On this week’s #MediaSnack, David is accompanied by ID Comms Head of Performance Alex Morse whilst Tom is away in NY speaking at a client conference (he will report back on next week’s #Media Snack).We are talking about the final big reveal of CEO Steve King’s vision for Publicis Groupe’s media entities. Since first announced the group have been very quiet on the details as we’ve discussed previously talked a lot about the restructure (see Episode 9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_VpdXHd2jwfor a back story to all this). Steve has provided good clarity with a strong narrative around it, the structure is nothing revolutionary and may be accused of being cautious or “me too” but it is a massive step forward and we look forward to seeing how this operates in practice.Second, Alex is picking up on Nielsen’s recent acquisition of media planning tool – Pointlogic and how that represents a short in the landscape. Alex warns that this might attract the interest of media agencies seeing Nielsen as a competitive threat.Finally, we look at WPP’s very strong 2015 financial results and consider why CEO Sir Martin Sorrell seems to be very cautious on future growth, driven by economic pressures and uncertainty of the 2016 media pitch market, which we have said we expect could be as busy as 2015.

As the media industry braces for the impact of the Omnicom-IPG merger, advertisers face a shifting landscape filled with both risk and opportunity. In this episode of #MediaSnack, Tom and David unpack the real implications of the merger—whether you're with Omnicom, IPG, or any other agency group. They introduce a practical four-quadrant framework to help advertisers understand where they stand and what actions to take. Then, in the How to Win segment, they tackle why brands need to shift their thinking from chasing cheap media to prioritizing quality and effectiveness—and how to stress-test your agency relationships and audit practices to make smarter media decisions in 2025 and beyond.

01:04 – How Not to Lose

12:04 – How to Win

#MediaSnack is presented by ID Comms, the global media consultancy helping brands achieve better media results.

Explore the Omnicom-IPG Merger Hub: https://www.idcomms.com/omnicom

The High Cost of Cheap Media:  https://www.idcomms.com/blog/the-high-cost-of-cheap-media

Winning the Digital Pitch: https://www.idcomms.com/blog/winning-the-digital-pitch

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ID Comms talks to Lou Paskalis, former SVP, Customer Engagement and Media Investment at Bank of America, about the ANA’s Media Transparency report and its lasting impact.

“While we didn't uncover any issues on our own, we went from a rather short contract, relatively speaking at the time with our agency to a very long one, which was rife with thou shalt nots, about various activities that may or may not have been happening at the holding company,” he says.

Lou, who was SVP, Enterprise Media Planning, Investment and Measurement Executive when the report was published, says that the information from the ANA enabled Bank of America to protect itself from some of the behaviors alleged to have been happening across the holding companies. “It just became imperative to elicit each of those items and describe our expectation in what kind of penalty we would expect if we were to find that those activities were taking place against our will,” he says.

The company worked through these issues quickly during the summer of 2016 thanks to the financial sector’s culture of risk mitigation but Lou recognizes that others might have taken longer to react. And he adds that the ANA’s work in providing frameworks, essential tools and resources, and, even in some cases, providing consultancy, like a contract template ensured that no one could avoid the issue.

Reflecting back, he argues that the unity showed by the industry in tackling this complex issue could teach today’s marketers a thing or two. “I think we need to have a consensus agenda as a marketing industry and work with some other trade associations in partnership. The reality is that the biggest platforms still receive 90 to 95% of their revenue from advertisers. And yet advertiser leverage has diminished over the last 10 years. As a result, a lot of things are happening that the marketing industry is neither benefiting from nor are consumers necessarily. I think we have to have a focused agenda with everybody pulling oars in the same direction,” he concludes.

