A Head of Investment’s perspective on planning bias, commercial opportunity and why every media investment should earn its place.
As Head of Investment, I spend my days asking one question: Where is the greatest commercial opportunity for our clients?
Notice I didn’t say, Which channel should we buy? Or Where can we find the cheapest CPM? Or even What’s everyone else doing?
Because great investment decisions don’t start with channels. They start with opportunity.
That’s why I think the conversation around regional media is one of the most important our industry can be having right now.
Not because regional Australia needs defending, but because it challenges some of the assumptions we’ve built into the way we plan media.
We’ve become incredibly sophisticated… yet we’re still carrying an old planning habit.
Today’s planners have access to more audience intelligence than ever before. We have real-time optimisation, advanced attribution, richer measurement and better planning tools than at any point in our industry’s history.
Yet despite all of that progress, I believe one bias still quietly exists. We’re still incredibly metro-first in the way we think. Not intentionally. Not because we don’t value regional Australia. BUT because metro has become the default setting. Not because planners don’t understand regional, but because habits, historic benchmarks, buying structures and even reporting frameworks have quietly reinforced metro-first thinking over decades.
Regional often becomes the extension, the incremental buy, the budget balancing item.
Or, unfortunately, the first thing removed when budgets tighten.
As an industry, we’ve become so comfortable planning this way that we’ve almost stopped questioning whether it’s actually the best commercial decision. The biggest risk in media investment isn’t making a different decision. It’s making the same decision simply because it’s the one we’ve always made.
Regional isn’t one audience and it certainly isn’t one channel.
One of the biggest misconceptions I see is treating regional Australia as though it’s one market.
It isn’t.
Newcastle behaves differently to Northern NSW.
Regional Victoria is different to regional Queensland.
Country WA has different media habits again.
The cultural, economic and media landscapes are incredibly diverse.
We would never suggest Sydney and Melbourne should be planned identically simply because they’re both metropolitan.
Yet we often talk about “regional” as though it’s one homogeneous audience.
The same applies to media.
Regional television plays a different role to regional radio.
Regional publishing delivers something entirely different again.
Local news brands often carry a level of community trust that’s incredibly difficult for national advertising alone to replicate
Radio personalities become part of communities.
Regional television can build fame and familiarity at a local level in ways that national campaigns often struggle to replicate
Out-of-home reaches people where they live and move.
Digital enables precision – but precision shouldn’t come at the expense of broader commercial thinking.
The opportunity isn’t choosing one.
It’s understanding what role each can play.
That’s why I think we need to stop talking about regional media as a category and start recognising it as an ecosystem.
I’ve seen regional radio personalities command a level of trust that many national campaigns spend millions trying to build. They’re not just broadcasters; they’re part of the community. When they speak, people listen because they’ve earned credibility over years, sometimes decades.
I’ve seen regional news publishers become the heartbeat of their communities. At a time when trust is one of the most valuable currencies in advertising, local journalism continues to play an incredibly important role in informing, connecting and influencing audiences.
I’ve seen regional television create disproportionate impact because brands aren’t simply buying airtime, they’re becoming part of local conversations through sponsorships, community integration and culturally relevant programming.
I’ve seen regional out-of-home succeed because it reaches people in places where there is less advertising clutter and greater contextual relevance, creating stronger opportunities for brands to be noticed.
We’ve confused efficiency with effectiveness.
One thing I consistently talk to our teams about is that efficiency and effectiveness are not the same thing.
The cheapest CPM doesn’t automatically create the most value. The biggest audience isn’t always the most influential audience. And the easiest plan isn’t necessarily the smartest one.
True investment thinking is about finding opportunities that others overlook.
Sometimes the best investment decision isn’t the biggest audience, it’s the audience paying closer attention.
Sometimes it isn’t the cheapest CPM, it’s the environment where your message is remembered.
Sometimes it isn’t another percentage point of metro reach, it’s owning a market where your competitors have barely shown up.
