Why we must care more about media

Opinion

Media should not be a platform to sell cheap and reach large, but nurture a quality environment that benefits advertisers, publishers and consumers, writes Initiative’s UK CEO.

Last month, The Financial Times ran a story on the decline in mental health of young people. The piece quoted stats from Pew Research in the US highlighting the impact social media is having on young people, with a staggering 19% of 13-to -17-year-olds saying they are ‘almost constantly’ on YouTube and 16% claiming the same for TikTok. And we’ve had similar research and warnings in the UK.

Thinking about these findings, I was also reminded of the comments made by ISBA President Margaret Jobling during in her recent keynote speech about the disregard for consumer experience in media and advertising, and the impact ad frequency is having on consumers.

All of this leads me to think that, in the understandable pursuit of commercial interests, we are in danger of losing sight of the consumer, of the role and value of media and our duty of care.

As an industry, we have become too focused on quantity rather than quality. Too often we have created poor digital experiences with intrusive advertising, and have used programmatic to seek out ever greater audiences with scant regard to the content or media environment.

UK media is admired all around the world, and yet we are increasingly treating it as a platform to sell cheap and reach large. If we are to preserve, nurture and develop the media we have, we simply must care more. Because media matters.

It matters to consumers, it matters to advertisers, it matters to agencies and it matters to society. I would urge agencies and media owners to work harder to prove the impact media has on a brand when it’s seen in ‘better’ environments and alongside quality content.

We need to create a better agenda for media

We must champion quality journalism as it drives consumer trust and increases consumer engagement. A study by the Association for Online Publishing and Comscore found that 62% of respondents trust premium publishers, compared to just 32% who trust social networks.

However, in a bid to compete with advertising revenue in a digital world, some of the traditional spaces for journalism appear to have to change their user experience at the expense of quality journalism.

Some newsbrand websites now have 15-plus ads on their homepages, compared to less than five on the premium sites.

We know that ads on premium sites have a 23% uplift in brand searches and a 153% uplift in brand site visits compared to social media.

Advertising works in quality environments and alongside quality journalism.

Similarly, we must champion quality TV. Well-made programmes for everybody. And that starts with preserving all that is good about public-sector broadcasting and maintaining quality programming at the BBC, which fuels channels across connected TV with amazing content.

In fact, the BBC is the single biggest investor in original UK content. And the industry will have collectively sighed with relief when the Government reversed its decision not to privatise Channel 4. The channel has led the way with ground-breaking TV and has been a global leader in quality news and drama.

And we must applaud the move by the likes of Prime, Netflix and Disney for launching ad-funded models, giving brands the opportunity to appear alongside high-quality, big budget productions.

Amazon Prime Video’s Rings of Power cost a reported $715m for the first season, and Netflix invested $260m in the production of The Crown.

We must play our part in investing in quality media

As an industry we have seen the negative consequences of blindly focusing on reach in media planning. It can become a race to the bottom with consequences for consumers, brands, media owners and agencies alike.

That is why we launched the Media Responsibility Index (MRI) to enable brands to place responsibility at the heart of every media planning decision. Focused on four priorities of accountability — safety, inclusivity, sustainability and data ethics — over 150 media partners across 12 countries have now signed up to MRI.

And this focus on responsibility is delivering positive results for consumers. Due to data and optimisation bias, pharma company Merck was failing to reach the people who most needed their medicines. Directly addressing these disparities saw a significant improvement in engaging audiences most affected by life-threatening conditions.

In the coming months, we will be launching our UK specific Media Responsibility Index illustrating how we can drive responsibility in the UK among our media partners.

We must focus on media and content that unifies us and celebrates difference. In recent years, social media has been full of misinformation and fuelled divisions in society. As an industry, I believe we have duty to invest in and support media that is inclusive and harmonising. And we are seeing good progress here. Since taking part in MRI, Meta in the US has seen significant year-on-year improvement in brand safety.

We must care about audiences, environments and content in our planning. Programmatic has delivered huge benefits to advertisers in terms of reach and efficiency, but at the expense of not having full visibility of where their ads might appear.

If we are to leverage the engagement benefits of quality media, we really must focus on private marketplaces, which guarantee known, premium inventory. According to Insider Intelligence, adspend on PMPs is now growing three times faster than on open exchanges, more publishers are making quality inventory available and new tools are simplifying processing.

This is not to rail against adtech. Far from it. It’s a rallying cry to remember that efficiency or hyper targeted opportunities are one thing, but it should not come at the expense of the impact of media context.

Even John Nardone, one of the adtech industry’s pioneers, can see that commercial pressures from advertisers have for too long ignored the media to create an environment where “both media and creative agencies have hyper-optimised their parallel processes to deliver their separate outputs as efficiently as possible.”

We must work together as an industry to stop treating media as a platform to sell cheap and reach large.

We must always do the responsible thing and care more about media — as it matters to all of us.

James Shoreland is CEO of Initiative UK & Ireland.