"In the future, how will
marketers choose to plan media?," Madison and Wall publisher Brian Wieser asks in a section outlining new media-planning "paradigms" that
are part of a new report commissioned by CIMM (Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement).
Great question. If you're as inquisitive about that as I am, go ahead and read the entire report,
"The Future of Media, Advertising, Measurement and Currency: A Perspective,"
but I'm using today's column to give you the highlights, because I know planners, buyers and advertisers are kind of busy paradigming these days.
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The report does touch on broader changes
taking place in the underlying media supply chain, as well as how the industry is measuring it -- and mining new currencies to buy and sell ads within it -- and Wieser notes his perspective piece is
the first in a series of papers the Advertising Research Foundation's CIMM unit plans to publish.
Meanwhile, here are Wieser's new media-planning paradigms:
- Optimizing
the Existing Medium: Some marketers will maintain a perspective that any content viewed on a television screen, whether described as linear or connected, counts as
“television,” while everything else should fall outside this category. There may be variations, such as whether YouTube viewed on a television should qualify as “TV” or if the
distinction lies in professionally produced content. Nonetheless, the underlying assumption is that consumers are primarily in a “lean-back” mode when watching content on a large screen
TV. Brands can leverage the brand equity of the content they advertise alongside, thus enhancing the perceived quality of their brands. As consumption levels for this definition of TV probably
decrease over time – there will simply be less “ambient” or background viewing in a world where many more consumers primarily access on-demand streaming services – and the
share of ad-free viewing goes up, campaign reach potential becomes increasingly challenged with every passing year.
- Optimizing a Broader Definition of
Video: As traditional TV, including connected TV, faces limitations in reaching audiences whether defined in terms of age and gender or on other alternative metrics, increasing numbers
of marketers may choose to broaden their definition of “TV” to include platforms like YouTube and/or TikTok, regardless of whether that content is viewed on a TV screen. In this scenario,
marketers might view traditional TV as “network prime time,” streaming video as “cable,” YouTube as syndication, and TikTok as daytime TV. In the 2000s, many marketers would
plan a single TV budget and segment it by dayparts or other factors; in the future, many marketers may adopt a similar approach for all platforms with significant ad-supported video content. Some
already do this, but it has yet to become the industry norm.
- Optimizing Across Media Companies’ Cross-Platform Offerings: While the concept of a
common user ID has existed in digital media for years, traditional TV network owners have only recently begun implementing this idea. As marketers increasingly manage their line items with media
owners, starting with tech giants like Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon, they may move away from traditional “medium” distinctions in their budget-setting processes. As the relative
effectiveness and importance of traditional television diminishes, these media incumbents may become more aggressive in adding digital inventory as part of their packages, whether video or not,
to a pool of cross-media inventory they offer to marketers. Smaller digital properties and second-tier social networks may also seek to collaborate with network owners in such initiatives to enhance
their standing in the industry. In essence, the future of trading, measurement, and currencies will be shaped by how these scenarios unfold, and the industry will likely see a combination of these
dynamics in the coming years.
Wieser goes on to discuss some important media-buying implications, including the new currencies themselves, but I was struck by one observation
in particular: the persistence of guarantees.
"Guarantees are likely to persist and even increase in importance," Wieser predicts, concluding: "As consumers increasingly access adfree content,
advertising inventory may become scarcer than before. This means that advertisers are unlikely to shift toward a “self insurance” model. Consequently, the demand for guarantees is expected
to rise. Marketers seeking to optimize spending across multiple channels will still be able to achieve reach goals, but those exclusively focused on traditional TV may face greater challenges, further
emphasizing the perceived need for guarantees."
Joe, Brian is absolutely right about the continued reliance on guarantees. The question being what are the guarantees based on and are they relevant to both parties--- buyers and sellers ---or just the latter. Taking "TV" as the subject of greatest interest---and I'm referring to both linear TV and streaming, the standard "audience currency" is going to be "impressions" which produce stats that are, typically, three times the size of the actual commercial audience. So obviously, these, device tuned in "measurements" are seller-friendly but produce highly misleading information for buyers and their clients.
Yet advertisers don't seem to care and the buyers position, while understandable, is not helpful. Ask a buyer what his/her main concerns are and they will tell you privately---and not for attribution---that its getting how they divide the buy up among the various sellers right---not whether the buy generates a sales lift for the brand because of how its targeted or the contexts ---or something else.That's the job of "the creatives". So unless one can show tremendous differences between the sellers in terms of commercial viewing---which is rarely true when tight competitive sets are being considered---like same network types, same dayparts or same program genres--- it doesn't matter if "impressions" vastly overstate actual ad "audiences".
The resulting disconnect is why advertisers aren't screamning for commercial attentiveness measurements to be standard elements in TV rating "currencies" and why most buyers are very silent on this issue. The CMOs can't be bothered to inject themselves in the process and the buyers have no motivation to do so---as that's not how their performance is judged by the client bean counters. Why complicate matters if in most cases they would make exactly the same buys? But is this assumption really correct?Don't we want to know?
True Ed.
It made me think about when I first worked in an agency. Being a media researcher I was in the media-buying group.
The first things I was told were:
John: Your media buyiing (and planning) principles and instincts were I believe fundamantally correct. Creative is King! However as Ed implies for the US at least, few seem to care and are generally complicite in their avoidance of best media practices which sadly also includes generating the lowest CPM's based on any defintion/derivation of "impressions" that is convenient, e.g., MRC's so called "Viewable Impressions" or more correctly, content-rendered-counts, which typically have little relationship to properly measured attentiveness of the brand creative campaign against the defined target group.