Media Auditing: The Audits Cometh
It seems law isn't the only profession that lends itself to a good punchline. In fact, a Google search for "auditor jokes" (hey, it's hard to come up with a compelling intro for a story on media auditing) produces more than 65,000 results. Some might even provide welcome fodder for media agencies dealing with the so-called "new breed" of media auditors.
A number of these independent auditing companies, including Billetts, Effective Media Management (EMM) and Media Audits Group, have sprung up in the U.K. over the past decade. They monitor advertisers' media spend -primarily TV, though Billetts does include other mediums in its repertoire-providing services ranging from simple spot verification to benchmarking and providing counsel on media strategy, targeting etc.
While many of these functions might once have been considered the sole purview of a marketer's media agency, auditors argue third-party involvement is vital in an era of rising costs, increasing consolidation of accounts with a single media AOR, and ROI-focused marketers.
Media auditors have already become a fact of advertising life in the U.K., where, according to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal, an estimated 75% of the £11.12 billion (C$25.1 billion) spent on advertising is now scrutinized by these independent firms. In addition, several of these companies have established a U.S. operation in the past 36 months as they attempt to capture a share of that country's US$161.4 billion ad market-a mere 5% of which is currently audited.
But as many marketers have consolidated their media accounts- McDonald's with OMD, for example-they have become "captive" to a single media AOR. "No matter how trustworthy the AOR," wrote Ephron, "best practice requires a second view."
For marketers, auditing can offer the allure of significant cost savings. Leary points to one MPMA client that achieved US$4 million in year-over-year savings on its media costs through a combination of reduced ad rates and improved quality. MPMA charges clients on a "scope of work" basis as opposed to linking its fees to media billings or cost recovery. "We think that's a bad way of doing business," explains Leary, "because it makes it feel like we're looking for problems."
One senior media buyer, who wishes to remain anonymous, tracks the rise in auditing to shared best practices among multinationals. "If you look around the world, multinational clients are looking for multinational vendors across a lot of markets," he says. "When that happens, they're looking for like-to-like comparisons. If you had an auditing company that was global, it would stand to reason that would be a smart thing. It's another indication of how globalization is impacting this marketplace."
Buying heads also point out that auditors are becoming de rigueur for virtually every new business pitch. OMD Canada president Lorraine Hughes agrees her agency's exposure to auditing firms like Billetts has come primarily through global new business pitches, althoughmarketers like Nissan also use auditing on a continuous basis.
But while senior buyers generally agree the intensity of auditing has increased, they also point out the process isn't new to the Canadian market. Developed 13 years ago by Mississauga-based Semple Media-which last year merged with Forde Media Works to create Forde & Semple Media Works-the SMART Report analyzes and benchmarks some $1.4-billion worth of Canadian TV ad spending for top-drawer marketers including CIBC, Ford and Kraft.
So while senior buyers may not always agree with their methods, they seem to at least have a congenial relationship with auditing companies like Billetts. Of course, we can't help but wonder if that's the case with EMM, whose outspoken founder and chair Stephen White (perhaps only half-jokingly) characterized media buyers as "Rejects from the Addams Family" during a panel discussion at the Canadian Media Directors' Council's annual conference in April.
The neither creepy nor kooky Dow believes that qualitative judgements are beyond the scope of media auditing companies. "Increasingly, our clients are looking for innovation and creativity," he explains. "They're looking for breakthrough ideas that would enable them to secure a competitive advantage and to stand out from the competition. That involves qualitative advances that, in many cases, have no precedent and are really very difficult to compare."
His concern, he adds, is that the auditing process leads clients to view media simply as a commodity-one to be bought at the lowest possible price. In this age of creatively-driven media, such a perspective, Dow cautions, is "increasingly irrelevant and useless" when determining the effectiveness of a media buy.
MPMA's Leary doesn't buy it. "I think clients want creative media people, but I don't think that's to suggest they don't want to be sure they're good and fair value for the money in the marketplace," he counters. "You can have both. You want the money to be working hard for you so you can actually focus on the creativity."
And when it comes to millions of ad dollars, well, that's no joke
Media Auditing: The Audits Cometh
Last update: 2011-02-03 14:50:32 - Keyword tags: media audit,media management,advertising,media