Tags containing: "media audit"

With advertising rocked, it’s a good time to revisit fundamentals

June 10, 2020 Tim Bourgeois — Digital Media Auditor and Consultant

Even during tumultuous times, foundational principles persist. Indeed, the tried-and-true techniques we know to be reliable — best practices, if you will — can be most useful during times of upheaval. This is particularly true when it’s difficult to make sense of what’s happening around us.

To wit: in recent months I’ve tried to keep my elementary school-aged children in check by focusing on the basics. Maintaining bed times, good hygiene and regular exercise has been a constant struggle. But I’d like to think these guardrails have helped to keep the train from careering off-the-tracks.

Comparing parenting to the advertising industry is absurd at face value. But the concept of best practices and fundamentals is not. It’s possible conditions have bottomed-out for the media and marketing category. Really, the only thing we know for sure is that we’ll be facing uncertain business conditions for many months and possibly years.

Here are some ideas that might help with navigating the bumpy terrain and making it successfully to the other side.

Stay top-of-mind with important audiences

It’s human nature to search for safe cover in the face of a crisis and wait until it passes before getting back into the fray. And that’s certainly what a lot of brands are doing when it comes to their advertising budgets right now. But it’s not sustainable over the long haul. The silver lining of lockdowns and restricted movement policies is more time for human connections (via digital platforms, that is). Find reasons to regularly make contact with important people in your network — customers, prospects, employees. Be a resource, for new ideas, as a sounding board, or just sharing a funny story or video.

Next steps: Develop a “nifty-fifty’” list of the people important to you and design a communications strategy for outreach.

Audit, assess, and improve

The last place most of us look for improvement possibilities is internally, but it’s a good place to start. Big publishers, in particular, have hidden gems in the form of underperforming — or just abandoned — digital properties that can be resuscitated with modest effort. Once identified, use our guide — How To Maximize The Value Of Digital Properties — to drive performance gains. Remember: content is king on the internet, even old content that might have been forgotten.

Next steps: Get together with a colleague and make a list of the websites your company has launched over the past 10 years and assign them a status – dead, dormant or in-market. It won’t take long and you might be surprised at what you find.

Be generous

It’s difficult to be generous when resources are scarce, but it’s also an opportunity to stand out. In a business context, “generous” has a lot of different meanings. For publishers, making excess ad inventory available for free to longtime customers or hot prospects is one way. Providing complementary, limited time subscriptions to products is another. I know of several companies that armed their sales teams with freebies to offer in April. It has paid huge dividends in May and June — in the form of market share and long-term competitive advantage. And then there’s always straight-up gift giving: one of my colleagues found a way to delight one his most important audiences that cost a few hundred dollars and will deliver goodwill for years to come.

Next steps: Figure out what your organization is able to part with for free and who would benefit the most from its acquisition.

Retool for success

When the economy does finally rebound, publishers will still need to wrestle with legacy challenges — mainly, how to compete effectively against Facebook and Google. We’ve addressed this topic in past postings, and many of the same recommendations still apply: make it easier to buy products, emphasize unique brand strengths, and help media buyers track and communicate their successes in a more meaningful way. At the same time, ground continues to shift underneath the duopoly and social media platforms. And there’s a steady drumbeat of opposition and concern about their policies, which will only intensify in the leadup to the November 2020 elections.

Next steps: Make it an organizational priority to further plans for competing more effectively against Facebook and Google. Publishers need to be front-and-center with media buyers when advertising levels return, and conditions could be more favorable than anytime over the past decade given the state of media and politics.

There’s no debate about the enormous challenges that the media, marketing, and advertising industries will continue to face through at least the remainder of 2020 and likely longer. But, assuming that existing the business altogether is not the goal, publishers must make well-calculated moves to adjust and ultimately thrive. Some actions will be subtle and geared towards incremental progress. Others will need to be more aggressive, either for reasons of survival or to take advantage of unique market conditions.

