Purpose
Generate a holistic paid media plan that coordinates budget, channels, audiences, creative, and timing across all advertising platforms. Balances reach and efficiency objectives with practical execution constraints to produce a ready-to-implement plan with clear pacing targets and contingency protocols.
The user must provide (or will be prompted for):
- Campaign dates: Start date, end date, and any blackout periods or mandatory flight windows
- Total paid media budget: Aggregate budget for the campaign period with any channel-specific floors or caps
- Channels available: Platforms in consideration — Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, TikTok Ads, ChatGPT Ads, programmatic display, connected TV, native, audio, out-of-home, etc.
- Campaign objectives: Primary and secondary objectives — awareness (reach/impressions), consideration (traffic/engagement), conversion (leads/sales/ROAS)
- Target audiences with segments: Audience definitions including demographics, interests, behaviors, custom audiences, lookalikes, and retargeting pools
- Creative assets available: Existing ad formats and sizes, video lengths, static variants, and any creative production timelines for new assets
- Geographic targeting: Markets, regions, DMAs, or countries to target with any geo-specific budget weighting
- Competitive spending intelligence: Known or estimated competitor ad spend, share of voice benchmarks, and auction pressure indicators
- Historical performance by channel: Past campaign data — CPC, CPM, CPA, ROAS, conversion rates — by channel and audience segment
- Seasonality factors: Demand fluctuations, industry events, holidays, promotional periods, or competitive surges that affect costs or performance
Process
- Load brand context: Read
~/.claude-marketing/brands/_active-brand.json for the active slug, then load ~/.claude-marketing/brands/{slug}/profile.json. Apply brand voice, compliance rules for target markets (skills/context-engine/compliance-rules.md), and industry context. Also check for guidelines at ~/.claude-marketing/brands/{slug}/guidelines/_manifest.json — if present, load restrictions and relevant category files. Check for custom templates at ~/.claude-marketing/brands/{slug}/templates/. Check for agency SOPs at ~/.claude-marketing/sops/. If no brand exists, ask: "Set up a brand first (/digital-marketing-pro:brand-setup)?" — or proceed with defaults.
- Assess channel-objective fit: Evaluate each available channel against campaign objectives using reach capability, targeting precision, cost benchmarks, creative format support, and measurement reliability
- Allocate budget across channels: Distribute budget using efficiency-weighted allocation — factor in historical performance, diminishing returns curves, minimum effective spend thresholds, and strategic importance per channel
- Design flight schedule: Structure campaign timing as continuous, pulsing, or flighting based on objectives, seasonality, and budget — define weekly spend levels and heavy-up periods
- Build audience targeting matrix: Map each audience segment to its optimal channel(s) with targeting parameters, expected reach, estimated frequency, and overlap management between platforms
- Plan creative rotation: Schedule creative variants across channels with rotation frequency, fatigue thresholds (impressions or frequency caps), A/B test windows, and refresh dates for new assets
- Define measurement framework: Establish KPIs per channel, tracking requirements (pixels, UTMs, offline conversion imports), attribution model, and reporting cadence
- Set contingency holdback: Reserve 10-15% of budget as contingency for opportunistic scaling, underperformance reallocation, or emerging platform opportunities — define trigger criteria for deployment
- Create platform setup checklists: Build channel-specific setup checklists covering account structure, campaign naming conventions, tracking implementation, audience uploads, and creative specs
- Model reach and frequency estimates: Project total reach, average frequency, and effective frequency per channel and in aggregate — flag oversaturation or underspend risks
- Compile unified media plan calendar: Assemble all components into a single calendar view showing budget pacing, creative rotation, audience activation, and measurement milestones week by week
Ads inside AI answers (checked 2026-10-04)
Two surfaces need special handling in any plan. Full sourcing, tracking and feed detail live in skills/paid-advertising/ads-in-ai-answers.md; follow it rather than restating numbers from memory.
- ChatGPT Ads: plan it as a test line, funded from the contingency reserve (step 8).
- Before any budget is committed, check two prerequisites:
- The Measurement Pixel and the server-side Conversions API are both live and deduplicated (pixel
event_id = API id).
- The target countries have been confirmed inside the brand's own Ads Manager.
- The developer surface is primary-documented at developers.openai.com/ads. Launch dates and country rollout are secondary-sourced; label them "reported, unverified" in the plan.
- Custom Audiences are unavailable in the EEA and Switzerland, so EU/CH lines carry no audience tactics.
- In the measurement framework (step 7), state the attribution window next to the line: the Reporting API default is 30-day click / 1-day view.
- Google AI Mode: not a separate line item.
- Google reaches AI Mode inventory through AI Max for Search, AI Max for Shopping, and Performance Max (blog.google, 20 May 2026).
- Budget it inside those lines, and say in the plan that no AI-Mode-specific reporting is documented.
- Do not schedule Business Agent for leads ("coming months") or Direct Offers upgrades ("coming soon") as live flights until the account shows them.
Output
A structured paid media plan containing:
- Channel allocation table: Budget amount, percentage share, and strategic rationale for each channel with minimum and maximum spend guardrails
- Flight schedule with weekly budget waves: Week-by-week spend plan showing ramp-up, steady state, heavy-up, and wind-down phases per channel
- Audience targeting matrix: Segment-by-channel-by-creative mapping showing targeting parameters, expected reach, frequency caps, and overlap management
- Creative rotation calendar: Asset schedule per channel with rotation dates, fatigue thresholds, A/B test windows, and refresh milestones for new creative
- Reach and frequency estimates: Projected reach, average frequency, and effective frequency per channel and in aggregate with confidence ranges
- Measurement framework: KPIs per channel, tracking requirements, attribution model, reporting cadence, and data integration points
- Platform setup checklists: Channel-specific implementation checklists covering account structure, naming conventions, tracking, audiences, and creative specs
- Contingency budget plan: Reserve amount, deployment trigger criteria (over/underperformance thresholds), and reallocation decision framework
- Competitive spending comparison: Estimated share of voice, auction overlap indicators, and competitive pressure assessment by channel
- Daily/weekly pacing targets: Spend and performance pacing benchmarks for in-flight monitoring with acceptable variance thresholds
- Cross-channel synergy map: Retargeting flows between channels, sequential messaging paths, and audience progression logic from awareness to conversion
- Risk scenarios with budget reallocation triggers: Defined scenarios (platform outage, CPM spikes, underperformance, budget cuts) with pre-approved reallocation responses
Agents Used
- media-buyer — Channel allocation, budget pacing, auction dynamics, platform setup, reach/frequency modeling, competitive spending analysis, and creative rotation planning
- marketing-strategist — Objective-channel alignment, audience strategy, cross-channel synergy design, contingency planning, and measurement framework architecture