Michael Hubbard

Articles by Michael All articles by Michael

• Buyer Beware: The Media Proposal With The Lowest Fees Is Not Always The Best Proposal in MAD on 07/29/2021
  

  There are common agency practices that lead to lower pricing, and none of them are good. A lowball agency proposal should raise all kinds of alarms.

Comments by Michael All comments by Michael

• The Many Benefits Of Cross-Training Your Media Agency Staff by Barry Lowenthal (MAD on 11/02/2021)
  

  Thanks for sharing Barry - we subscribe to a similar mindset.  Let me add just one more cross training benefit to your list.  And that's the ability to optimize and understand the results better.  For example, when the person buying the TV spots understands the impact it's going to have on the search and programmatic teams, it makes communication better and results optimization better.  Now the attribution model that has become so coveted is pretty easy to comprehend and plan against for future buys.  So again - even if one person isn't an "expert" at one of the channels, just that cross training exposure is going to make your clients so much better for it.  Congrats on the evolution! 

• Targeting Ads To The Unvaccinated Becomes An Art by Laurie Sullivan (Data & Programmatic Insider on 09/13/2021)
  

  That's actually really funny Ed.  I'm picturing an agency doing a 20 page PPT presentation showcasing all of these stats, and then at the end, presenting a media plan that only shows Fox News :)

• Is The RFP Process Broken? Most Clients And Agencies Think So by Joe Mandese (MediaDailyNews on 08/30/2021)
  

  This topic has been a hot one for me for years - and of course, as a small agency - we are notoriously going to say the process is rigged against us :)   But even when it's not procurement led (which adds another layer of finger pointing), I still feel like the client side can eliminate almost all concerns you've addressed above (both advertiser and agency).  For starters - use an agency consultant.  Yes, it costs more money, but they'll help you find what you actually are sending out an RFP for.  Second - require transparency.   By requiring transparency of EVERYONE, that elimnates every agency concern outside of price, and can eliminate every advertiser concern except seeing the agency in action.  We often say if the advertiser won't give us Analytics access, then they don't trust us enough to make us their agency, and on the flip side, we can't show them enough about what we do without showing them how we can specifically apply our expertise to their data.  So don't issue an RFP if you aren't going to allow for full transparency, and agencies shouldn't be responding without the same. 

• 4A's Creates Agency Review Participation Agreement by Richard Whitman (Mediapsssst on 08/24/2021)
  

  So I'm confused. Who signs this?  And what power does this have?  Or is this just a hope to get clients to notice that agencies are sick of the current RFP process?  Because I'm pretty sure if I submit this with my RFP response that I'll get a "thank you ver much" but it won't change a thing about the current song and dance that's out there.  At the very least, I appreciate that there's an effort to try and change the process, but I'm just curious as to what the goal is with the document?  

• Veteran Ad Beat Reporter Larissa Faw Dies At 43 by Steve McClellan (MAD on 08/09/2021)
  

  Thank you Steve.  Larissa was the best friend I never got to meet in person.  Enthusiastic - and realistic.  She loved to tell me about all of the good people in the industry, and no matter how busy she was, she'd always just drop a quick hello.  The world lost one of the good ones this week.

• Why It's Time For The Industry To Ditch Display Ads by Patrick Brown (MAD on 05/20/2021)
  

  Thank you Dan - reading your comment at least calmed my blood pressure.  I've read so many of these articles like this that have clearly only skimmed the headlines of the trades and never actually built out an attribution model or dug deeper into the issues at hand.  Patrick, no disrespect, but when you say "Ive been told..." - it tells me that you're not writing from experience.  Rather than highlight what I have issues with in this article - I just want to add to Dan's note...  Media buyers have to rely on volume, because most creatives can't be bothered to design a banner ad.  It might be budget constraints - but let's be realistic - we can't expect to stand out with an ad that looks the same and speaks the same as every other ad.  As a media buyer - you can target until your heart is content utilizing contextual and marrying it up with 1st party data and speak almost one to one with your audience, but if you continue to not have the creative speak to the audience, you'll continue to see horrible results.I do want to address view through data...  In the early days of affiliate networks, the view through was a compromised metric.  It stood alone, and it took credit for everyone's sale.  In the days of attribution, the view through of a banner ad (which - you should be buying based on 100% viewability, so below the fold arguments should hold no water) should be used as a pathway to a sale.  Just like saying watching a TV spot or seeing a billboard along the highway should not be said they aren't effective, nor should they get full credit in your funnel.  It's about building the attribution model and understanding your campaigns data well enough to be able to pull the right levers in your optimization pattern.

• Survey Finds Families Will Hit The Road This Summer by Larissa Faw (MAD on 05/14/2021)
  

  Thanks for the great article Larissa!   I think this is again more confirmation that local TDA's and their marketing dollars are going to be critical this year - but not in the fashion they're used to being.  With locations through the peak and shoulder months booked up as early as last fall - it won't be urgent to try to draw tourists, as much as it will be to spend money supporting the local shops.   Not just in promoting their services, but in promoting seasonal help - as all across the country you're seeing destinations struggling to find wait staff, life guards, retail workers and everything else that makes the tourists trips successful!  So while I'm sure many agencies will use this year as a case study at "how great the rebuilt after the pandemic" - the reality is, tourism is going to spike anyway - so it's up to the TDA's to invest the marketing dollars now to ensure future success.  Not to mention, putting a lot of those dollars toward 1st party data collection would be extremely wise and valuable given the high occupancy rates.

• From 'Mind-Numbing' To 'Bored To Death,' Digital Media Has An Image Problem by Joe Mandese (RTBlog on 05/03/2021)
  

  Digital is still a complex animal, so there's no surprise to me that the C-suite is struggling to see the full impact.   We've taken over a number of digital accounts of large marketers from huge agencies only to uncover a lack of education on how data impacts campaigns - and just what those metrics are implying.  Attribution is a pretty word - but few understand how it works, and even fewer understand how to set it up and look at it cross-channels.   Throw on top of all of this the walled-gardens that Facebook and Google have, and you'd think that they're solely responsible for creating every sale in the world.Digital is complex.  If you don't fully understand the media and it's platforms, you're going to be paying 30-50% extra margins on your ad buys like Ed mentions above.  If you don't understand digital, you won't understand how it complements and works off of traditional media buys.   Now thow in the fact that C-Suites think you should have better audience targeting - but oh yeah, next year your 3rd party cookies are going away...   This is not an easy industry, and it takes specialists to do it correctly.  It takes seasoned veterans in the space to explain it to a C-Suite who shouldn't have to be living and breathing it every day like we do... I'll be curious to read both of these reports in detail Joe.  Thanks for sharing the findings.

• Remember The Golden Age Of Media Training? It Was The Real Thing by Joe Mandese (RTBlog on 09/28/2020)
  

  Joe - please find/replace the word "Audio" with "Google", and you have your column for tomorrow too.  

• With A Shift In Ad Strategy Arizona Lottery Sets New Annual Sales Record by Larissa Faw (MAD on 09/03/2020)
  

  This is a well done pivot - one that probably would have worked well for a lot of industries (yet, from what I've seen, most never did it).  Too many agencies still do the set it and forget it mentality - so - well done OH Partners.

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