About the author

Tim Bourgeois is a marketing advisor who helps brands optimize ROI on advertising, technology and agency investments through digital marketing audits and strategy engagements.

Perspectives

The impact of Accenture’s exit from the media auditing market

February 10, 2020 Tim Bourgeois — Digital Media Auditor and Consultant

One of the world’s biggest consultancies, Accenture – home to arguably the largest media auditing operation – has announced it would be leaving the business. Presumably, this is because the firm sees more opportunity on the media buying side of the equation, which it has pursued in earnest via acquisitions and other investments in recent years. For media companies, the implications are varied and sometimes conflicting.

Pro: one less watchdog on the job

For too long, Accenture was able to play both the “objective” auditor and media buying provider. However, the tension finally became too much, in part due to the refusal of some of the world’s largest ad agencies to be audited by the company any longer. And, with a media buying operation that generates more than $10 billion annually, it just didn’t make sense to run the comparatively smallish auditing operation any longer. Media companies benefit by having one less aggressive and well-known watchdog lumbering around the marketplace. And, let’s face it, no one likes auditors.

Con: more pervasive data-driven media buying themes abound

Companies with roots in management consulting that buy media for advertisers apply rigorous, data-driven methodologies to their offerings. That’s why digital media buying was so appealing to them in the first place, because it played to their strengths. Accenture Interactive is arguably the largest digital media buying operation in the world today, and will now have no reason not to invest even more aggressively in its ad buying activities moving forward. This in turn will spur others in the category like Deloitte Digital or even IBM to think about bolstering their media buying chops as well — after all, if Accenture is doing it, it’s at least worth consideration. Media concerns will need to respond by continuing to bolster the quantitative benefits of their products in packaging, promotion and delivery — something the duopoly excels at.

Pro: strategy and planning priorities can be streamlined

Accenture has more than 500,000 employees roaming the world and counts 75% of the Global 500 as customers. Though the company isn’t literally everywhere, it covers more ground than just about any other non-government, non-retail company on the planet. (By comparison, IBM has 350,000 employees. And WPP, the largest advertising agency, has 130,000.) Accenture’s staff is also well-trained to identify opportunities to cross-sell different services into the client base. With media auditing off the menu, media companies can focus their efforts exclusively on figuring out how to deal with Accenture’s ad buying operation. That, of course, is a no small job in itself.

Con: Accenture’s media buying advantages will accelerate faster

Media buying has always been a tricky business, which is why so many big advertisers opted to farm out the activities to agencies like WPP, Omnicom, and Publicis. The introduction and rapid growth of the digital channel has increased complexity substantially, and emphasized the reliance on data and analysis. This, in turn, opened the door for newcomers like Accenture and Deloitte to enter the sector.

Formed in 2009, Accenture is by most accounts the largest digital media buyer in the world today, employing more than 25,000. Having been a major player for a decade now – as well as auditing the operations and books of likely dozens or even hundreds of large global advertisers – Accenture is ideally positioned to understand the weakness and pain points of media companies in a unique and disruptive way. Without having to worry about conflict-of-interest concerns related to the soon-to-be-defunct auditing business, media executives should be on the lookout for inventive new media buying negotiating tactics.

Net positive

At the end of the day, Accenture’s exit from the media auditing game should be a net positive for media companies, if only because of the ability to focus on one aspect of Accenture’s offering moving forward: the media buying operation. More predictability typically results in fewer surprises and better outcomes.

That’s not to say the media auditing business overall will contract much. Media buying remains a volatile segment and not long ago was the target of an FBI investigation. Indeed, most market analysts agree that the explosion of the digital channel has resulted in more inefficiencies in the marketplace, many of which remain unaddressed. If nothing else, this event is yet another reminder that traditional media companies need to continue to invest in packaging products and their features and benefits in a data-centric manner, as the impact of quantitative-based buying methods will become increasingly pervasive in the future.

About the author

Tim Bourgeois is a marketing advisor who helps brands optimize ROI on advertising, technology and agency investments through digital marketing audits and strategy engagements.”