Facebook, Twitter and Google may dominate the trade press and the blogosphere, but one of the most traditional media brands -- ABC -- is the most powerful in the hearts and minds of advertisers and
ad agency executives, according to an annual survey of Madison Avenue’s perceptions of the media they do business with. The study, which surveyed thousands of advertisers and agency executives,
is conducted by Advertiser Perceptions, which is to the ad industry what J.D. Power’s annual awards are to the automotive industry.
ABC’s ranking as the most dominant
“overall” media brand is a composite of all of the individual attributes that AR surveys the ad industry about, and it replaces last year’s champ, Meredith. AR only releases the
identity of the top media brand in each category, so it’s not clear what happened to Meredith’s relative performance this past year -- but last year, AR partner Ken Pearl noted that
Meredith “has always done well in the past.”
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Interestingly, Meredith also failed to rank in the top position among any other data released by AR this year, including print -- a
category that Time Inc. publications nearly swept.
Time Inc.’s People ranked No. 1 in “brand strength,” while its Real Simple ranked No. 1 in
“customer service,” and its Sports Illustrated was tops in “advertiser satisfaction.” The only other print publisher to rank among AR’s top media brand scores
was American Express’ Food & Wine, which ranked No. 1 in “customer service.”
Among these individual categories, AR generally considers “brand
strength” to be a telling indicator of the vitality of a media brand in the hearts and minds of ad executives, because it is a composite of attributes that ad executives use to value media,
including ad results, audience and the image of a media company's brand.
Not surprisingly, ABC ranked No. 1 in “brand strength” among broadcast network brands for the second year
in a row. It also was top in the “sales knowledge” category. CBS was No. 1 in “customer service,” and Fox ranked first in “advertiser satisfaction.”
Among
cable network brands, ABC sister network ESPN ranked No. 1 for the second year in a row in “brand strength,” while Scripps’ HGTV was tops in “sales knowledge” and Food
Network was No. 1 in “customer service.” MTV Networks’ Comedy Central ranked No. 1 in “advertiser satisfaction.”
Among “digital” media brands, an
ascendant Facebook toppled Google from the top position in “brand strength,” while Time.com was tops in “sales knowledge,” Yelp in “customer service,” and
FoxNews.com in “advertiser satisfaction.”