More Choice, Better Decisions: Our Takeaways from MediaPost Chicago
Earlier this month we spent three days at the Pendry in Chicago for MediaPost’s Planning & Buying Insider Summit. The theme was “Precision in the Plan,” and about 100 brands and agency leaders came to debate where media dollars should flow in 2027. Across sessions on AI, retail media, measurement, and culture, one idea kept surfacing: more choice doesn’t automatically create better media; better decisions do.
Highlights
Molson Coors on Culture. Dan Langert opened the summit with a lesson in patience. Coors Banquet’s Yellowstone partnership started as a small product placement in season two, then grew into media deals and licensed IP at retail nationwide. His philosophy: plant seeds, nurture the ones that grow, and remember “you can do anything, but you can’t do everything.”
The New Rules of Cross-Channel Planning. Dan joined Jeanne Bright (Mars Snacking) and TJ Salopek (Goodyear) for a panel moderated by Arielle Heller. Dan called multi-touch attribution something that had potential but never lived up to the capability the industry chased for years. He also flagged that rather than channel-first planning, Harmelin identifies where key audience segments spend their time in an effort to answer the business questions our clients need answered, then measures against key marketing signals. The panel agreed that AI gets a plan about 80% of the way there, with Dan flagging “context creep,” where one wrong assumption compounds until the plan drives off a cliff.
ALDI: Lower Spend / Higher ROI. Outspent 10 to 1 by competitors, ALDI grew media ROI from roughly $8 to $14, starting with geography. Matt Case’s team built a custom radius around each store, then clustered markets into four groups using 300 factors like awareness and purchase intent. Brand-building markets got more TV; markets ready to convert got more social. It mirrors how Harmelin uses Market Max to strategically cluster geos for our clients.
Measuring What CTV Adds. Alissa hosted a roundtable on realizing real value from CTV and addressable linear. The question that stuck: are we measuring what CTV contributed, or only what happened after someone saw an ad? Incremental reach beyond linear and MMM came up as better ways to read its role in the mix.
Finding, Activating, and Protecting Your Best Customers. This panel on first-party data, loyalty signals, and suppression raised a question Alissa keeps coming back to: when does personalization feel useful to a consumer, and when does it feel invasive? And when does targeting get so precise that it stops finding new customers?
Culture and Commerce. Erica Chen made the case for overlooked fandoms like fan cons and BookTok’s romance readers. Smithfield paired premium streaming with Walmart and Kroger data to reach younger shoppers, and Tabitha Hernandez showed how Publicis runs Coca-Cola’s retail search across 15 brands and 30+ retailers.
Key Takeaways
Start with the business problem, not the channel list. Every channel on a plan should have a clear reason for being there, and audience and channels should follow the question you’re answering for the client.
Own the signal. Platforms reward advertisers who feed them clean first-party data, and some are starting to require it. Brands that rent everything keep paying the toll.
Know when to go precise and when to go broad. ALDI found that when targeting got “too sciency,” platforms lost room to optimize, especially for new stores. Precision protects your best customers; broader reach finds the next ones.
Measure contribution, not activity. Attribution tells you what happened after an impression. Incrementality, MMM, and signals like brand lift tell you what media actually added. Decide what you’re trying to prove before choosing how to measure it.
Keep a human on the toggle. AI speeds up the first 80%, but context, judgment, and knowing a client’s business decide whether a plan works. As TJ reminded everyone, somebody once decided to put a blimp in the sky, and no model would have suggested it.
Relationships still matter. Some of our best insights came between sessions, comparing notes with other agencies and brand leaders on the same problems. Technology will keep changing how media is planned and bought, but this is still a relationship business.
Watch Dan’s full panel: The New Rules of Cross-Channel Planning
Watch the ALDI keynote: From Rented to Owned: ALDI’s Data Transformation
For more information, visit harmelin.com, or connect with us on LinkedIn or Facebook.
