With the myriad of media opportunities available to the marketer in an offline and online world, the media channel budget allocation decision will be continually harder to make moving forward. Having worked first hand in media agencies that tackle these conundrums professionally, I can confidently say there is no magic formula to determine the splits. Yes, some major media agencies have developed tools to assist, but Im yet to be convinced that they actually work and are robust.

The rule of thumb I hear bandied around marketing classrooms and boardrooms is 10 percent. I’ve viewed and created many a media schedule significantly higher and lower than this but I doubt they would ever end up @ a flat 10 percent across the board.

Looking at the credit card markets media spend I could confidently say at least 80 percent + is attributed to online media. FMCG, ont he other hand, gets less than two percent. Having worked on campaigns for both categories there are a number of reasons why the difference is so large.

So what about your brands or businesses? Without giving the game away, what percentage of your media budget do you spend online? How do you come to this figure? Do you think it will increase or decrease over time?

Looking forward to your comments.