Why just eyeballs are not good enough for media planning?

Many brands still depend only on media planning based on survey data ( BARC, Adex etc) and while this served the purpose about 20 years ago, in today’s scenario it is simply not good enough. Let me point out some deficiencies in the existing media planning process. For one even if the eyeballs estimated are correct, this does not mean that the “right” eyeballs are being targeted. We need more evidence if we are to conclude that the media is impacting the right audience and resulting in sales. The second issue is the guesswork involved in investment across media. What is the right proportion of TV, Print, and Digital? How do we know if the budget invested in each is right, as plans across each cannot be compared? 

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Therefore figuring out the impact of each of the media on sales is the key requirement. Luckily, marketing analytics has a tried and tested approaches that can estimate the impact of each media on sales. This process if used with the standard media planning process can optimize spends. It is not my contention that one should be abandoned in favour of the other, it is both used together (with sound marketing judgement) that will lead the right mix of media, of channels, of the roles of each media. What is amazing is that with this process one can actually estimate the overall impact of media, and also figure out the lift in sales with the same budget. And for most brands this lift will be big money. So what is stopping brands from going to the next level?