• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, June 26, 2013

A survey from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) indicates that procurement professionals remain heavily focused on keeping costs down when evaluating agency selection and compensation -- but they want ROI to play a larger role.

Among the 113 survey participants, almost all marketing procurement professionals, 30% said improving ROI is a metric currently being used in the procurement process, although 64% said it would be ideal to employ it.

In addition, only 44% are using innovation as a procurement benchmark, while 68% would ideally like to use it. Industry intelligence came in at 42% and 58%, respectively.

Agencies might be heartened to learn that 72% said “agency/supplier performance improvemens” are being used and 84% think that ideally they should.

On the expense side, 94% said cost reduction is being used and 84% said cost avoidance.

“A key concept some organizations struggle with is understanding marketing spend as an investment to be maximized and not an expense to be minimized,” stated AFLAC’s Terri Burns, co-chair of the ANA Procurement Task Force. “In that context, the role of marketing procurement is to help maximize the investment in marketing activities.”