Media advertising continues to be the most significant single component of most advertisers’ marketing budgets. Paid media is a substantial investment across traditional media and, increasingly, into digital channels, which are eclipsing traditional broadcast media channels. However, with this change comes a corresponding increase in the significant issues facing marketers, media owners, and media agencies.

Much of the media industry appears more interested in deciding who the best agency /sales team /advertiser is, with endless award shows, presentations, and conferences designed to recognise the various players.

However, the industry faces challenges and issues driven by technology, the economy, and the category’s increased complexity.

Previously, we had organised “The State of the Media Industry” survey to garner the opinions of all parties, including advertisers, media agencies, and media owners, including their sales teams, to prioritise the issues and solutions. But it was increasingly frustrating that many of the existing issues facing remained while new ones were added to the list, with little resolution in sight.

Therefore, we have created this list of the biggest media advertising industry issues.

What are the big issues facing the industry?

The list is categorised into six categories of issues:

  1. Media Agency Relationships
  2. Media Strategy
  3. Media Trading
  4. Media Measurement
  5. Media Reporting
  6. Digital and Data

We acknowledge this is not a definitive list. We also acknowledge it is a dynamic list. Therefore, we invite you the industry to review this list on a regular basis, bookmark it if you will, and provide feedback on what issues are on the list, what new ones need to be added and how existing issues are evolving.

We hope this becomes a place where those of us who love media and share, discuss, argue and solve the big issues facing the media industry.

Media Agency Relationship

Which remuneration model is right for me? Which model gives me the greatest control? Which model will provide me with the lowest fee but ensure I get an adequate team and a high-quality service?

Should I include a performance bonus scheme? If so, what level of upside and sacrifice should be included? How do I establish targets? How do I measure performance? How frequently do I pay bonuses?

How important is it to have complete transparency of the fee/ revenue taken by my media agency? Will I audit the accounts? How answerable am I internally to this? Do the benefits of ‘non-transparency’ outweigh the additional cost of full transparency? What is most important for me to get from my media agency relationship?

How will my media partner fit in with my other marketing service suppliers, particularly my Creative agency/ content provider? What do I need to check when appointing an agency? What do I need to do to establish a ‘modus operandi’ and manage my campaigns on an ongoing basis?

Are my activities currently coordinated across all customer contacts within the Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned framework? How is this being achieved? Or why is this not being achieved? Whose responsibility is it to manage this? Are activities just being coordinated rather than integrated to increase overall value and effect?

What mechanisms are in place to assess how well my agency partner delivers value in campaign delivery? Do I need external independent expert advice and benchmarking services? Am I tracking performance across time to ensure continual improvement? Are campaign learnings being used to optimal effect?

How important is a cordial relationship relative to performance assessment? How do I measure the relationship? How do I ensure a cordial relationship links to improved performance? What do I need to change?

How good/bad is the staff churn on my business? Am I losing critical people too quickly? How long does it take to educate new personnel on the vagaries of my business? Is the rate unacceptable and could the agency be doing more to manage this? Is my business being prioritised or taken for granted?

How recently did I develop my contract template? Is it robust in all the new areas of concern in digital – data security, data usage, data privacy? What level of access does the agency have to first party data? Are there adequate clauses around the agency’s responsibilities & liabilities? How well are rebates & commissions covered?

Have I established robust processes for campaign development that optimise the use of my teams time and the agency’s time? Are these documented and understood?  Am I providing high quality campaign briefs and adequate timelines for planning and buying? Does this process fully engage with creative development?

Am I structured in a silo-based way which renders it difficult for the agency to service my business efficiently? Do I coordinate my marketing requirements of the agency to ensure all my activities are staggered as much as is possible? Can I provide any additional management to get greater value from my media agency partner?

I provide the funds for the activity. Do I feel I have sufficient control on marketing outcomes and the performance of activities? Is my media agency partner driving media selection and usage to questionable effect in environments that don’t always make sense to me? What can I do to be more engaged in media usage decisions?

Strategy

How robust are the feedback mechanisms that tell me which media work and which don’t? Does this give me the specifics of what works best within medium? Am I able to identify the audience triggers that generate a response?

Should I engage with Market Mix Modelling? What additional learnings has it the potential to deliver? If I do engage, how will I select the best model to adopt? Are independent models preferable to the option available through my media agency partner?

How much benefit do I derive from my MMM partner compared to the Media Agency’s black box of tools? How do these two work best together? When conflicting stories emerge, which is more dependable?

How granular should my audiences be defined? Do I have reliable enough insights to go this granular? How focussed is my target audience in delivering sales? How do I ensure my activity embraces the full range of audience sales potential whilst limiting wastage?

How well connected are my media activities to all other elements of marketing points and points of customer contact? Are they coordinated and beyond this are they integrated to provide enhanced presence and effect with my target audience?

How important is it for me to command the attention of the target audience? Is the activity a more complex branding message that requires attention or a simple reminder of a well-established product acceptable to the target?

How do I ensure my activity cuts through? Most advertising categories are congested, and the most cost-efficient environments for activity are often well established. How do I stand out in these environments and identify alternative environments with great clear space?

Efficiency is reaching my audience in a cost-efficient manner. Effectiveness is being in environments that work. Media environments don’t always deliver both. One without the other isn’t ideal. Have I got the balance right between the 2?

Have I embraced the learnings of the full range of tools available? How valuable is AI in determining where, when and how I should advertise? If AI directs me to where my category competitors advertise, how effective will my activity perform amongst the category clutter?

AI can accurately advise me of where the category efficiency and effective opportunities are. How important is it for me to use human ingenuity and strategic skills to find new and different places to advertise?

