Online media planners and buyers like Web media because it offers them the opportunity to buy against particular audiences. The ability to target is great for clients. The trouble is, publishers
won't sell online media the way planners want to buy it, according to online media strategists speaking Monday at Ad:Tech Chicago.
"This is the only medium where we pay for waste, it can't
continue," said Mike Zeman, associate director, insights & analytics, Starcom IP, a unit of Starcom MediaVest Group. "We need 100 percent delivery on the target; the big strength of the Internet is
being able to target against behavior," he continued.
Three online media strategists described using reach/frequency tools to assist them in their work, but which still fall short of
expectations. Atlas DMT's tool, for example, doesn't allow for drilling down within a site to specific channels within a portal, according to Carrie Soriano-Frolich, group director, The Digital
Edge, a unit of WPP Group's Mediaedge:cia. She noted that in working with a client that's prepared to spend in the double- digit millions, publishers she is targeting couldn't provide the data she's
looking for.
As online media strategists pull up their chairs to sit at the big kids' or traditional media table, there is more of a need than ever for everyone to speak the same media language.
"If we all don't speak the same language, we are confusing clients," Soriano-Frolich notes. Starcom's Zeman said that part of the problem lies with clients that have separate e-marketing and
digital divisions that remain siloed from offline media planning departments.
"Reach and frequency and GRPs are largely directional," says Sean Finnegan, Midwest director, OMD Digital, a unit of
Omnicom Group. "We are looking to make media channels neutral."
"The sense of urgency in developing a reach/frequency tool has been delayed," Finnegan notes, in part, because publishers do not
have the incentive to sell media that way. "Publishers sell impressions that we convert to GRPs," he continued, adding, "I wish publishers would understand that we're purchasing impressions to meet
clients' goals ... It's not merely about selling inventory."
Soriano-Frolich called GRPs the "biggest bunch of baloney, ever ... they're misleading."