Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for TV Planner

🎯 Role Definition

The TV Planner is responsible for developing, executing and optimizing television media plans that meet client objectives across linear and addressable ecosystems. Working closely with TV Buyers, Account Teams, Creative, Analytics, and Broadcast Partners, the TV Planner translates audience targeting and campaign goals into tactical schedules, buys and post-campaign insights. The role requires a mix of quantitative media analytics (GRP/TRP planning, reach & frequency modeling, audience measurement), commercial negotiation, and strong stakeholder communication to drive business outcomes and ROI.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Junior Media Planner (TV-focused)
Media Analyst or Media Coordinator with broadcast experience
Account Coordinator from an advertising or agency environment

Advancement To:

Senior TV Planner / Lead Planner
TV Strategy Director / Broadcast Strategy Lead
Media Director / Head of TV & Video

Lateral Moves:

Programmatic TV Specialist / CTV Strategist
Audience Planning / Research Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Own end-to-end television campaign planning for linear, addressable and CTV/OTT buys—developing strategic plans that align audience targets, flighting, dayparting, and budget to client KPIs and business objectives.
Build detailed reach & frequency models and GRP/TRP schedules using Nielsen (or equivalent) datasets to forecast coverage, duplication, effective frequency and expected audience delivery across markets and DMA-level geographies.
Translate strategic objectives into tactical media schedules, specifying networks, programs, dayparts and spot lengths while optimizing for cost-efficiency, audience delivery and brand safety.
Manage budget allocation and pacing—create spend ladders, pacing reports, and re-allocation recommendations to ensure campaigns hit delivery milestones and client goals.
Produce competitive and market intelligence analyses including share-of-voice, competitor flighting, program performance and seasonal trends to inform targeting and timing decisions.
Negotiate commercial terms with broadcasters and station reps, secure added value (AVs), makegood agreements, and confirm spot availabilities while protecting client financials and inventory.
Prepare client-facing media plans, buy summaries, and creative insertion recommendations in PowerPoint and PDF formats that clearly explain strategy, assumptions and expected outcomes.
Execute media trafficking and scheduling in ad management systems (e.g., Strata, Mediaocean, WideOrbit) and coordinate with trafficking teams to ensure spot delivery and avails confirmations.
Validate campaign delivery against contracted conditions—cross-check affirms vs. delivered spots, verify makegoods, and coordinate reconciliations with finance and traffic.
Run pre- and post-campaign delivery analyses, measuring GRP/TRP attainment, reach, frequency distribution, and incremental reach among targeted demos and multi-platform audiences.
Partner with analytics and measurement teams to define KPIs, set uplift testing frameworks, and integrate multi-touch and cross-platform attribution where available (e.g., Nielsen, Comscore, TVSquared).
Optimize live campaigns via weekly or daily delivery checks—make schedule adjustments, re-weighted spots, or supplemental buys to address under-delivery or optimize ROI metrics.
Lead cross-functional briefings with account teams, creative and digital planners to ensure the television plan amplifies broader omni-channel strategies and creative messaging.
Design and maintain channel-specific forecasting models and forecasting assumptions for cost-per-point (CPP), cost-per-thousand (CPM), and expected GRP efficiencies across networks and dayparts.
Integrate addressable and audience-based TV opportunities into standard linear plans—map household-level targeting segments, household delivery estimates, and cross-device reach considerations.
Coordinate with research to commission or interpret bespoke uplift studies, brand-lift measurement and ad-effectiveness testing tied to TV flights.
Ensure compliance with industry measurement standards, client contractual requirements, and legal/regulatory considerations (e.g., logging commercial adjacencies, spot length rules).
Manage relationships with network and station sales teams, ensuring strong communication on inventory, upcoming promos, and opportunities for premium placements.
Prepare executive summaries and post-campaign reports with actionable recommendations for future buys—showing lessons learned, channel shifts, and audience saturation analysis.
Drive continuous improvement of planning process—document templates, planning playbooks, and knowledge transfer to junior staff to scale best practices across accounts.
Oversee market-level plan execution in multi-market campaigns; ensure consistent targeting strategy while allowing for local optimization based on market-specific inventory and pricing.
Support media proposal development, RFP responses and pitch materials with media plan rationale, expected outcomes, and benchmarks versus industry norms.
Monitor brand safety and content adjacency risks and coordinate proactive remediations (blacklists, whitelist approvals, daypart restrictions) when necessary.
Act as the subject matter expert for television planning systems and measurement tools—train internal stakeholders on plan interpretation, GRP math, and deliverable expectations.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc reporting requests, lift studies and exploratory analyses for cross-channel campaign effectiveness and audience overlap.
Contribute to the team’s measurement roadmap by piloting addressable TV use cases, pilot integrations with data partners and new measurement methodologies.
Collaborate with data science and analytics to translate audience insights into segment definitions and household-level targeting logic.
Participate in campaign debriefs, postmortems and continuous optimization sessions to refine planning assumptions and improve future forecasting accuracy.
Support commercial pitch teams with pricing models, inventory availability checks and scenario analyses for new business opportunities.
Help maintain vendor and partner relationships for measurement vendors (Nielsen, Comscore, TVSquared) and media buying platforms (Mediaocean, Strata, WideOrbit).

