5 Common Media Pain Points (and what to do about them)

As a media lead, you manage one of the largest line items on the company's balance sheet: often 5-15% of total revenue.

You’re regularly coordinating with teams across the business, from consumer insights and analytics through to marketing, finance, and procurement. Your decisions impact brand equity, customer acquisition and bottom-line growth.  Yet somehow, you're still piecing together performance data like a detective gathering clues. 

If you're nodding along, you're not alone. I’ve experienced these challenges first-hand throughout my roles managing media investments. There is a better way.  

Here are the five most common frustrations I hear from media leaders today and more importantly, how to move past them. 

Media pain point #1: your media data lives everywhere except where you need it 

The problem: You don't have a shared space for key media data. Critical information is scattered across spreadsheets, trapped in email inboxes, buried in disconnected tools, or locked away with your agency partners. Every time you need to dig deeper into performance, you're stuck waiting for someone else to pull the data and send it to you. 

The reality check: When your CMO asks a straightforward question about media ROI across markets, you shouldn't have to say, "Let me get back to you on that." Yet that's exactly what happens when your data lives in other people's systems.  

The frustrating reality? While sales has sophisticated CRM systems and finance operates with robust ERP platforms, media still runs on PowerPoints, spreadsheets, emails, and agency black boxes. For a trillion-dollar global industry, we're operating with surprisingly primitive infrastructure. 

The solution: take ownership of your data 

Stop waiting for updates, bring your media data into your own infrastructure. This means having direct access to data that is validated and structured the way you need it. What you really need is a media operating system, that connects your data, strategic planning and media performance all in one place. 

So, when you log in, you’re presented with your own dashboard and can immediately see all the key performance metrics: 

• Campaign delivery across all markets 

• Budget allocation and spending patterns 

• Cross-channel campaign insights 

No more "Can you send me the latest numbers?" emails. Instead, you have direct and immediate access to your data when you need it. 

Media pain point #2: data reconciliation takes forever 

The problem: It takes far too long reconcile data across different teams and markets. What should be a straightforward task turns into back-and-forth emails with local teams, each using different naming conventions, measurement periods, and reporting formats. By the time you've reconciled everything, you're not sure if you're consolidating data consistently.  

When your data lives in siloed systems with different collection methods, pulling together a simple report on campaign spend in Excel becomes a mammoth task. 

The reality check: If your data is fragmented, your strategic decisions are built on shaky ground.  

The solution: a global media taxonomy 

Set up a unified data structure so that everyone across agency and internal market teams is working from the same playbook. 

Collect data consistently across markets, so there’s no confusion  

• Use shared naming conventions and a consistent way of measuring performance 

• Catch errors early with built-in validation and quality checks 

• Give your collaborators access to the same data in one place 

Now everyone who depends on this data - marketing, consumer insights, media and procurement teams - can finally speak the same language. Your teams can collaborate fluidly and make confident decisions. 

Media pain point #3: you're always playing catch-up

The problem: 
It feels like you're constantly reacting instead of steering. Decisions get made before you’ve seen the data and by the time issues surface, the campaign’s already out the door. You don’t have the visibility or systems to ensure your global strategy is being delivered at a local level.  

The reality check: 
Even with strong agency partnerships, strategy gets watered down fast if you don’t have real-time oversight. Local teams adapt, plans drift, and suddenly what’s on paper isn’t what’s playing out in market. 

The solution: bring strategy back into your hands 
With a media operating system in place, you’re not left reacting, you’re in the loop, in real time. You now have a shared foundation to guide execution, align teams, and course-correct before things veer off track. You maintain strategic control without micromanaging and your agency can focus on doing what they do best. 

Media pain point #4: you're learning too late 

The problem: It’s hard to compare performance in a way that helps you improve. 

By the time your post-buy reports land, the window to act on them has already passed. The insights come in too late and by then, your next campaign is already out the door. You’re constantly playing catch-up, making decisions with outdated info instead of timely insights. 

The reality check: 
If you’re not learning in real time, you’re missing chances to improve and likely spending money on things that aren’t working.

The solution: turn data into real-time intelligence 
Use your media data to guide smarter, faster decisions while it still matters. 

With one clear view of your campaign performance, you can: 

• Monitor how campaigns are delivering vs. plan 

• Understand how your media mix is performing across brands, channels, and markets 

• Spot patterns and compare results across campaigns to find what works 

• Pull your own reports with actionable insights  

No more waiting around for reports. You’ll know what’s working while campaigns are live, so you can work with your agency to monitor and adjust to get more from every media dollar. 

Media pain point #5: good ideas don't scale 

The problem: There is no easy way to make sure actions are accountable. Your agency presents a compelling case study showing how a particular audience segment performed well in one market. Everyone nods in agreement about rolling it out globally. But six months later, you realise only half your markets implemented the change and you have no systematic way to track whether it's working elsewhere.  

The reality check: If you can't systematically implement and track optimisation opportunities across your entire media portfolio, you're leaving value on the table. 

The solution: connect performance intelligence with plans  

Create a feedback loop that connects past insights with future plans. 

With an integrated system that connects your campaign intelligence with your planning process, you can: 

• Build learning loops that enable real-time optimisation 

• Have confidence that successful tactics are systematically implemented across markets 

So when you spot a winning strategy, you can implement it consistently across all markets and measure its impact systematically. 

The bottom-line 

These pain points share a common root cause: the lack of a proper operating system for media management.  The solution isn't to replace your agency partnerships, it's to empower a collaborative relationship with better infrastructure. When you take control of your media data and put a media operating system into place, you stop chasing problems and start shaping strategy. Media becomes less about reacting and more about driving real impact. 

About the author

John has shaped media investment strategies for some of the world’s biggest advertisers, working with global and local teams to close the gap between strategy and execution. Today, he works side by side with advertisers and agencies to navigate the realities of modern media management and help them make smarter investment decisions.