#MediaSnack

#MediaSnack 112: The 5 States of Media Control by ID Comms

On this week's #MediaSnack we are back to school, after an unusually busy summer for the media industry, we review some of the biggest stories of the last 3 months. This will help catch you up if you've been on the beach. The scale of progress in the global media industry is immense and it's interesting to review what's happened in just the last quarter. First, we review news that Diageo, the global drinks giant has concluded its hasty media agency review and it's pretty much as you were. Dentsu Aegis retained their most important global client. You might recall on a previous #MediaSnack we were surprised that Diageo had called a review because we regarded them a highly loyal to their long relationship with DA agency Carat. Retaining clients of this scale is as good as a win, this year the media agency pitch market has been significantly slower than the madness of 2015's MediaPalooza so these global pitches are highly contested both in terms of the commercial offer and the agency talent working on them. It's an advantage for advertisers like Diageo and IKEA (also running this year, managed by ID Comms) to pitch their accounts in quieter periods because you get more attention for agencies who are not having to spread their resources and commercial power across multiple big advertisers. Next, we discuss a fascinating insight from some research in the US which highlights the huge churn still occurring in the CMO role. 50% of major retail advertisers in the US have changed their CMO in the leat year! And over 60% of those found replacements outside their company. This churn seems to indicate a broad dissatisfaction with CMO's likely because the role of a CMO is changed but companies are not able to describe what they need. Our review of the busy summer shows just how broad the CMO's perspective and expertise needs to be nowadays. It's overwhelming, and then you add on top of this the far greater accountability that marketing is subject to in this competitive digital world. CMO's are expected to turn magic in very short periods. We suspect that this is in because of their organisation's dysfunction which makes it very difficult for CMO's to succeed: The company expects them to transform the business but at the same time is not actually empowering CMO's with the influence internally to activate the changes needed. We consider how this impact the Chief Media Officer role, any media executive needs greater tenure because of the specialist technical knowledge which is required. Companies who transition media directors out of their roles risk losing huge value. Finally, we review some startling evidence found by Gideon Spanier of Campaign in the accounts of the Guardian Media Group. The publisher has made provision in its accounting to pay incentives to media agencies in return for commitments of advertisers budgets. Sometimes this can be in the form of cash rebates. It's another example, following the Daily Mail admitting it puts aside £27m ($40m) each year as rebates to agencies, this amounts to 7% of its total ad revenue. Both examples give welcome transparency into how media agencies can generate income and benefit from committing advertiser spend. This is concerning at a time when Guardian is posting record financial losses and the organisation risks imploding under debt which would be a loss to quality journalism and a loss to the advertising industry. Marketers should welcome the transparency, and we look forward to many more publishers starting to make public their financial arrangements for paying incentives and rebates to media agencies. 

#MediaSnack Ep. 126: More “UNETHICAL” Agency Pitch Practices by ID Comms

On this week’s #MediaSnack we consider what a challenging year its been for the global media industry and devote our Christmas episode to sharing with you the amazing story of Population Media Center (PMC), an NGO that we work with at ID Comms. We think PMC is a truly amazing organisation, leveraging the power of media to tackle some of the world’s most acute challenges, improving education and rights for woman and girls, empowering them with family planning which reduces the impact of population growth and thereby the impact and strain on the environment. PMC creates TV and radio shows, serialized dramas, that embed positive role models into prime time entertainment to drive behavioural and societal change. By thorough pre-post testing, PMC has been able to demonstrate to governments around the world how effective their programmes are when compared with traditional public-service communications. PMC are showing the world (and marketers) what true effectiveness means for media investment and how compelling content changes minds and changes lives. The goal of the partnership with ID Comms is to help PMC, which was founded in 1998, reach more people around the world.ID Comms will provide marketing advice, training and brand introductions for PMC, dedicating more than 40-days of employee time for the first year of the initiatives.The partnership will bring together ID Comms’ expertise, connections and understanding of the media landscape with PMC’s skill at creating compelling entertainment that inspires behavioural change.“We are very excited to be working with Population Media Center, which is making a real difference in the lives of women and girls in some of the most hard-to-reach communities across the globe,” said Tom Denford, Co-Founder of ID Comms. “The way PMC tackles these behavioural issues through media exposure is really easy for us to get excited about. The team at ID Comms act as trusted advisors to some of the world's leading brands, helping them compete in a fast-changing media landscape. We are therefore hugely excited to be supporting PMC’s incredible work, applying the same knowledge and skills to drive real change in the world through media. ”“We are delighted to be working with the team at ID Comms to help us analyse new markets and connect with more of the world’s major brands,” said Bill Ryerson, Founder and President of Population Media Center. “There is no more cost-effective use of charitable dollars than in preventing unplanned and unwanted births and reducing birth rates worldwide through information and empowerment,” said Ryerson. “The work of PMC is helping empower women and girls and prevent the needless suffering of millions of people. ID Comms is helping us expand this work. With their help, we’re going to reach more people, which is desperately needed.”Population Media Center is a nonprofit leader in entertainment-education dedicated to women’s rights and empowerment, population stabilization, and the environment. For the past two decades, PMC’s entertainment programming has promoted social and cultural change and has helped 500 million people in more than 50 countries.PMC’s efforts span the globe, continually targeting underserved audiences. The East Los High TV Series in the United States, broadcast via Hulu, resulted in almost 30,000 people using the Planned Parenthood widgets on eastloshigh.com in the first month of broadcast. Via this widget they were able to determine their risk for sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy, and 76% of viewers who accessed resources on East Los High’s website also shared those resources with friends.PMChttps://www.populationmedia.org/Please donate to PMC directly here and support their amazing workhttps://www.populationmedia.org/donate-now/ID Comms x PMC press releasehttp://blog.idcomms.com/id-comms-announces-global-csr-partnership-with-population-media-center