ID Comms 2016 Media Transparency Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/media_transparency_2016_IDCommsOn this week's #MediaSnack we hear from David about his recent trip to Paris where he presented to the WFA (World Federation of Advertisers) Sourcing Forum. The WFA represents the interests of the worlds leading brands and the Sourcing Forum is a very impressive group of the worlds most influential marketing procurement leaders. David explains the work ID Comms has done with WFA to research different marketing operational structures. The Paris meeting follows a similar session in NY back in December 2015. A white paper of the results will be published by WFA shortly. Up second, we discuss the launch of the ID Comms 2016 Media Transparency Survey which looks into how the myriad transparency issues might be affecting trust between advertisers and their media agencies. It will also give insight into which areas of transparency might be most influential in building trust. We are interested in transparency as an aspirational business principle rather than something toxic. Leading up to the ANA's findings of the investigation into media rebate practice in the US, The ID Comms survey will hopefully provide some constructive additional context. Please participate in the survey, links provided below. Closes on 4 March. Finally we discuss news reports that some major mobile network operators are considering providing their users with network wide Ad Blocking technology, allowing customers to have better control over how ads are served to mobile devices. It's an interesting move. Certainly users are fatigued with poor quality, intrusive ads on mobile. It's a good challenge back to the advertising community. It coincides with Mobile World Congress (MWC) happening this week in Barcelona. One notable keynote by Sir Martin Sorrell highlighted the gap between mobile's share of global ad spend (6%) versus consumer media time spent on mobile (25%). Agencies want to reduce that gap, the mobile networks might have something to say about that! 

On this week’s #MediaSnack we celebrate an epic list of the 50 Most Innovative CMOs In The World written by Lara O’Reilly at Business Insider. Business Insider segmented the world’s marketing leaders into 4 interesting categories; The Connectors, The Rebels, The Integrators and The Storytellers. It is interesting to note the mix of old and new, notably that the CMO’s at Google and Netflix account for the top two positions. The word ‘media’ appears 25 times across the 50 CMO profiles, whilst the word ‘advertising’ only appears 17 times. Perhaps an indication of the shifting focus of the CMO to take a more pro-active interest in media? What’s certain is that this list tells us the individuals within the world’s most ambitious and exciting brands who will set the narrative for the future of the industry. Also in the news this week, a Dominic Mills blog lifts the lid on an apparently highly secretive plan by Dentsu-Aegis Network to launch a digital media buying (or is it audience selling?) platform akin to GroupM’s Xasis, that is a non-disclosed media buying model which would allow advertisers no right to audit media prices. These types of buying methods, which exist in most all of the other agency groups already, are regarded as delivering particularly healthy profit margins by allowing the agency to mark up media inventory in opaque ways. They operate as ‘Principal-based buying’, that is the agency buying and then selling on the media opportunity to the advertiser (see here for more explanation on PBB). The (perfectly valid) argument in support of this approach is that in not disclosing the price paid, that the agency can negotiate lower media prices for the advertiser compared to using a fully transparent model. Some advertisers love this approach, getting more for less always sounds like a good idea. Whilst many other brands can’t tolerate the lack of transparency. Whichever side of this barbed fence you sit, it still begs the question as to why Dentsu-Aegis thought that a ‘cloak-and-dagger’ approach to launching this to US advertisers would serve them well in the long term. These things have a habit of leaking out and it was only a matter of time before questions were raised about the need for secrecy at a time of low trust in media agency digital media operations. We will wait to see if Agyle Advantage - for that is what this secret plan is called - becomes a serious proposition, giving advertisers more choice in the principal based / arbitrage approach to media buying. But it does seem to sit against the underlying trend to offer more transparency, visibility and control to the advertiser. The agency in this case obviously sees a demand (or a tantalising margin) which has driven this new product release. It is time to ask ourselves, who will actually define the media agency of the future? We have the simple answer, its the Marketers. As we’ve discussed many times before, the blueprint for a media agency will be defined by the marketer, typically based on a narrative and vision set by the CMO. Which is one of the reasons why the Business Insider Top CMOs list is so important. It is their marketing ambition and vision which will determine the role for media, how brands will invest in connecting with customers and therefore what will be required from the media agency landscape. We can already see this taking shape in some pitch briefs for 2017, brands are having a very clear point of view of exactly what media agency resources they need to support and reflect their own internal media management operational structures. Many are following best practice in preparation for media agency pitches by really defining the blueprint for a new agency model and ensuring a well-organised, accountable and transparent process. It is the only way to be a priority pitch in a busy 20176 market and to get the best out of competing agencies.

