Conference Report – Monitoring Media Practice – 9 October 1997

Significance of advertising today:

No. of commercials per day: 1987 – 500

1997 – 11,000

2007 – 33,000

The premise of the Monitoring Media Performance conference was to analyse the role and function of the media auditors and consultants as independent bodies who provide feedback on the effectiveness of a client’s advertising campaign. Recurring questions raised were: are auditors/consultants independent, impartial and act with integrity, and should they be; are they transparent in so far as they demonstrate clearly their techniques and results to clients; are they accountable enough; should their results be more actionable, that is to say genuinely useful in some way, and, indeed, do clients really need them?

The background to these questions is, predictably, a rapid increase in the complexity of the media market-place. The number of television channels is about increase ten-fold, if not more, audiences are more fragmented and disparate than ever before, and as a result new monitoring techniques are required.

Opening the meeting, and pointing to this situation, Bob Wootton director of media services, ISBA, remarked how the prevailing use of ‘downsizing’ in companies has led to the frequent (and expensive) use of outside services which, Wootton argues, loses in-house control where it’s needed most. He also noted that more than half the advertising industry uses media auditors and asked if they are genuinely useful.

John Blakemore, UK advertising director of SmithKline Beecham, spoke on what the advertiser requires. He argued that investment in consultants should be made more accountable in that an advertising client employing a consultant to produce information on planning a successful campaign should provide some sort of guarantee that their advice, if followed, will yield some return. This is particularly true in the light of the great cost often involved in acquiring consultants’ research. Blakemore also voiced his concerns that some supposedly independent consultants are not only providing advice to advertisers but also to media owners themselves; this could, he suggested, create a ‘conflict of interest’ which would depreciate their impartiality and objectivity. Some consultants also operate as media buyers and may therefore tell the client that their own media buyer is not up to scratch in order to promote themselves. In other words, there is a possibility that consultants may sometimes be working to their agenda rather than the client’s. Advertisers, he warned, should be aware of this. Blakemore went on to say that ideally campaign planning and research should be done in-house keeping the expertise within the company and also retaining the company’s best interests. However, this is only financially viable, says Blakemore, if the campaign investment is over £12m; any less and it makes more sense to go outside. He acknowledged the possibility of using both internal and external consultants (external to check the success of the in-house team) but described this as “policing the policemen” saying that it is unwieldy and unnecessarily expensive. He also argued that any consultants’ results should be relevant and actionable and clients should be aware of insubstantial psycho-babble.

Many of the speakers stressed that advertisers should understand the difference between value and price (haggling over a half a per cent in commission for your auditor/consultants is preventing good and useful service was the general opinion). Chief executive of Media Audits Group Tony Ayers argued that an internal media department cannot maintain impartiality and that is why external agencies are required even though they are expensive and time-consuming. He said that it is the role of the media agency (consultant) to make the client more aware of the media, make them more demanding and more difficult. However, at present Ayers believes that the UK market is virtually saturated with consultants and noted that 60-65 per cent of all TV advertising expenditure is external examined. The future of the consultancy market Ayers outlines as having an expansion of detail and depth in reports; more original research which may well have to be carried out by groups of companies/consortia in order to meet the costs; results should be more actionable and there will probably be an expansion to markets outside the UK.

Chairperson at Barsby Rowe, Pat Barsby asked whether advertisers are asking the right questions. She argued that it is not necessarily the advertiser’s responsibility to ask exactly the right questions of the consultants to get the required results. In analogy with having your car serviced the client should only have to give an outline of the campaign/product (taking your car to the garage) to get a useful campaign structure from the consultants (picking up a fully serviced car). Auditors, she said, should not only concentrate on the price of a campaign when evaluating its effectiveness but also its overall use of the media.

Mandy Pooler, managing director of the network suggested that the UK advertising industry is spending too much time arguing about consultants’ commission and transparency where they should be addressing asking more basic and important questions such as ‘How can media help build my business/brand equity?’ ‘What returns can I expect on my investment?’ Again, the issues of accountability and relevance. Essentially Pooler argued that clients and advertisers should understand that the planning process is vital and often quite expensive but should not be ignored for the sake of slightly reduced costs or allowing less commission to the media planners. She illustrated this by saying that many advertising campaigns follow the form of: stick it all on TV (biggest audience), put it on ITV because it’s easier and target housewives. This approach, according to Pooler, is both lazy and ineffective. Pooler also complained that clients spend too much time and money getting to auditors/consultants to police the work of their own media planners/buyers after the event (after the campaign) when it’s already too late. She said if a client doesn’t trust their agency then they should demand the right to audit them but the shouldn’t use auditors/consultants as a “fraud squad” for media planners.

John Billet, chief executive of The Billet Consultancy, presented the media owner inventory management system as a way of monitoring other advertisers’ presence and effectivness. The use of this system, which shows who is being targeted, by whom, at what times and what the audience actually is, can quantify how well a campaign meets the needs of the objectives before buying the first spot. Billet pointed towards the future of consultancy whereby the consultants would receive no pay unless a material gain could be proven.

Ian Brace, director of BJM Research, took a more psychological view of the advertising market by demonstrating the existence of four types of attitudes towards adverts. He showed that there were players (30-40%) who think that advertising was interesting, entertaining, devious but not annoying; the uninvolved (25%) who think that adverts are not at all entertaining but do not object to them – indifferent; the acceptors (20-25%) who think that advertising is interesting, entertaining, not devious and not annoying; finally there are the rejecters (20-25%) who believe that advertising is not interesting, not entertaining, devious and annoying. Interestingly, BJM’s research showed that the rejecters (naturally the hardest group to reach) are not to be found in any particular demographic group (ABC1s for example) but are spread throughout the audience. However, it was discovered that rejecters remember the message of an advert more clearly than even the acceptors but take about two weeks longer to become aware of its existence. In the light of this Brace noted that advertising is developed to appeal to the most receptive audience and questions whether this is necessarily the best method. He claimed that there are such things as rejecter-friendly ads but BJM have not discovered exactly what there are. He did concede, however, that the soft drinks market seems to contain a higher concentration of rejecters than is average.

Paul Barker managing director at OHAL talked about the merits of econometrics for showing the correlation between a change in scheduling and its effect on sales. Stef Clarke, media strategy manager at Halifax, reiterated that advertisers should question whether their media performance is merely efficient rather than effective and warned that advertisers should beware of ‘big discount’ becoming synonymous with value.

Overall, then, the opinion amongst those in the advertising industry seems to be that auditors and consultants should become more accountable and companies should also be able to trust their own media planners to a greater degree. This can be achieved by an open and honest dialogue between the two parties. There is the need to recognise the difference between price and value; this in terms of both actual cost of campaign as well as consultants’ commission. Finally, new detailed research needs to be undertaken to understand the recent and rapid developments in the market and the use of different techniques to evaluate performance, such as econometrics and inventory management systems should be explored further.