Commentary

The Good News, Bad News For Planners & Buyers

by Joe Mandese , October 9, 2023

On the upside, the just-released World Federation of Advertisers report reveals relatively little immediate threat to traditional agency planners and buyers from either in-house or specialist roster agencies. The bad news is they will need to become more agile, flexible and responsive to shifts in evolving media agency models.

While the report's top line takeaway is that the overall media agency service model is in flux and not fit for the future needs of the kind of big, multinational advertisers surveyed this summer by MediaSense for the WFA, a more granular analysis of the data reveals relatively little displacement to date for either traditional agency planners and buyers due to the growing shift to in-house agencies, or more specialized agencies in clients' rosters.

Overall, the report indicates big clients plan more "internalization" or outsourcing to specialist agencies for certain kinds of media services, but they tend to be ones that are either highly specialized to begin with -- like performance media, retail media, content development, social media and big data analytics -- or are strategically aligned with internal brand performance.

“The growth of retail media and ecommerce has taken us all by surprise and to fully leverage the opportunity, we need to know we are working with the best," explains one anonymous WFA member.

advertising, agency, media, media buying, media planning

2 comments about "The Good News, Bad News For Planners & Buyers".

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Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, October 9, 2023 at 11:57 a.m.
Joe, it's dificullt for media planners and buyers to become more agile when they operate within silos which are locked into place by the cleints' ongong efforts to pay the lowest service fees possible. In order to operate efficiently, the planners are not involved in many aspects of ad campaign development nor in evaluating their results---that's the account groups' job, aided by the market researchers. So the planners are left with the media planning part---though in many cases the basic media mix is pre-determined. So instead of considering what mix of media---at what cost---will genrate the required awareness of the campaign, the planners make mini plans for each medium---mostly laying out how much will be spent and when, plus the usual wildly inflated GRP and reach and frequency numbers.

Then, once approved, the various components of the plan go to specialized buying groups---national linear TV , spot TV or radio, CTV, print, digital,OOH, etc. none of whom are really familiar with what the advertiser is trying to accomplish, nor what appeals are being used---especially what mindsets are being targeted by the ads. So, for the buyers it boils down to obtaining a given number of impressions---or GRPs---in media platforms the client prefers--or is tolerant of---with some generic "demo", like adults 18-49 being set up as their buying "currency".

Yes, there are exceptions but in the main, we remain highly compartmentalized and just as the planners' role is limited so is the buyers'. Indeed, the latter usually become cozy with the sellers and try to keep the planners at arm's length, least they muck up the buying process with unresonable demands. So, we often have silos within silos.

How is this situation going to be fixed if the CMOs don't care and their bean counters contiinue crunching the agencies on their fees? Beats me.
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James Smith from J. R. Smith Group, October 9, 2023 at 10:39 p.m.

Must say, this is a VERY small sample size!