifies two priority groups: existing customers with potential for higher order frequency, and non-customers aged 25–44 who value convenience but believe healthy meal services are expensive and inflexible. The principal communication barrier is not lack of category need; it is a belief that nutritious delivery lacks value and scheduling control.

The marketing objective is to increase new-customer penetration in the three cities while maintaining profitable repeat purchase. The communication task is to establish FreshPath as a flexible, credible, and good-value solution for weekday meals. The media target is therefore broader than recent site visitors. It includes prospective category users, with a separate CRM and retargeting stream for known customers and recent prospects.

Approach and solution

The strategy assigns complementary roles:

• Online video and connected television build broad awareness and demonstrate the scheduling proposition.
• Paid social extends reach and uses short demonstrations and customer evidence.
• Search captures active demand for meal delivery and related weekday meal problems.
• Retail and location-based media support availability and geographic relevance.
• The website provides transparent pricing, nutrition information, delivery windows, and trial terms.
• Email and CRM support onboarding, repeat purchase, and lapsed-customer reactivation.

The plan uses a continuous base of brand activity, heavier support before seasonal demand peaks, and always-on search. Search is not evaluated only against last-click revenue; it is also examined for incremental conversions using geographic or audience holdouts where feasible. Brand tracking measures awareness, value perceptions, and consideration. Sales analysis separates new-customer acquisition from repeat orders.

Suppose the launch period produces 1,800,000 impressions against a target population of 750,000. The plan therefore delivers 240 GRPs because 1,800,000 ÷ 750,000 × 100 = 240. If 450,000 unique target people are reached, reach is 60 percent and average frequency is four exposures per reached person. These figures describe delivery only. The campaign’s success still depends on creative quality, landing-page clarity, availability, and incremental sales.

Outcome

In this illustrative case, the company observes increased awareness and consideration, while search continues to generate efficient direct response. The strongest improvement occurs when the video message explicitly demonstrates flexible delivery windows and links to a transparent comparison page. Retargeting alone had produced efficient reported conversions but insufficient scale. The combined strategy improves the organization’s understanding of how brand and performance activity interact.

Learning points

1. Low-cost conversion is not the same as sustainable growth.
2. Media channels should be assigned roles based on the communication problem.
3. Broad prospecting and narrow activation require different audiences and KPIs.
4. Delivery metrics must be separated from causal business evidence.
5. Operational readiness and landing experience are part of media effectiveness.

11. Critical Issues, Ethics, and Governance

Media planning affects attention, privacy, representation, and access to information. Consent, lawful data use, purpose limitation, data minimization, retention controls, and vendor accountability should be built into planning rather than added after activation. Personally identifiable information and sensitive inferences require heightened protection.

Targeting can reproduce discrimination when models use biased historical data or proxy variables. Credit, employment, housing, health, and political advertising may be subject to special legal restrictions. Even where a practice is technically lawful, it may be ethically unacceptable if it exploits vulnerability, obscures sponsorship, or manipulates people who lack meaningful choice.

Brand safety extends beyond keyword blocklists. Planners should evaluate adjacency, misinformation, hate speech, fraud, deceptive creators, made-for-advertising sites, and supply-chain transparency. Accessibility requires attention to captions, contrast, audio description, readable landing pages, and inclusive representation.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly used for audience modelling, creative variation, bidding, forecasting, and anomaly detection. Its use can improve speed and scale, but automated optimization inherits the quality of objectives and data supplied to it. Human governance should define permissible data, explainability requirements, testing protocols, escalation thresholds, and responsibility for errors. Generative systems also raise questions about copyright, synthetic endorsements, disclosure, and fabricated claims.

12. Contemporary Developments and Best Practice

Media environments are becoming more fragmented, privacy-constrained, retail-mediated, and algorithmically optimized. Cookie deprecation and platform restrictions increase the importance of first-party relationships, contextual signals, clean measurement, and experimental design. Retail media networks offer proximity to transaction but can encourage fragmented buying and inconsistent measurement. Connected television and digital out-of-home expand addressable video while creating challenges in deduplication and frequency control.

Best practice includes:

• Begin with the business constraint, not the available platform.
• Use STP to define a strategically meaningful audience.
• State the communication mechanism and expected response.
• Give every channel a role and define how roles interact.
• Separate reach, attention, response, and business KPIs.
• Balance immediate activation with future demand creation.
• Use consistent definitions across platforms and databases.
• Prefer incrementality tests over uncritical platform attribution.
• Integrate creative, media, landing experience, distribution, and service.
• Document privacy, safety, accessibility, and AI governance decisions.
• Treat planning as a learning system: test, interpret, and revise.

Chapter Summary

Marketing media strategy translates business ambition into coordinated communication and delivery decisions. The process moves from business objectives to marketing objectives, communication tasks, target audiences, media roles, investment, timing, and measurement. STP provides the strategic foundation by identifying meaningful segments, selecting priorities, and defining a distinctive position. Funnel and journey models help planners clarify whether the task is discovery, understanding, evaluation, action, experience, or advocacy, while recognizing that real customer behaviour is not a rigid sequence.

Reach, frequency, GRPs, CPM, conversion rate, and ROAS are useful measures, but each describes only part of performance. Delivery metrics do not prove attention or causality, and attributed revenue is not necessarily profit. Effective planning combines brand-building and performance activity, assigns complementary roles to paid, owned, earned, and shared media, and uses experiments or other credible designs to estimate incremental effects. Ethical governance, privacy, accessibility, brand safety, and responsible AI are integral to professional practice rather than peripheral compliance tasks.

