• by Anne-Marie Schaffer , June 2, 2008

Have the big media shops taken their eye off the ball? Are local TV buyers so stretched that success is measured purely by ensuring post-campaign ratings delivery?

While watching episodes of "Two and a Half Men" and "Rules of Engagement" last month, I was shocked and amazed to see the lack of competitive separation in automotive advertising. Every local pod was chock full of back-to-back ads touting performance and price wars. Have local broadcast buyers dismissed buying guidelines in an effort to garner the lowest CPM? Or are they simply overworked and understaffed?

I would suggest the latter, as procurement and competitive fee structures have forced media managers to scale back resources, thus challenging the extent to which buyers can truly negotiate and monitor the best buy (and not just CPM and delivery).

Sure the local buyers will claim that the stations' traffic departments can't allocate local spots individually. But I would challenge that: No program is ever a "must buy" if their clients' ads don't have some distinct separation and differentiation. And if those precious rating points are so important, why aren't they taking a greater stance with the stations to guarantee separation on behalf of their clients? It can be done.

I have worked at shops that not only require local pod separation, but monitor it and demand credits on behalf of their clients when the guideline is abused. Then again, these agencies were privately held, not bound by Wall Street projections; procurement was not part of the media vocabulary.

Clients should demand more from their media departments, and in return, media departments should command more from their clients. Media should be priced and valued beyond clout and CPM. Media planners and buyers should command a fee for service and optimization when employed to their clients' buys. ROI is important in measuring how TV dollars are spent, but not at the expense of effectiveness, which for many marketing managers is a challenging metric to tie to sales.

Looking to the future, what will this mean when addressable TV becomes the new commodity, requiring both solid negotiation skills and constant stewardship, similar to today's online buys? Will local broadcast buyers have the skills and resources to report and optimize on the fly? Or will online planners/buyers, who command a different fee structure, be better positioned to handle the new digital broadcast world?

The safe answer would suggest a melding of the two disciplines, but I'll go out on a limb and say the online planners/buyers will have the nimbleness and know-how to balance efficiency and effectiveness. Only time will tell.