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Advanced knowledge of television measurement and planning metrics: GRP/TRP, reach & frequency, CPP, CPM, effective frequency and duplication analysis.
Proficiency with media planning & trafficking platforms (e.g., Nielsen One, Strata, Mediaocean, WideOrbit, ThinkTV or region equivalents).
Hands-on experience with audience measurement tools (Nielsen, Comscore, Kantar, BARB) and familiarity with currency data sets and reporting.
Strong Excel modeling skills: multi-tab planning templates, pivot tables, INDEX/MATCH, SUMPRODUCT, scenario modeling and sensitivity analysis.
Experience building reach curves, frequency charts and overlap matrices; ability to interpret and communicate statistical delivery risks.
Familiarity with CTV/OTT and programmatic TV ecosystems, including household graph, device graph concepts and PMP/PMD buying approaches.
Competence creating clear, persuasive client decks in PowerPoint that articulate strategy, assumptions and outcomes.
Basic data querying experience (SQL) or strong capability working alongside analysts to pull and interpret audience and delivery datasets.
Ability to interpret video ad verification and measurement outputs (viewability, completion, verification vendors) and integrate into campaign performance.
Knowledge of ad ops/traffic workflows and reconciliation processes; ability to manage and audit insertion orders and makegoods.
Experience with forecasting tools and automated reporting (Tableau, Looker, or Excel-based dashboards) to surface performance trends.
Understanding of cross-platform measurement issues and experience integrating linear TV results into broader omni-channel measurement frameworks.

Soft Skills

Excellent client-facing communication: present complex planning rationale clearly and confidently to clients and internal stakeholders.
Strong analytical mindset with attention to detail and the ability to identify root causes and actionable optimizations.
Collaborative team player—works cross-functionally with buyers, analytics, creative, and account management to deliver integrated solutions.
Time management and prioritization skills to balance multiple overlapping campaigns and fast-paced delivery timelines.
Negotiation and commercial acumen when dealing with broadcaster reps, station sales and vendor partners.
Problem-solving orientation—comfortable making data-driven decisions under uncertainty and iterating plans quickly.
Pedagogical skills—ability to train junior planners and translate technical metrics into business-impact language.
Adaptability to rapidly evolving industry measurement changes (addressable TV, CTV measurement changes) and new partner integrations.
Client empathy and consultative approach: understands business goals and recommends media strategies that align to KPIs.
Quality-first mindset—ensures plans are error-free, reconciled against targets and documented for auditability.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Advertising, Communications, Media Studies, Business, Economics, Statistics, or a related field.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree with coursework or certification in media analytics, data science for marketing, or a professional media planning certification.
Industry certifications (e.g., Nielsen Training, Thinkbox courses, IAB / programmatic TV certifications) are a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Marketing & Advertising
Media Studies / Broadcast Communications
Business Administration / Economics
Data Analytics / Statistics
Computer Science (for data-centric planning roles)

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

2–6 years of media planning experience with a significant portion dedicated to television planning (linear TV and CTV/OTT).

Preferred:

3–5+ years in an agency or client-side media planning role with demonstrable experience delivering multi-market TV campaigns, negotiating with broadcasters, and producing post-campaign measurement.
Experience with Nielsen (or regional currency) planning tools and hands-on fluency with planning/traffic platforms (Strata, Mediaocean, WideOrbit).
Proven track record creating measurable TV outcomes tied to business KPIs (awareness, consideration, direct response metrics).
Prior exposure to cross-platform measurement, addressable TV implementations or programmatic TV integrations is strongly preferred.