Key takeaways
- Territory boundaries and media boundaries almost never align. Territories are drawn by postcode, population or drive time; media is sold by metro, broadcast area or platform geography.
- Spill is not waste when it lands in another franchisee's territory — it is a transfer. Treating it as waste is what starts the arguments.
- Decide the rule before you buy the media. Overlap disputes are cheap to prevent in a policy document and expensive to resolve after a campaign has run.
- Drive time beats radius everywhere except on paper. A five-mile circle crossing a river, a rail line or a state boundary describes a market that does not exist.
- Digital does not solve this. Platform geo-targeting is more precise than broadcast but still resolves to areas that do not match franchise boundaries.
A franchise territory is a legal construct. It is defined in an agreement, usually by a list of postcodes, a population count, a radius or a drawn polygon, and it determines where a franchisee may operate and what they are protected from.
Media is sold on entirely different geography. Broadcast covers a designated market area. Print covers a circulation zone. Out-of-home covers a road. Digital platforms resolve to their own geographic units, which are more precise but still not your postcodes. None of these were drawn with your franchise agreement in mind.
Everything difficult about local media in a franchise system follows from that mismatch.
Map the territory as it actually behaves
Before media planning, it is worth establishing what a territory is in practice rather than on paper, because the two often differ substantially.
- The contractual boundary, exactly as written in the agreement. This is what protection and disputes are judged against
- The operating area, which is where customers actually come from. Pull a year of customer postcodes and plot them; the shape is frequently not the shape in the agreement
- The drive-time reality, which is what the customer experiences. A location ten minutes away across a bridge is nearer than one four miles away through a town centre
- Physical and psychological barriers — rivers, motorways, rail lines, county or state boundaries, the point at which people say "I don't go over there." These are invisible on a postcode map and decisive in behaviour
The gap between the first and second is where most media argument originates. A franchisee protected across thirty postcodes who draws ninety per cent of business from six of them has a legal territory and a real one, and media bought against either will look wrong measured against the other.
Where the maps disagree
| Media type | Its geography | Typical mismatch |
|---|---|---|
| Broadcast television and radio | Designated market area | Covers many territories at once; no way to isolate one |
| Print and direct mail | Circulation or carrier route | Routes cross boundaries; minimum buys exceed the territory |
| Out-of-home | Road and site specific | Traffic is directional; a board serves commuters, not residents |
| Paid search | Postcode or drawn polygon | Closest match available, but radius defaults are the norm and are wrong |
| Paid social | Platform-defined areas and radii | Approximate, with interest-based inclusion that leaks badly |
| Local organic and maps | Proximity to the searcher | Not buyable at all; determined by where the location physically is |
Paid search is the only channel that comes close to matching a franchise territory, and only if it is configured against boundaries rather than a radius — which is the subject of local paid search for multi-location brands.
The bottom row is worth noting because it is the one nobody can negotiate. Organic local visibility is determined by physical proximity between the searcher and the location. A franchisee whose territory extends fifteen miles in a direction where a competitor sits five miles from the customer will not win those searches regardless of what the agreement says.
Spill is a transfer, not waste
When a franchisee buys media that reaches beyond their boundary, the standard framing is that the excess is wasted spend. In a franchise system that is usually wrong, and the wrongness is the root of most overlap disputes.
If the spill lands in an unallocated area, it is genuinely wasted. If it lands in a neighbouring franchisee's territory, the money was spent by one owner and the benefit accrued to another. That is a transfer between two businesses in the same system, and how you treat it determines whether the two owners cooperate or compete.
Three ways systems handle it, in ascending order of sophistication:
- Ignore it. Workable where territories are sparse and spill is rare. Fails badly in dense metros
- Cost-share by coverage. Franchisees in a shared media area contribute proportionally to population or households covered. Requires a cooperative structure and an agreed formula
- Move it to the fund. Media that structurally cannot be bought at territory level is treated as system spend, on the argument that its benefit does not depend on geography — the test set out in ad fund allocation
The third is the cleanest where it is available, because it stops the question being about individual fairness and makes it a structural decision. It also requires the fund to have capacity and the reporting to justify it, which is not always the case.
The overlap zone rule
Where territories abut — particularly in metros with several locations — a written rule covering the boundary is worth more than any amount of goodwill, because goodwill does not survive a dispute about a specific lead.
A workable rule covers four things:
- Who advertises into the zone. Either a named location, both with agreed budget shares, or neither with the zone covered centrally
- How leads from the zone are routed. Nearest location by drive time is the usual answer and is defensible because it matches what the customer would choose
- What happens to a lead that names a specific location. Customer preference should override routing, always, or you will be arguing about it within a month
- Who arbitrates, and how quickly. An unresolved boundary dispute poisons the working relationship between two owners who have every reason to cooperate
Write it once, apply it consistently, and revisit it when a new location opens in the metro rather than when someone complains.
Planning media against the real map
Once the territory is mapped honestly, media planning becomes a fairly mechanical exercise.
Channels that can be bought at territory level — paid search, most paid social, some direct mail — are local budget and local responsibility. Channels that structurally cannot be — broadcast, most out-of-home, metro print — are either cooperative buys or fund expenses, and pretending otherwise produces a franchisee paying for coverage of nine territories they do not own.
The genuinely contested middle is regional campaigns covering some but not all locations. There is no clean answer here; there is only a decision made deliberately, written down, and applied the same way next time. Systems that resolve each instance on its merits end up resolving it by whoever argues hardest, which is the outcome that damages the fund relationship most.
And where a new location is opening into an established metro, the boundary questions surface immediately and at their most sensitive — which is one reason the opening plan in grand opening marketing should include a conversation with the neighbouring owners before the campaign runs, not after.
Questions we get asked
Why do franchise territories and media areas not line up?
They are drawn for unrelated purposes. Territories are legal constructs defined by postcode, population, radius or polygon in the franchise agreement. Media is sold by designated market area, circulation route, road position or platform geography. Neither was drawn with reference to the other, and in dense metros the mismatch is substantial.
What should happen when one franchisee's advertising reaches another's territory?
Treat it as a transfer between two businesses rather than waste. Options are to ignore it where territories are sparse, cost-share proportionally to coverage through a cooperative, or move structurally un-targetable media to the ad fund on the grounds that its benefit does not depend on geography.
How should leads from an overlap zone be routed between franchisees?
Nearest location by drive time is the usual rule and is defensible because it matches what the customer would choose anyway. The critical exception is that a customer naming a specific location should always be routed there — without that override, disputes start within weeks.
Is radius targeting appropriate for franchise territories?
Rarely. A circle around a pin ignores rivers, motorways, rail lines and administrative boundaries that determine where people actually travel, and it simultaneously spills outside the contractual area and excludes parts of it. Use drive time or the actual boundary polygon instead.
How do you map a franchise territory for media planning?
Establish four layers: the contractual boundary from the agreement, the operating area from a year of plotted customer postcodes, the drive-time reality, and the physical barriers people will not cross. The gap between the first two is where most media disputes originate.
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