With Bionic Media Planning Software, you get free upgrades as part of your subscription. Bionic’s software development team is continually improving your software. You got a bunch of big enhancements in 2015. You can expect even more great stuff in 2016. Here’s a sneak preview.

Media Planning Spreadsheet

The media planning spreadsheet – or “The Grid” – is scheduled for a makeover.

The media planning spreadsheet was the first major component of the Bionic media planning software. It’s core to Bionic and differentiates it from any media planning software ever built. It was released with the original version 1.0. Since then, we’ve added functionality piece by piece over the years. Now, the media planning spreadsheet is getting a technical overhaul and a bunch of new features, most notably:

  • Compact Display – a new multi-line display allows you to see more information on your screen.
  • Sticky Columns – making it easier to keep track where you are in your media plan.
  • Batch Edit – automates the process of applying an update to a bunch of line items all at once.
  • Time Shifting – shift the flight dates forwards or backwards in a batch.
  • To-do List – for keeping track of due dates, assignments, and status of tasks. For example, material due dates.
  • Key Performance Indicators – see your performance goals and results right on your media plan.
  • Filtering – filter your media plan to see only the line items that interest you.
  • New fields – improved targeting, creative specs, dayparting, weekparting, and others.
  • Faster Performance – as part of this project, we’re rewriting the grid from the ground up to improve performance of very large media plans and to create a solid foundation for these features and for years to come.

Task Management

In media planning, there are a myriad tasks to accomplish and deadlines to meet. Bionic will help you to manage all these tasks so nothing slips through the cracks.

Insertion Order Automation

Bionic currently streamlines the insertion order process by bursting out your media plan into Insertion Order schedules, one for each of the vendors on your media plan. This is a huge time saver, but it’s not the ultimate solution we envision. In 2016, you’ll get electronic delivery and tracking, electronic signatures, management of terms and conditions, support for OpenDirect, and more.

Search and Discovery Tools

One of the best kept secrets in the Bionic media planning software is its advertising catalog. We’ve compiled the world’s most comprehensive directory of advertising programs that spans all media channels. But it’s buried in the system and the search interface can be improved. Besides search, Bionic provides other discovery tools like category browsing, recommendations, reorders, and media magnet. You’ll see a major improvement in the presentation and utility of these search and discovery tools

And Much More

Media Planning Grid Spreadsheet, Insertion Order Automation, and Discovery Tools are the most popular features among dozens of new features planned for this year. Lost more to come!

Your High Priority Features

As always, your high priority features take precedence over the product roadmap. While it’s good practice to proactively develop a product vision, it’s even more important to listen to you and your needs.

When will these features roll out?

We’ll continue our practice of releasing new software upgrades every 3-4 weeks. The Bionic software development team is currently working on the Media Planning Grid 2.0. You’ll see the first phase in the next few days.

Beyond that, we’ll schedule the new features based on customer priorities. Your opinion counts: please let us know which enhancements are most critical to you.