Sue Cant, Head Investment, This Is Flow
A Head of Investment’s perspective on planning bias, commercial opportunity and why every media investment should earn its place.
As a Head of Investment in a media agency, I spend my days asking one question: ‘Where is the greatest commercial opportunity for our clients?’ Notice that I didn’t say, ‘Which channel should we buy?’ or ‘Where can we find the cheapest CPM?’ or even ‘What’s everyone else doing?’
That’s because great investment decisions don’t start with channels, they start with opportunity. And 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.
The dead weight of old planning habits
Despite huge progress in media planning, one bias still quietly exists. We’re 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. It’s not because planners don’t understand regional, but because habits, historic benchmarks, buying structures and even reporting frameworks have 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 stopped questioning whether it’s 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 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 same applies to regional media. Local news brands often carry a level of community trust that’s incredibly difficult to replicate. Radio personalities become part of communities. Regional television can build local fame and familiarity in ways that national campaigns 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.
Also, 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. And the easiest plan isn’t necessarily the smartest one.
True investment thinking is about finding opportunities that others overlook.
“National” should actually mean national
One word appears in almost every client brief: national.
Australia doesn’t stop at the edge of our capital cities and neither should our thinking.
Imagine opening a brief with a blank page instead of a map. 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.
Every channel has strengths and every one 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. 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
This isn’t an argument that every campaign needs more regional investment.
But planning and investment decisions shouldn’t be driven by habit, they should be driven by evidence, audience behaviour and commercial opportunity.
Our job isn’t to prove one channel is better than another, it is to understand where each creates the greatest value.
The regional conversation is actually much bigger than regional itself because it’s about challenging assumptions and 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. The question isn’t whether planning bias exists, it’s whether we’re aware enough to challenge it. And it’s about being willing to question long-held habits.
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.
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.
And I suspect if we all approached it that way, we’d see many more regional opportunities making their way onto media plans.