The inaugural IPA Media Owner Awards
This month saw the inaugural IPA Media Owner Awards (MOA) take place, at the Delfina Gallery on London’s South Bank.
The awards celebrate the best in service, creativity, and commercial collaboration over the previous 12 months, judged by some of the key personalities behind the UK’s leading media agencies.
For an industry that spends most of November and December celebrating its successes, it might seem surprising that these are the first awards designed exclusively to recognise the central role that media owners play in the creation of award-winning advertising campaigns.
But in reality, this is a clear reflection of the increased contribution that media owners are expected to make, to campaign planning and campaign delivery, in a digitally mature media world.
Few media agency buyers have time to analyse and optimise, in real time, every ad placement on a campaign media plan where the ad placements run in to the hundreds. Equally, few agency planners could claim to have all the answers in what is an increasingly fragmented media landscape, with infinite opportunities to engage and influence consumers.
Agencies, having long relied on media owner ad ops teams to optimise live campaigns, are now also starting to embrace an operational model that encourages deeper involvement from media owners to contribute to campaign planning, looking to engage them early in the briefing process.
It is for this reason that the MOA is such a fantastic concept. It provides an opportunity for the agency community to thank those media owners that recognise and work to support this operational model: those that have created infrastructures that deliver service excellence; employed and trained individuals that integrate with the agency planning process; and have developed products that enable us to communicate with consumers ever more effectively.
What better place to start to reflect this new era of collaboration than with the sales newcomers of the year.
Having met all three of the highly commended nominees, you couldn’t fail but to be impressed with their passion for the industry. But the quality that most resonated was the commercial acumen of the candidates, not just a hunger to hit sales targets, but in all cases an informed insight in to the role of the media agency planner, and a clear understanding of how to integrate and support it.
It should come as no surprise that the sales newcomer of the year (Emily ffrench Blake, Spotify) and the commercial director of the year (Ian Dowds, Specific Media) both come from businesses that have worked tirelessly to build stronger, more commercially engaged, agency relationships.
It is only when media owners recognise the opportunity of building collaborative partnerships with media agencies that they create the infrastructure to unlock the potential for more effective advertising campaigns.
If there was anything to be slightly disappointed about, it was clear from the lack of empirical measurement in some of the effectiveness entries that agencies and clients still feel uncomfortable sharing meaningful campaign performance information with media owners, but any disappointment was more than offset by some of the fantastic innovation demonstrated within the submissions. From The Register’s use of the LinkedIn API, to You Tube’s opt-in advertising model, there were ideas and products showcased within the submissions that highlighted the role media owners play in changing the way that we consume media and engage with brands.
The IPA Media Owner Awards are a welcome addition to the end of year awards calendar, providing deserved recognition of the great work that media owners deliver to help grow our industry, as well as allowing a rare nod of appreciation from agencies for helping to make our working lives easier, and more importantly, our clients’ campaigns more effective.
For more on information on the Awards and the winners go to www.ipamoa.co.uk