The Poor Old Clients Have Nothing at the Moment!

And it most certainly isn’t a case of "You pays your money and you gets your Choice" So many billions of dollars/pounds are spent on television advertising that a lot rides on making the right commercials  and providing some sort of real accountability."

Few advertisers harbour doubts as to the desirability of accountability. Andrew Jung, Kellogg's senior director for advertising probably spoke for the majority of his peers when he told a recent conference: "Without change I don't know how long television can be sustainable [for advertising]."

In America there is available right now detailed data that analyze viewing second-by-second. It is used by agencies and TV networks to gather feedback on whether a given commercial works better in a given time slot.

However new data will measure the average rating for all commercials watched during a program, rather than the popularity of individual ads. Even on line Clients get nothing in return for their marketing investment!
Almost seventy per cent of major marketers world-wide who advertise on line admit to uncertainty that they actually get what they pay for. That percentage increases to 75% in the United Kingdom and 78% in North America.

Moreover, 68% of the three thousand business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketing professionals polled "didn't know" if they could trust the visitor/traffic profiles claimed by on line media owners and publishers.
A Global Marketing Effectiveness Report 2007 belies the ongoing tsunami of hype emanating from the on line marketing industry.
And despite a recent forecast that on line ad revenues will hit $147 billion (€93.27bn; £73.43bn) by 2012, the  report reveals that marketers appear to have a major trust issue when it comes to the overall reliability and credibility of on line ads.
Their top five concerns?

1. They don't know if they actually get what they pay for.

2. They don't know if they can trust the visitor and/or traffic profile on line media owners and publishers claim their sites have.

3. They have the feeling there is a lot of click fraud.

4. They don't know if their ads appear in the sites and/or sites' sections where they should appear.

5. They don't trust the traffic and click-through reports digital media owners give them.

This could explain why 40% of marketers around the world did not run on line campaigns in 2007, a figure reaching 65% in high GDP growth markets such as Greater China, India and Singapore.
While looking ahead, marketers world-wide say they intend to take a prudent approach and spend only a small percentage of their marketing budgets on line.

One of the main reasons for such poor results is that with more than 70% of the on line campaigns audit tracked across all types of on line media platforms (display ads, emails, paid search, referrals, rich media and sponsorships), our clients did not get what they paid for. One million impressions purchased often ended up with 800,000 impressions served; an email blast to a third-party 10,000-record database was more often than not sent to a 7,000-active-email base.

The bottom line: the discrepancy between what is claimed and/or purchased and what is actually delivered is beginning to cast a shadow on the long-term credibility of the industry. On line media have now the immense challenge of winning the trust and confidence of marketers and must be prepared to be audited and be accountable for the results they deliver.
Marketers look for two types of auditing when advertising on line:

(a) Independent auditing of what media owners and publishers claim about their medium in terms of audience profile and demographics, traffic data etc; and…

(b) Independent auditing of the results of individual campaigns – actual number of impressions served, placement of ads, pay-per-click results, CTRs, CVRs etc.
On line media platforms have the potential to grab a larger share of the marketing budget alongside traditional stalwarts such as newspapers and TV.

They can be a powerful component of the communications mix and marketers will spend more of their budgets on line if they have independent audit tracking of the results generated to ensure they truly got what they paid for, and if the results clearly contribute to the top and/or bottom line of the company.”
As we said earlier "The poor old Client has nothing at the moment and it appears to be getting worse.
A majority of US marketers believe that television advertising has become less effective over the past two years, spurring interest in exploring new ad and video commercial formats.
That's the conclusion of a survey recently conducted, among the studies main findings...

* Sixty-two percent of marketers believe TV advertising has become less effective in the past two years, but close to half of the advertisers surveyed have already started to experiment with new ad types to work with DVRs and VOD programs.
* Eighty-seven percent of advertisers believe branded entertainment will play a stronger role in TV advertising in the coming year.
* Advertisers are eager to try new ad formats, including ads in on line TV shows (65 percent), ads embedded in VOD (55 percent), interactive television ads (43 percent), and ads within the set top box menu (32 percent).
* Over 50 percent of marketers reported that when half of all TV households use DVRs, they will cut spending on TV advertising by 12 percent.
* Eighty-seven percent of respondents said they intend to spend more on Web advertising this year.
* Seventy-two percent of marketers are very interested in having individual commercial ratings rather than average commercial ratings.

As marketers embrace the richness of new advertising avenues outside of the traditional TV format, the TV industry is working to address marketer's issues related to ratings and the changing TV landscape.
Marketers, in collaboration with the TV industry, will continue to find the most effective and innovative ways to reach their customers through the TV medium, utilizing the emerging technologies available to them.

Additional insights from the study...
* Two-thirds of respondents indicate that C-level executives are watching the changes in TV advertising more closely, up from 54 percent two years ago.
* Media agencies have vastly improved their ability to help their clients deal with the changes.  Only 28 percent of respondents reported that their media agency is ill-equipped to address the changes in TV advertising, compared to 47 percent two years ago.
* Creative agencies did not fare as well, with 47 percent of marketers indicating that their creative agency was still ill-equipped to help deal with changes, a slight improvement from 55 percent of marketers two years ago.

The study was based on a survey of 78 leading advertisers, across all major industries and categories.

In my book “Television killed advertising” to be published end September 2008, I detail just how much more effective interactive communication is when compared to conventional advertising and details the results of a research investment in excess of £5 m.