Media researches and social researches of target groups available today are largely focused on mechanical description of the investigated questions and subjects. They tend to be rather superficial. This is not caused by the incompetence of companies carrying out these polls. Failing to understand the client’s assignment and the resulting vague formulation of questions or unsuitable classification of questions into thematic sections may lead to absurd results. Simple behavioural researches of the population’s social groups yield a picture of merely the basic factors of customer decision-making, which is insufficient to mark out any kind of communication strategy.

The advertising industry’s giants may emphasise the benefits of the economy of scale in trading media space, but the truth is that at a time of a slanting level of customer sensitivity and increasing intensity of advertisement, not every client can take the liberty of accepting the risk of vague/ineffective media communication. A communication agency should therefore lean not only on media and social polls, but also on client’s research documentations relating to the issues or products to be communicated. The creative and strategic part of the campaign development should therefore never be separated from its media part, or planning and purchase of media. The form and extent depend directly on the creative rendering of the communicated message.

This holds true more in online marketing communication than anywhere else, since here, the differences between an advertising campaign and the product itself get blurred. Online marketing communication does not mean only the Internet. It amounts to vast room for new approaches to media planning, finding new forms of linkage between various types of media and of allocating marketing communication among individual media. With human perception ever changing, with penetration of modern technologies into everyday life ever increasing, online marketing communication is being given a key role: the role of an umbrella over the entire marketing communication, delivering order between the above-the-line and below-the-line communications.