The ID Comms Global Trading Survey for 2021 has shown a dramatic shift in favour of quality buys over commodity buys in the three years since the survey was last conducted.
While 92% of respondents agree that “advertisers who treat media as a quality buy, rather than a commodity buy, are at an advantage”, the number of those who strongly agree has risen to 70% of respondents, up 20 points on the 2018 results.
ID Comms conducted its latest research over a two-week period in December and received 162 responses from media, marketing and procurement professionals.
Notably, the number of procurement stakeholders who now strongly agree that media trading based on quality over quantity is more advantageous, has increased more than 50% to 72% since 2018.
Some 82% of marketing respondents also strongly agree, although client-side media experts are more wary, with 64% strongly agreeing.
“The race to the bottom has been a killer for agencies and many media owners while also failing to deliver for advertisers. Treating media as a quality buy and an investment in growth is long overdue and welcome news,” said Paul Stringer, consultant at ID Comms.
Alongside the recognition that a better buy is a quality buy, there is also stronger support for the role of auditing as an integral part of good media governance, although advertisers are more convinced than agencies.
Some 86% of respondents somewhat or strongly agree that media auditing is a critical component of good media governance. This is similar to the findings from 2018. However, there has been a 23% increase among those who strongly agree, underlining the centrality of auditing to media governance best practice.
The conviction is particularly strong among advertisers, 67% of whom strongly agree, double the number who strongly agreed (31%) with the statement in 2018.
Agency respondents were more sceptical with just 29% of those respondents strongly agreeing that media auditing is a critical component of good media governance (compared to 19% in 2018).
This may be due to the fact that the auditing process can sometimes be fairly labour intensive and operationally disruptive for agencies.
