• by David Kaplan , April 1, 2005

Local stations need to do a better job of adopting electronic invoicing, a panel of Madison Avenue's top media buyers pleaded to a receptive audience of local broadcasters gathered Thursday at the Television Bureau of Advertising's 2005 Marketing Conference at the Jacob Javits Center in New York.

The media buyers - Kathy Crawford, president of local broadcast for MindShare; Lannie Dawson, senior vice president and director of media services for Martin/Williams; Peggy Green, president of broadcast for Zenith USA; and Sue Johenning, executive vice president of local broadcast Initiative Media - also addressed a number of other key issues facing local broadcast, including the seeming lack of urgency to embrace electronic data interchange to make media buying invoices more efficient, the problems of getting accurate ratings, and the gulf between media planners and local advertisers.

"There are 60 to 80 percent of local stations not participating in electronic invoicing and that's 60 to 80 percent of media buyers' time pushing paper back and forth," Dawson said. "The hope is with [electronic invoicing system vendor] Strata and now Harris Corp. coming on board, it should move quickly. Media buyers are certainly anxious to get more stations to use this kind of method for invoicing."

The issue for media buyer is the cost that is raised when having to fill out - and often refill out - invoice documents by hand.

"When I see piles of invoice papers, I have to call my client and say we need more money to process them," Crawford said. "And if you say such a thing to a client today, in this environment with EDI available, a client will look at you like you're nuts. And in some cases, decline to raise the amount they're paying."

In what many in the audience, judging by their cheers, seemed to regard as a defense for not moving more quickly in taking up EDI, Zenith's Green pointed to the same problems plaguing local cable.

"EDI is important, but more dollars are going to national cable and they're even more behind in adopting EDI than the local stations," she said.

In terms of local stations creating more demand from marketers, the media buyers offered advice on how they can attract more advertising and remain "TiVo-proof."

"Local advertisers have a close connection to their communities, as many of you do," Initiative's Johenning said. "You can create integration and content. That's something local cable can't offer. By showcasing and packaging your local programming in such a way as to appeal to certain demos and psychographic models that have an affinity with certain products is one way to attract more demand from advertisers. It's got to be more than just selling discrete spots."

In terms of planning, most planners tend to think nationally, the group seemed to agree. And there needs to be earlier collaboration between the planners and the clients and the local stations in order to see what will work and what won't.

"A client will do a total plan for a big, nationwide event that will visit a number of communities," Crawford said. "It'll be cookie cutter. And then the client and the planners will wonder why something that worked in one market didn't work in another. Well, some markets have more competition or different demographics. When the planning doesn't consider that, success is scattered."

"Most planners give short shrift to local broadcast," Green said. "Some of these people are barely 2-years-old and they're being promoted as planners awfully fast. They need to be educated as to the goals of the client. The clients need to be educated as well. For example, some markets are late fringe markets, and some are early fringe markets. Nothing drives me crazier when I see 15 different markets all with the same [gross ratings points]. That's impossible! But it doesn't have to be that way. Planning must be done early in the process and it must be done collaboratively."

Perhaps the most contentious issue for the group and the audience was the issue of Fusion, which is the spot cable rep firm National Cable Communications' methodology for estimating local ratings. It was intended to be an interim solution to the challenge of submitting credible ratings estimates for local cable.

While Nielsen measures local TV viewing, individual cable systems and interconnects are not measured or reported in Nielsen. Furthermore, the sense was that limitations to the diary data collected by Nielsen needed to be addressed.

But clearly many local broadcasters are dissatisfied with Fusion for measuring local broadcast. And a few of the media buyers on the panel said they have little choice.

"Right now, we need Fusion, it's all we got," Johenning said. "It will go away in the [Nielsen Local People Meter] markets. Until that point, it will stay."

Green said she doesn't rely on it, to the applause of much of the audience.

"I only want to use consistent measurement," she said.