On this week's #MediaSnack we are excited to see the digital media behemoths Google and Facebook, so dominant of global digital media investment, softening their stance on allowing external verification and measurement. Are the walls around their highly successful gardens finally coming down after a bit of recent pressure from P&G?http://blog.idcomms.com/pg-rewrites-the-rules-of-digital-marketingFacebook and Google have both confirmed that they will provide more data to the main third-party measurement partners Moat, DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science and that these three will be audited by the Media Ratings Council (which is the independent, industry-funded medîa audience accreditation service, founded in the 60's).Facebook made their concessions in a meeting with the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) which came shortly after ANA Chair and P&G executive Marc Pritchard had delivered a powerful speech to the media industry calling for greater transparency of digital media measurement and the end of "walled gardens" that is media platforms not allowing external verification, essentially marking their own homework. Google separately announced their change of policy to allow more external verification, but claimed their announcement was not prompted by Facebook's first move nor "a reaction to industry pressure....". Go figure. Next up we discuss, also related to Marc Pritchard's speech, details of an exclusive ID Comms webinar we hosted last week with over 100 marketing and procurement leaders from around the world. We had attendees from as far wide as San Francisco, New York, Europe, Dubai and Singapore. You can access the full #MediaChange webinar recording here for the next few weeks.http://content.idcomms.com/mediachange-webinar-marc-pritchard-of-pgs-media-transparency-action-plan-what-nowIn the webinar, we provided some action-focused advice to advertisers on what they should be considering following Marc's speech and how it might impact their own businesses. We looked specifically at Marc's five-point "Media Action Plan" and hosted a guest panel to dig into the areas of measurement and viewability, contract compliance and TAG certification to combat ad-fraud. Thanks to all those that attended and provided some amazing questions for us and our special guest panel. Finally, on this episode, we look ahead to the ANA Media Conference (#ANAMedia) which is taking place in Orlando next week. https://twitter.com/search?src=typd&q=%23anamediaInterestingly the keynote is being delivered by none other than ANA Chair Marc Pritchard so the industry will be listening closely to see what follow ups there will be from the Action Plan speech. Tom will be at the conference and be reporting back on a future #MediaSnack.

What exactly is Ad Fraud, how big a problem is it, how does it happen and what can advertisers do about it? 

Just some of the questions answered by the 'Ad Fraud Crusader' Shailin Dhar, the founder of Method Media Intelligence. 

Learn how Shailin accidentally got into the ad fraud business, creating sites and selling counterfeit traffic to advertisers. He then realized his calling was to switch the good side and created a company to advise advertisers on how to minimize their risks to fraud. 




Episode Links:

Method Media Intelligence website
https://www.methodmi.com/about/

Method Media Intelligence twitter
https://twitter.com/method_mi

Shailin Dhar twitter
https://twitter.com/ShailinDhar

Bad Men by Bob Hoffman (Amazon)

https://www.amazon.com/BadMen-Advertising-Minor-Annoyance-Menace/dp/0999230700 

The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu (Amazon)

https://www.amazon.com/Attention-Merchants-Struggle-Inside-Heads/dp/1782394850 

Thinking Systems by Donella Meadows (Amazon)

https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/1603580557 

The Donella Meadows Project - Academy for Systems Change (link)

http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/ 

Who's going to #ANAAFM this year?

