CAS study plan

Map the advertising strategy process end to end: situation analysis, objective setting, target audience definition, positioning, and the creative/media brief handoff, writing a one-page flow diagram from memory.

Distinguish marketing objectives from advertising objectives and practice rewriting five vague goals (for example, 'raise awareness') into SMART objectives with a metric, baseline, and timeframe.

Build a segmentation and targeting worksheet that evaluates three audience segments on size, reachability, purchase intent, and competitive intensity, then select one with written justification.

Identify the core compliance duties that govern advertising content (truthfulness, substantiation of claims, disclosure of material connections, and special rules for sensitive categories such as health, finance, and advertising to minors), and list the evidence a marketer must retain for each.

Draft a 10-item checklist an agency would use to review a brief for legal and ethical risk before creative development begins.

Convert a strategy brief into a campaign plan with a work breakdown structure covering insight, concept, production, media, and launch gates, assigning an owner and due date to each task.

Write a campaign brief that specifies the single-minded proposition, reasons to believe, mandatories, tone, and required deliverables, then self-score it against a five-point clarity rubric.

Sequence a 12-week campaign timeline that shows dependencies between creative approval, media booking deadlines, and launch, and mark the three highest-risk slippage points.

Define the approval and trafficking workflow (internal review, legal review, client sign-off, asset delivery specs), and note where version control typically fails.

Compare waterfall and agile campaign management approaches and state which suits a long brand campaign versus a fast-response social campaign, with reasons.

Translate campaign objectives into media objectives and set reach, frequency, and continuity targets that are internally consistent with the budget available.

Compute GRPs, TRPs, impressions, reach, and average frequency from given inputs, and explain why doubling GRPs does not double reach.

Build a media mix allocation across at least three channels and justify the split using audience overlap, cost per thousand, and role in the purchase funnel.

Interpret a rate card: calculate net cost after agency commission and volume discounts, and compare CPM and cost-per-point across two media vehicles.

Identify the contractual terms in a media buy (flight dates, pre-emption, make-goods, cancellation windows, and audience delivery guarantees) that protect the advertiser when delivery underperforms.

Write media buying specifications for each channel in the plan, including format, dimensions, duration, file weight, and delivery deadline, so a producer could execute without further questions.

Evaluate three creative concepts against the brief using a scored matrix on message fit, distinctiveness, feasibility, and production cost.

Estimate a production budget for one concept covering talent, location or studio, post-production, music licensing, and contingency, and flag which line items are most likely to overrun.

Explain how creative format choices constrain media placement and how media placement constraints (for example, sound-off environments or six-second slots) should feed back into creative design.

List the usage rights and licensing questions that must be settled before an asset runs, including talent term, territory, media scope, and music synchronization rights.

Diagram the digital campaign architecture (ad server, demand-side platform, publisher, analytics, and CRM) and trace how an impression becomes a conversion event in the data.

Set up a measurement plan that names one primary KPI and two supporting metrics per funnel stage, with the data source and refresh cadence for each.

Compare last-click, linear, time-decay, position-based, and data-driven attribution models, and state the specific bias each introduces when evaluating upper-funnel spend.

Design a controlled test (holdout or A/B) for one campaign element, specifying hypothesis, sample size logic, duration, and decision rule.

Interpret a campaign dashboard containing impressions, click-through rate, conversion rate, cost per acquisition, and return on ad spend, and write three diagnostic questions you would ask before changing budget.

Build a campaign budget from the bottom up (media, production, agency fees, technology, contingency) and reconcile it against a top-down target expressed as a percentage of expected revenue.

Calculate return on investment, return on ad spend, payback period, and break-even cost per acquisition for a given set of margin and conversion assumptions.

Apply marginal analysis to a spend curve and identify the point of diminishing returns, explaining why average ROAS can rise while incremental ROAS falls.

Run a sensitivity analysis that shows how a 20 percent change in conversion rate or cost per click shifts the break-even point.

Prepare a budget reallocation recommendation that shifts spend between two channels using incremental return evidence rather than average performance.

Apply a compliance review to five sample ad claims, deciding for each whether the claim is substantiated, needs qualification, or must be removed, and record the reasoning.

Explain the disclosure obligations for paid partnerships and influencer content, including where and how disclosure must appear so it is hard to miss.

Identify data privacy obligations relevant to digital targeting and measurement: lawful basis for processing, consent for tracking, data minimization, and retention limits.

Revisit the domain 1 strategy brief and the domain 5 measurement plan and annotate each with the compliance controls that would apply in execution.

Draft an escalation protocol describing who reviews a borderline claim, what evidence is required, and when legal counsel must be consulted.

Integrate the prior seven weeks into a single end-to-end campaign case: strategy, campaign plan, media plan, creative package, measurement plan, budget model, and compliance review.

Complete two timed practice sets of mixed-domain questions and categorize every error by domain and by cause (knowledge gap, misread, calculation slip).

Re-derive from memory the formulas for GRP, CPM, conversion rate, CPA, ROAS, ROI, and break-even CPA, and check each against your notes.

Rewrite your weakest three topic summaries into one-page reference sheets that you could review in the final 48 hours.

Produce a prioritized final-week review list ranked by error frequency from your practice sets.