Key Terms

Business objective: Desired economic or organizational result.

Marketing objective: Market behaviour or growth result intended to support a business objective.

Communication objective: Intended change in audience knowledge, attitude, memory, intention, or behaviour.

Media objective: Required audience delivery conditions, including who, when, where, and how often.

Segmentation: Division of a market into meaningfully different groups.

Targeting: Selection of priority segments for marketing investment.

Positioning: Intended distinctive meaning of a brand relative to alternatives.

Mental availability: Probability that a buyer will notice or recall a brand in relevant situations.

Reach: Number or percentage of a target audience exposed at least once.

Frequency: Number of exposures received by an audience or reached person.

Impression: One recorded advertising exposure.

GRP: Gross rating point; reach percentage multiplied by average frequency.

Effective frequency: Context-dependent exposure level believed useful for a communication task.

Brand building: Activity intended to strengthen future demand and brand equity.

Performance activation: Activity intended to stimulate measurable near-term response.

Incrementality: Additional outcome caused by an activity compared with a credible counterfactual.

Attribution: Allocation of observed outcomes among marketing contacts or channels.

ROAS: Attributed revenue divided by advertising cost.

Strategic media brief: Document aligning objectives, audience, proposition, roles, investment, measurement, and governance.

Review Questions

Short Answer Questions

1. How does a communication objective differ from a media objective?
2. Identify four criteria that make a market segment useful for planning.
3. What is the difference between reach and frequency?
4. Why is ROAS not equivalent to profit?
5. Name two ethical risks associated with algorithmic audience targeting.

Long Answer Questions

1. Explain how STP informs the construction of a media strategy, using an example.
2. Compare brand building and performance activation in terms of objectives, audiences, timing, and measurement.
3. Discuss the strengths and limitations of funnel models in contemporary media planning.
4. Explain how paid, owned, earned, and shared media can work together in an integrated plan.
5. Design the essential contents of a strategic media brief for a new service launch.

Analytical / Application Questions

1. A campaign generates 2,000,000 impressions among a target population of 800,000 and reaches 400,000 unique people. Calculate GRPs, reach percentage, and average frequency. Interpret what the figures do and do not establish.
2. A platform reports a low cost per acquisition for retargeting, but the brand’s customer base is not growing. Diagnose at least three possible strategic explanations and recommend a measurement approach.
3. Develop a media-role matrix for a fictional product facing low awareness, strong category demand, and a complicated purchase decision. Specify channels, communication tasks, KPIs, and governance safeguards.

Multiple Choice Questions with Answers

Question 1

Which statement best distinguishes a communication objective from a media objective?

A. A communication objective specifies the intended audience response, while a media objective specifies delivery conditions.

B. A communication objective specifies the budget, while a media objective specifies the product price.

C. A communication objective identifies competitors, while a media objective defines the brand position.

D. A communication objective measures profit, while a media objective measures employee productivity.

Correct Answer: A. A communication objective specifies the intended audience response, while a media objective specifies delivery conditions.

Question 2

A campaign generates 1,500,000 impressions against a target population of 500,000. What are the gross rating points?

A. 150 GRPs

B. 200 GRPs

C. 300 GRPs

D. 500 GRPs

Correct Answer: C. 300 GRPs

Question 3

Which is the strongest example of a strategically defined media audience?

A. Everyone who uses the internet

B. Adults aged 18–54

C. People who like advertising

D. Urban weekday meal planners who value convenience and have not purchased the brand

Correct Answer: D. Urban weekday meal planners who value convenience and have not purchased the brand

Question 4

What does incrementality attempt to estimate?

A. The number of ads purchased

B. The additional outcome caused by an activity compared with a counterfactual

C. The average number of impressions per creative asset

D. The percentage of a budget assigned to search

Correct Answer: B. The additional outcome caused by an activity compared with a counterfactual

Question 5

Which channel role most directly captures existing active demand?

A. Broad-reach online video

B. Paid search for relevant purchase-intent queries

C. Corporate internal communication

D. Unpaid employee training

Correct Answer: B. Paid search for relevant purchase-intent queries

Question 6

If 600,000 people are reached and total impressions are 1,800,000, what is average frequency?

A. 2 exposures per reached person

B. 3 exposures per reached person

C. 4 exposures per reached person

D. 6 exposures per reached person

Correct Answer: B. 3 exposures per reached person

Question 7

Why can optimizing only to last-click conversions create strategic risk?

A. It always eliminates all measurement data.

B. It may overvalue demand capture and underfund future demand creation.

C. It measures reach more accurately than any other method.

D. It prevents a brand from using search advertising.

Correct Answer: B. It may overvalue demand capture and underfund future demand creation.

Question 8

Which statement about GRPs is correct?

A. They directly measure profit.

B. They equal unique reach without regard to repetition.

C. They summarize exposure relative to the target population but do not prove persuasion.

D. They can be calculated only for email campaigns.

Correct Answer: C. They summarize exposure relative to the target population but do not prove persuasion.

Question 9

What is a central purpose of a strategic media brief?

A. To replace all creative development decisions

B. To align objectives, audience, media roles, investment, measurement, and governance

C. To guarantee a specific sales result

D. To describe only the technical specifications of advertisements

Correct Answer: B. To align objectives, audience, media roles, investment, measurement, and governance

Question 10

Which practice best supports responsible AI use in media planning?

A. Allowing automated systems to use any available personal data

B. Optimizing only for the cheapest impressions

C. Defining permissible data, testing procedures, explainability, and human escalation

D. Removing all human review from targeting decisions

Correct Answer: C. Defining permissible data, testing procedures, explainability, and human escalation