How live signals help build stronger media plans
Opinion | The Future of Planning, Strategy and Innovation Week in Focus
When live signals from media owners and commerce partners flow into the planning process, the resulting plan will be quite different to one built on panel data alone, writes the global head of InfoSum.
A media plan is only as good as the data behind it. Planning tools draw on a wide mix of inputs, from a client’s own first-party data to historical campaign performance, industry benchmarks, and individual platform reporting.
Each has a role to play. But while some of the most heavily relied-upon panel and aggregated data describe what audiences have consumed in aggregate over time, they say little about where those same people are right now, what they bought this week, or which direction their behaviour is heading.
At the same time, a large share of digital ad spend concentrates in a small number of platforms, with the big three walled gardens forecast to account for 62.3% of total worldwide digital ad spend in 2026. That’s because they’re simple to buy and their data is readily accessible to planners. They also offer activation at scale, and measurement is straightforward. Ease of use has a big say in where budget lands.
Better media planning doesn’t involve getting rid of any of these elements. But it does need to evolve so that live signals from global and local media owners and commerce partners become available to planners on the same footing as the platforms that are currently easiest to buy.
Live signals tell us what static data cannot
Live signals are data points that reflect current behaviour rather than a historical snapshot. A broadcaster has access to live viewing data describing what its audience is watching this evening. A grocery retailer has transaction records showing what its customers bought this week, and how their basket has shifted over recent months. A travel platform holds booking data reflecting the journeys people are planning right now, not six months ago.
Each of these signals carries predictive value that a panel can’t replicate. A grocery basket that has shifted from convenience foods to fresh, organic produce points to a lifestyle change, with implications a retailer’s own data would never reveal on its own.
Someone’s travel booking pattern says just as much: a consistent uptick in premium fares points to a change in disposable income that a static demographic profile would never capture.
Connecting the signals makes for a better plan
When live signals from media owners and commerce partners flow into the planning process, the resulting plan will be quite different to one built on panel data alone.
First, planners working from live signals can identify audiences a panel-based plan would miss entirely, since panels capture only their specific members or respondents.
Additionally, a live signal reflects behaviour as it’s happening, so insight arrives in days rather than the months it can take for panel-based findings to filter through.
But most importantly, instead of defaulting to whichever platform is easiest to buy, spend can move toward the audiences most likely to respond, regardless of which platform they’re on.
Media owners who make granular, first-party data available for planning put themselves back into consideration. Staying outside these frameworks carries a cost, as a planner working from live signals has less reason to include a media owner they can’t see clearly.
Making the connection without the risk
The obvious objection to all this is data movement. Broadcasters and retailers hold sensitive customer data, as do travel platforms. Asking any of them to hand that data over to a central pool for planning purposes creates a governance risk that most legal and compliance teams won’t accept, particularly in highly regulated sectors.
Decentralised infrastructure offers a solution; rather than moving raw data into a shared environment, each organisation’s data stays within its own systems. Signals connect across those separate environments to build a combined picture, without personal data ever leaving its source.
A broadcaster’s viewing data and a retailer’s transaction data can inform the same plan without either party handing over information to the other, or to a third party sitting in the middle.
This approach removes the barrier that has kept so much valuable data out of planning in the first place.
Data owners who were previously reluctant to participate, worried about regulatory exposure or simply about losing control of their own information, now have a new and safe avenue to monetise data with the reassurance that their data never moves and commercial value is protected.
A plan built on what’s happening now
A media plan built on live signals shows an audience as it’s behaving today, with enough specificity to predict what it might do next.
As more media owners and commerce partners find ways to connect their data safely, the industry has an opportunity to build plans that reflect where consumers actually are, rather than where the easiest available data says they used to be.
Nick Henthorn is the global head of InfoSum, data and technology solutions, WPP