"Every single agency CEO talks about the same challenge; talent. Talent empowerment is the biggest challenge across all industries right now. "


My guest on this #MediaSnack Meets is Marla Kaplowitz, the CEO of the 4As. I've known Marla for many years since her previous leadership of agencies, Marla now heads up the leading agency trade organization in the US, the American Association of Advertising Agencies with over 600 agency members. 

Never miss your #MediaSnack - subscribe for updates every FridayOn this week's #MediaSnack we look at the Q2 results published by the marketing services groups over the summer and consider the causes and implications. Is this downturn a blip or the new normal? Are the days of holding company dominance and stellar growth rates over? Probably, but we have some ideas how things might play out. On this week's Good Week Bad Week we celebrate the launch of GroupM's new agency, the merger of MEC and Maxus, called WaveMaker. It's a bad week for the "crappy media supply chain" as P&G's Marc Pritchard gives an update on his 5 point media transparency action plan and heads to DMExco next week to share the progress they've made and to issue a rallying cry to the stragglers to shape up or miss out on P&G's vast media investment. Oh, and Bell Pottinger, once one of the world's most powerful PR forces has ruined its own reputation and faces meltdown this week. A very bad week indeed. Further reading:http://adage.com/article/agency-news/invisible-hand-wpp-wednesday-transparency-takes-toll/310217/http://www.moreaboutadvertising.com/2017/08/heres-a-turn-up-is-publicis-on-the-right-track-while-wpp-has-lost-its-way/http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/omnicom-continues-organic-growth-lead-rivals/1443022https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/306145/wpp-reports-organic-decline-shares-tumble.htmlGood Week:http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/wpp-unveils-wavemaker-name-merged-mec-maxus-agency/1443769Bad Week:http://www.adweek.com/digital/digital-advertising-is-facing-its-ultimate-moment-of-truth-and-billions-of-dollars-are-at-stake/https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/sep/07/bell-pottinger-could-go-under-within-days-sources-claimQuestion of the Week: What do you think about the new #MediaSnack? Worse, Better, Whatever.... Please vote. Check back for the results next Friday.

How Media Directors Drive Business Growth #MediaSnack 143 by ID Comms

On this week's #MediaSnack we vent a little about the consistently underwhelming experience of seeing companies try and pitch technology solutions to marketers. We make three simple recommendations to help any company to improve the way they sell technology ideas. If you have been on the receiving end of any technology pitches you will probably recognize them. 1. Focus 100% on the client benefit from the start2. Don't forget to be a human. People still buy people even if they are selling technology. 3. Care about the client's business. Sounds obvious? You'd be amazed how many times none of these are considered. Question of the Day: Who delivered the worst technology sales pitch you've seen this year? [just the type of business...]We are taking a little summer break from #MediaSnack and we will be back in Sept with a new office and a new format, have a good August.

On this week's #MediaSnack we go live on Google Hangouts whilst Tom and David are in different countries. Tom is reporting live from the ANA's massive Advertising Financial Management conference in Florida.The big highlights of the conference are the ongoing concerns over media transparency, the CEO of ANA Bob Liodice sets out his big media concerns and updates the 700 assembled marketing procurement clients on the progress of the K2 Intelligence investigation into media rebate practice in US. He also interviews Michael Roth, the global CEO of IPG one of the world's leading marketing services companies who (in contrast to the same conference last year which featured GroupM's Irwin Gottlieb) took questions from the audience and seemed very open to discuss matters especially around transparency. His bold claims of IPG's openness on this area are refreshing but he fears all agencies will be "tarred with the same brush" if the K2 report is damning on agency practice.Next we look at some clouds gathering over another smaller agency group called MDC in US who have been in the headlines for the wrong reasons again. Last year their CEO was forced out amid an expenses scandal that saw him having to repay $21m back to the company he founded. This week they are in the news again because their struggling stock has been shorted by a notorious investor, betting against their future growth. We consider the implications of this and wonder what parallels may be drawn.Finally we announce the first in a series of Webinars on Media Transparency as a follow up to our very successful Media Transparency survey and report published last month. In next week's webinar we will talk you through the results and give more analysis and commentary about the data you need to know. If you have any interest, whether as a client, agency or anyone else in the topics of trust and transparency around media then please schedule an hour next Wednesday to join the free webinar. It will be worth it.