Audiences and sub-sets of audiences can be more precisely identified than ever before. How much additional impact and value can be derived from content customisation specific to the audience reached?

 Trading                                                                       

Is my media agency partner operating ‘non-disclosed’ Principal-Based Trading? Am I OK with them earning additional commissions without disclosing them to me? Do I trust the agency to deliver an equitable proportion of the added value derived back to me? Will ‘non-disclosure’ of rates and the fees taken by the agency be acceptable to my purchasing/ procurement team?

Are the rates received through ‘Non disclosed’ trading significantly better than those through transparent trading? Is my activity being conducted in the right environments? Am I convinced that the price advantage derived isn’t at the expense of quality?

How integral to my activity are Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, and TikTok? Am I sufficiently invested in their products, or am I overinvested in their products? How do I know? How reliable is the data and information coming out from behind the Walled Gardens? Have I got the right support and mechanisms in place to make these judgements? If dealing directly, how do I control the prices I pay to ensure value?

Is supply chain waste a fact of life when using the Internet? Am I limiting supply chain wastage by limiting and carefully using the Open web where it is most prevalent?

Where is the value still to be found in linear TV? How important is a presence in live TV? Beyond the numbers, is there a difference in the effectiveness achieved on Linear TV versus BVOD? What are the implications of this for placement and usage?

Can I look at Cross-Screen reach, frequency, and optimisation? If so, how can I use this information to deliver reach more efficiently and minimise excessive frequency?

CPM’s are an important but overused currency. Do I fully understand the relationship between CPM and key performance metrics across the range of media deployed?

At what point does wastage kick in or is a continuous presence at frequency effective (and affordable)?  How do I put parameters around activity to ensure that I’m not wasting money? How do I extend this principle into added value to ensure I don’t deliver high volumes of free activity that has no benefit and could potentially annoy consumers and become counterproductive?

Am I post-analysing and reporting to the metrics that matter? If I am assessing multiple metrics, do I understand the interplay between them and how to balance activities to optimise the overall effect?

Are my campaigns being managed diligently week to week, day to day, to ensure that learnings and insights are acted upon throughout the campaign? Am I regularly engaging with the team responsible for this optimisation to ensure it is happening? Have I made sure that my campaigns are never ‘set and forget’?

Measurement

Do I have mechanisms to track, monitor and minimise Ad Fraud?

How readily usable is my first-party data for targeting in advertising and media? Is attribution accurately measured?

Should I engage with the audience data pools available through my agency partner? Are they useful and accurate in assisting me with placement? How much do they cost? If used how reliant would I become for access to historical performance? What would be the implications of changing agency? What would I potentially lose?

How can I best interpret data and information from behind the walled gardens?

Have varying levels of attention and resultant effects been captured by my measurement and performance assessment tools.

Attribution modelling is notoriously flawed. Am I getting an accurate picture of how businesses are successfully moving through the sales funnel?

Have I built in mechanisms to accurately reflect the value derived from my sponsorship activity?

Does my performance assessment system accurately reflect the contribution of the brand halo across different product categories?

Are all variables that affect performance accounted for in my performance measurement system?

Reporting                                                                   

Are the metrics I am measuring most reflective of my performance? If multiple metrics are tracked and assessed, do I understand the relationship between them and how they influence each other?

Media metrics need to be optimised to deliver most effectively against performance metrics. Have I got the two metrics working together to best effect?

Does my dashboard provide the relevant information in a timely manner that provides visibility of performance and the capacity to swiftly adjust activities as required?

Digital & Data

Have data security checks been conducted and protocols established with relevant suppliers across my marketing service suppliers?

Am I compliant with new privacy laws? How is compliance established and monitored on an ongoing basis?

Are acceptable and unacceptable environments for activity established? How frequently is this checked and validated?

Have I thoroughly investigated the benefits of ‘in housing’? Do the benefits outweigh the risks, and does this give me greater control over the marketing area?

Did we miss anything? What are your thoughts on the biggest issues facing media today?

Image by freepik

An 8 year-old from Toronto goes Halloween costume shopping at Party City, takes offence that the store sells First Nations costumes, and asks her mother if she can write a letter of complaint to the management. Mom suggests social media as a more direct way to shine light on the issue, and posts her daughter’s missive to Twitter. Before you can say ‘trick or treat’, Huffington Post and GlobalTV come knocking for an interview.

The coverage is glowingly positive and upbeat — a precocious, socially conscious child, standing against the injustices of the world. The thumbs up come fast and furious. But so does the avalanche of hate. Dad engages but eventually blocks the combative strangers who descend on his Facebook feed. Mom’s Twitter is now private. “We’re taking an incredible amount of shit on social media for this,” the girl’s father acknowledges a few days later.

Few parents could have anticipated such a crucifixion — never mind the extent to which it was preordained. However, empathetic the reporters, however positive the spin, the story was destined to court trolls, generate ‘controversy’, and serve a larger machine.

Such is the nature (and economics) of the 24-hour news cycle.

How it works: to be profitable online, media outlets must generate a massive number of page views and shares. The most tried and true way to ‘go viral’ is to trigger an emotional response. Given the immediate and anonymous nature of online media, the most click-worthy emotion is…outrage.

This means the link between page views and profit is also the tie that binds social justice activists and haters. The fact that no two groups could be more opposed in their opinions and judgements makes them perfect pawns in a larger game: revenue generation.

So before entrusting your personal story to even a sympathetic reporter, remember: the 24-hour consumer news cycle cares not for your affiliations, your predilections or your children. It just wants audiences to pick a side and run with it. What happens next will take care of the rest.