• by John Gaffney , July 9, 2003

New auditing processes for TV advertising continued to gain momentum yesterday as MediaVest announced a partnership with AudioAudit to "elevate media buying accountability and effectiveness in tracking, verifying, and managing client broadcast advertising purchases."

MediaVest will utilize the AdVantage technology platform, which was adopted after a lengthy test by the agency. The system allows agencies or clients to view and track results of TV schedules, including information on when ad units ran, where they were intended to run and that creative content is accurate.

According to Paul Hummel, president and CEO of AudioAudit, his company's technology solution is different from other audit tools in that it shows results every morning and highlights anomalies. For example, the daily report will show agencies if a wrong creative ran during the previous day, or even if unscheduled spots ran. For example, is an agency bought three spots on Oprah, and four ran, it would stand out first in the report. So would underdelivery of a buy.

With the big rate increases paid in the recent upfront, and a current of dissatisfaction with that process apparent among some big advertisers including GM, TV auditing has gained prominence. Clients want more proof of their return on investment for the media. Hummel agreed that this trend has given new traction to the immediacy of his service, which has been on the market for three years. He also said that the auditing service was not meant to set up a competitive situation between broadcasters and agencies.

"This is not an adversarial situation," he said. "It is not meant to say that anybody is doing anything wrong. This is the last part of the industry with no scale (measurement). People are looking to substantiate their ROI and we're trying to make that as efficient as possible."

MediaVest has gone public with the usage of AudioAudit by Paramount Pictures. Other unnamed clients will use it as well. Hummel is confident that the AdVantage tool will be used not only as an immediate check on what was purchased and delivered, but potentially as a TV campaign optimization tool as well. He believes post-campaign analysis can be done more quickly and accurately with the tool as well.

"As stewards of our clients' brands, we take very seriously our commitment to carefully maximize every dollar we spend on their behalf, and we constantly seek verification measures that can ensure that the media are actually delivering what we buy for our clients," said Mel Berning, President of Broadcast, MediaVest USA.