That’s what commercial investment is about. Not buying more media but creating more advantage.
Sometimes those opportunities are found in premium national television.
Sometimes they’re found in local news brands that have spent decades earning trust within their communities.
Sometimes they’re found through regional radio personalities who have genuine influence over purchasing behaviour.
Sometimes they’re found in regional television sponsorships that create genuine fame within local markets.
Every channel has a role; every market has a role.
The challenge is understanding when and why.
“National” should actually mean national.
I’ve been quite vocal about this recently; one word appears in almost every client brief.
National.
But I often ask myself what do we really mean by that.
Does national simply mean buying the largest metropolitan audiences? Or does it mean genuinely understanding where Australians live, work, consume media and make purchasing decisions?
Because they’re not the same thing.
Australia doesn’t stop at the edge of our capital cities. Neither should our thinking.
Imagine opening a brief with a blank page instead of a map.
You wouldn’t start by saying, “Let’s buy Sydney.”
You’d ask: Where are the customers? Where are the growth markets? Where are competitors under-invested? Where is trust highest? Where can we own the conversation rather than simply join it?
Only then should channels and geography follow.
The opportunity isn’t regional. The opportunity is different thinking.
One of the privileges of leading investment is seeing the market from every angle.
We speak to television networks, radio broadcasters, publishers, outdoor partners, digital platforms and regional media businesses every day.
Every one of them has strengths and every one of them has limitations.
The role of investment isn’t to champion one over another, it’s to understand where each creates the greatest commercial return for a client.
That’s why I describe myself as channel agnostic. The best ideas don’t come from favouring a medium, they come from following opportunity wherever it exists.
This isn’t a case for more regional media.
Let me be clear, this isn’t an argument that every campaign needs more regional investment.
Some won’t, some absolutely should remain metro heavy.
That’s the point.
Planning and investment decisions shouldn’t be driven by habit. They should be driven by evidence, audience behaviour and commercial opportunity.
Being channel agnostic means being equally open to a metro television sponsorship, a regional radio network, a trusted local publisher, a national BVOD campaign or a combination of all of them.
Our job isn’t to prove one channel is better than another, our job is to understand where each creates the greatest value.
Better thinking creates better outcomes.
The regional conversation is actually much bigger than regional itself because it’s about challenging assumptions and it’s about recognising planning bias.
As an industry, we spend enormous amounts of time understanding consumer bias.
Perhaps it’s time we spent a little more time understanding our own planning bias.
Every planner has one, every agency has one and every client has one.
The question isn’t whether planning bias exists, it’s whether we’re aware enough to challenge it. It’s about being willing to question long-held habits.
Most importantly, it’s about remembering that our responsibility isn’t simply to buy media.
It’s to invest our clients’ money where it will create the greatest commercial return.
Sometimes that will be in our largest cities. Sometimes it won’t.
The best investment decisions are rarely the most obvious ones.
They’re the ones made with an open mind, a deep understanding of audiences, and the confidence to look beyond where everyone else is already looking.
Perhaps the real opportunity isn’t simply investing more in regional Australia. Perhaps it’s becoming better at recognising opportunity wherever it exists.
Which brings me to one final thought…
Regional doesn’t need sympathy. It needs to be judged differently.
I don’t believe regional media should receive investment simply because it’s regional.
It should earn investment for exactly the same reason every other channel should – because it delivers commercial value.
That value might come through trusted local journalism.
It might come through broadcasters who genuinely know their communities.
It might come through less cluttered advertising environments.
It might come through stronger attention.
It might come through cultural relevance.
Or it might simply come from reaching customers that metro-only thinking never will.
Regional doesn’t need special treatment – it deserves objective evaluation.
And I suspect if we all approached it that way, we’d see many more regional opportunities making their way onto media plans.
Regional media isn’t asking to be chosen, it’s asking to be considered.
And they’re two very different things!