It is STILL the best #marketing #procurement stage in the world, hosted by the Association of National Advertisers

In this episode of #MedisSnack LIVE, we are giving listeners the 'unofficial' AFM preview.

We’re featuring many of this year's AFM speakers, conference hosts and happy delegates including Conference Host Katherine Freely, the ANA’s Bill Duggan, and many more.

The AFM conference is happening April 30 - May 3 in Phoenix, AZ. Full agenda and tickets available here: https://www.ana.net/content/show/id/ms-afm-apr23-agenda

ID Comms is hiring!We are expanding fast and are looking for brilliant people in all positions to grow our teams in London and New York. If you are interested to join our company please click and send us your details.http://idcomms.com/contacts/#join-us-...ID Comms Summer InternshipOur annual internship programme opens for registration in April, get in early if you are at college or recently left and want to gain rich experience in marketing consulting.http://idcomms.com/contacts/#join-us-...#MediaChange Webinar Weds 22nd March 17Register Herehttp://content.idcomms.com/webinar-id...In this episode of #MediaSnack Tom and David are looking into more #MediaChange taking place, specifically within the agency landscape. They discuss recent news about Havas merging media and creative companies into a single P&L, is this a move back to full-service management? Also, Accenture Interactive are providing services for advertisers to in-house programmatic media buying.You may recall, that in January, on the first #MediaSnack episode of 2017 David and Tom announced that CHANGE is their media word of the year. And they discussed how this change will affect the industry from change amongst advertisers, media agencies and greater accountability.Last week Havas Group announced that they are merging their media and creative services under single P&L. We have seen other holding groups gathering their divisions in single locations, but the Havas move goes further, fully aligning full marketing services, in theory making it easier for those clients wanted an integrated service.Tom and David suggest that this may be a response to advertisers fragmenting their media scopes of work. Advertisers are increasingly looking to identify best in class suppliers along the entire marketing communications chain. Allowing clients to access best talent and solutions without any commercial barriers gives Havas Group more flexibility in theory.We live now in a “Post-consolidation” worldIn the last couple of years, major advertisers have gone through some form of consolidation. The most recent example is PSA’s global media review that was announced this week looking to consolidate media spending into a single agency globally. Over the last few years ID Comms has helped many advertisers to manage agency pitches where clients were looking to gather their billings together and work with one or two media agency partners in a consolidated way. We are now seeing more advertisers looking beyond that, having driven cost-efficiency from consolidation the new question is “how to we improve effectiveness?” and that requires a different brief, a different agency scope and a different type of pitch.Moving media buying away from media buying agencies?Next, Tom and David discuss a comment from Accenture Interactive that they are now helping advertisers to move programmatic buying services away from agencies and to in-house teams. This is a big play and makes a lot of sense as a natural extension service based on Accenture’s expertise with IT systems, their high-level consulting relationships and increasing capabilities in marketing services.

Is there anything in marketing more misunderstood than procurement?

Reports and guidelines published recently by WFA and Association of National Advertisers illustrate the evolving and increasingly influential role played by procurement in marketing success.

For this episode of #MediaSnack LIVE, we joined with the industry's leading marketers and procurement experts on LinkedIn Audio to unpack the role of procurement and its blossoming partnership with astute marketing leaders.

Our show is LIVE and we invite anyone that joins to ask questions and share perspectives. In this show, we covered how the view of procurement continues to change, why 2023 is procurement's year to shine, how we can all grow in our understanding of procurement's role in marketing, and much, much more.

#MediaSnack LIVE is hosted monthly on LinkedIn Audio. We gather the best and brightest from media and advertising to talk about the latest trends and topics, with the goal of working together toward Better Media for Brands We Love.

Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn for info on upcoming shows. 

In this episode:
Buying Less for Less by Gerry Preece
Madison Avenue Manslaughter by Michael Farmer
Magic and Logic from CIPS, the IPA and ISBA

In this episode you’ll be delighted to know that we discuss absolutely nothing at all about #CES2016, BUT we do talk about matters closer to home such as Recma’s nicely presented report on the results of 2015 #MediaPalooza and how that has affected the agency groups’ performances. We also highly recommend reading a long post on Medium by our friend Mikko Kotila  of botlab.io who gives 8 awesome predictions around Ad Fraud in 2016, a must read for any marketer spending money on digital advertising and wondering where their money goes. Finally, we respond to a viewer question about Daily Mail Group’s financial reporting which shows that they “set aside” £26m ($40m) to pay rebates to UK media agencies, this is about 7% of their ad revenue and for the first time gives an official benchmark to UK press rebates.