What Should a TV Advertising Brief Include?
A TV advertising brief should give your media planner a clear picture of what you want to achieve, who you need to reach, what you are promoting, when the campaign needs to run and how much you have available to invest.
You do not need to decide the channels, programmes, airtime or exact media schedule before briefing an agency. Those decisions should come from audience research, viewing data and media planning.
A useful brief gives planners the information they need to turn a business objective into a practical TV advertising strategy.
1. Your Campaign Objective
Start with the result the campaign needs to achieve.
A TV campaign could be designed to:
Build brand awareness
Launch a new product or service
Enter a new market
Increase website or app activity
Generate enquiries or sales
Support a retail promotion
Reach a new customer group
Strengthen awareness in selected regions
Be as specific as possible.
“Advertise on TV” is a media choice. “Increase awareness among UK homeowners ahead of our spring product launch” gives planners a clearer problem to solve.
The objective will influence almost every decision that follows, including audience selection, campaign scale, scheduling and measurement.
2. Your Target Audience
Who actually needs to see the advert?
Include the audience information you already know. This might cover age, location, household profile, interests, purchasing behaviour or life stage.
Customer data can make the brief stronger. If you know which age groups buy most frequently, which regions generate the most revenue or which customers have the highest lifetime value, share that information.
Avoid making the audience unnecessarily narrow at the briefing stage. Media planners can use viewing and audience data to determine how your customers can realistically be reached through television.
This becomes particularly important when deciding how broadcast TV, video on demand and Connected TV advertising could contribute to the campaign. Connected TV can support criteria such as location, demographics and defined audience segments where the relevant platform and data allow it.
3. What You Are Advertising
The agency needs to understand the product or service before it can plan the media.
Explain what you are promoting and why customers would consider it.
Useful information includes the product's price, availability, sales cycle and any important seasonal demand. You should also mention whether the product is established or being introduced to the market for the first time.
For example, launching a new app creates a different planning challenge from promoting an established household brand.
Commercial context helps planners understand the role television needs to play rather than treating every TV campaign as a generic awareness exercise.
4. Your Geographic Priorities
Specify where your customers are and where the business needs to grow.
The campaign might require national UK coverage, or there may be particular regions that deserve greater investment.
A retailer could prioritise areas surrounding its stores. A university may want to reach prospective students in selected regions. A business expanding into a new part of the UK may want additional visibility there.
Explain why each priority location matters.
This allows geographic decisions to follow the commercial opportunity rather than simply dividing the budget evenly across the country.
Where supported, streaming and Connected TV environments can provide additional geographic control for advertisers that do not require nationwide coverage.
5. Your Available Budget
A TV advertising brief should include a budget or realistic budget range.
This allows planners to determine what level of audience delivery can realistically be achieved and how the available investment should be allocated.
Be clear about what the figure covers.
Does the budget apply only to media buying? Does television creative still need to be produced? Are other channels competing for the same overall campaign budget?
If the final figure has not been approved, provide an indicative range. The agency can then show what different investment levels could achieve rather than developing a plan that later needs to be rebuilt around a significantly different budget.
6. Campaign Dates and Key Moments
Include the intended campaign period and any dates that cannot move.
These might include a:
Product launch
Store opening
Seasonal promotion
Event
Sale period
New service launch
Sponsorship
Major business announcement
It is also useful to explain whether the campaign needs to peak around one particular moment.
Timing can significantly affect the media plan. A campaign supporting a fixed launch date may require a different pattern of activity from an ongoing brand campaign.
For campaigns linked to major programmes or cultural moments, planning further ahead can also provide more time to assess relevant airtime, sponsorship and surrounding opportunities.
7. Your Existing TV Creative
Tell the agency what creative assets are already available.
If the advert has been produced, include its duration and any alternative edits. If production is still underway, provide the expected delivery date.
Also mention whether you have different versions for particular products, audiences or regions.
If no TV advert exists yet, say so early. Creative production needs to be factored into the campaign timeline rather than addressed shortly before the planned launch.
The media and creative should ultimately work towards the same objective. A strong media plan cannot compensate for an advert that is unclear about the brand or message.
8. Other Media in the Campaign
Your TV brief should show what else the audience may encounter.
Include planned activity across channels such as search, social, outdoor, radio, display and online video where relevant.
This helps planners define television's role within the wider campaign.
TV might introduce the brand to a large audience, while search captures subsequent demand. A viewer might encounter a Connected TV advert and later search for the brand or respond through another digital channel.
Providing the wider media picture also helps prevent channels from being planned independently when they are intended to support the same customer journey.
9. Previous Campaign Results
If you have advertised before, share what you learned.
Previous results can help planners understand which audiences, regions, periods and creative approaches have performed well.
Useful information might include:
Reach and frequency
Website activity
Search trends
Enquiries
App downloads
Sales
Regional performance
Brand tracking
Previous media costs
Poor results are useful too.
Knowing that a previous campaign struggled to reach a particular audience or generated weak response gives the planning team something specific to investigate and improve.
For example, our work with DuckDuckGo involved balancing reach, airtime quality and cost efficiency while supporting the brand's objective of driving app installs in the UK.
10. How Success Will Be Measured
Do not wait until the campaign has finished to decide what success means.
The KPIs should connect directly to the objective in the brief.
An awareness campaign might focus on reach, frequency and brand measures. A response focused campaign may also consider website visits, branded search, enquiries, app downloads or sales.
Connected TV campaigns can provide additional delivery measures such as impressions, completed video views, video completion rates and geographic delivery depending on the platform and campaign setup.
Measurement should also account for the wider campaign. If TV, paid search, social and outdoor advertising are running simultaneously, an increase in sales should not automatically be attributed entirely to one channel.
Give Your TV Campaign a Clear Starting Point
You do not need a finished media strategy before approaching an agency.
A useful brief simply needs to answer the important questions: What are you trying to achieve? Who needs to see the campaign? What are you promoting? Where and when should it run? What can you invest? How will success be judged?
With those details in place, the media planning process can focus on finding the right way to reach your audience.
Planning a TV campaign? Get in touch with our team to discuss your brief, audience and campaign requirements.