Global marketers making ‘radical’ changes to media management
Global brands have made major changes, or are planning to make extensive changes, to their media governance practices across a wide range of areas, according to new research from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA).
In the last 12 months, 35 multi-national companies with a total annual marketing spend of more than $30bn globally said they have taken action on issues including transparency, brand safety, viewability and ad fraud.
Transparency remains a top priority for 47% of companies, while 51% say it is rising up the list. However, 14% said it is de-escalating, which the WFA says suggests some companies are seeing progress.
In an effort to improve transparency, 65% said they have improved their internal capabilities via moves such as hiring a head of programmatic, while more than 70% have amended their media agency contracts and 58% have included terms that define agency status as agent or principle at law.
Brand safety is the next most-important priority for most companies and is moving up the agenda fast, with 70% saying it has escalated as an issue over the last year.
74% said they have suspended investment in ad networks where they felt there was an unnecessary risk to their brands and a further 14% plan to do so. 89% currently limit or plan to limit investment in ad networks that do not allow use of third-party verification.
In terms of viewability, 63% said they are now only investing in viewable impressions which meet industry standards and 37% have devised their own viewability criteria.
Meanwhile, in an effort to tackle ad fraud, 55% said they are now limiting the run of exchange buys; 43% are shifting away from using CPM as their key metric in favour of business outcomes; and 40% are developing in-house resource to help tackle ad fraud.
“Last year’s ANA report was a catalyst for a new wave of action by brands not just in the US but around the world, addressing many of the media issues that our members have highlighted including brand safety and ad fraud,” said Robert Dreblow, head of marketing services at the WFA – which also describes the changes as ‘radical’ in nature.
“These actions, coupled with an increasing number of WFA members sharing that they have witnessed improved transparency, are positive signs that we can create an improved media landscape for brands, agency partners and media owners.”
At the start of the year Procter & Gamble’s chief brand officer, Marc Pritchard called on the industry to “clean” digital up advertising – especially around the muddied waters of media buying and viewability.
“We have a media supply chain that is murky at best and fraudulent at worst,” Pritchard said at the IAB’s annual leadership meeting in February. “We need to clean it up, and invest the time and money we save into better advertising to drive growth.”
Pritchard said P&G is currently poring over every agency contract in an attempt to achieve full transparency by the end of 2017 – including terms requiring funds to be used for media payment only, all rebates to be disclosed and returned, and all transactions subject to audit.
That also means adopting basic viewability standards, ditching the adtech middle men, breaking down walled gardens, and getting serious about measurement.
In line with that commitment, P&G said last month – while cutting more than $100 million from its digital marketing spend – it had reduced overhead, agency fee and ad-production costs in the quarter.