Commentary
From 'Mind-Numbing' To 'Bored To Death,' Digital Media Has An Image Problem
- by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, May 3, 2021
On the heels of the Association of National Advertisers’ announcement that it is embarking on a new study of the “mind-numbing” programmatic digital media marketplace, a new study suggests that digital media has a far deeper -- and higher up -- problem with corporate America. Specifically, in the C-suite.
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3 comments about "From 'Mind-Numbing' To 'Bored To Death,' Digital Media Has An Image Problem".
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Joe Mandese is the Editor in Chief of MediaPost. You can reach Joe at joe@mediapost.com.
I think that this is correct, Joe, but not for the reasons cited. To begin with, it is debatable whether digital has the right metrics for branding advertisers---as differentiated from search "advertisers" and there are indications that its targeting mechanisms may not be all they claim to be. Also, there's the phenomenal cost of making digital media buys--with anywhere from 30-50% of the media budget gobbled up by DSPs, targeting systems, the distribution of ad messages, etc. ---compared to only 1-3.5% for "linear TV". Perhaps the most damaging evidence---assuming it can be called that----was evident when a number of big TV advertisers announced that after cutting back significantly of their digital media buys they saw no drop in sales.
So it's not just a matter of getting the digital folks to do a better job of selling their medium's values to advertiser CMOs and above. They must first and formost move aggressively to clean up their act regarding realistic audience and ad exposure metrics, refine their targeting systems as needed and price the cost of doing business with them far more competitively with TV and other media. And let's not forget about fraud. It's the sellers' responsibility to fix this problem---not the buyers---isn't it?
Good points Ed.
My surmisal is that digital, due to its immediacy, has brought out 'the salesman' in many marketers meaning less focus on long-term brand values, and that the C-Suite is starting to get restless. [And of course this ennui is neither universal nor across all brands and goods, but is more noticeable in retail and PCG etc.]
Digital is still a complex animal, so there's no surprise to me that the C-suite is struggling to see the full impact. We've taken over a number of digital accounts of large marketers from huge agencies only to uncover a lack of education on how data impacts campaigns - and just what those metrics are implying. Attribution is a pretty word - but few understand how it works, and even fewer understand how to set it up and look at it cross-channels. Throw on top of all of this the walled-gardens that Facebook and Google have, and you'd think that they're solely responsible for creating every sale in the world.
Digital is complex. If you don't fully understand the media and it's platforms, you're going to be paying 30-50% extra margins on your ad buys like Ed mentions above. If you don't understand digital, you won't understand how it complements and works off of traditional media buys. Now thow in the fact that C-Suites think you should have better audience targeting - but oh yeah, next year your 3rd party cookies are going away... This is not an easy industry, and it takes specialists to do it correctly. It takes seasoned veterans in the space to explain it to a C-Suite who shouldn't have to be living and breathing it every day like we do... I'll be curious to read both of these reports in detail Joe. Thanks for sharing the findings.