AANA calls for media owners to share more data and media agencies to open up their books
The industry body for Australia’s major advertisers has listed the issue of autorefresh as the most important media problem to be tackled next year.
In a wishlist of ten problem areas to tackle, the Australian Association of National Advertisers cited autorefresh as the number one topic to be addressed. It pointed out: “Australia is among the last developed countries to abandon the practice of artificially inflating online audience numbers by treating each “refresh” of computer screens as an additional viewer.”
However, there were also issues for other media too. For radio, the AANA urged a move away from the diary system of measuring radio listening, while it called on TV networks to release data on audience behaviour during ad breaks. Newspapers and magazines will also come under further pressure to share data about sales of individual editions, the AANA said.
The AANA list also suggests that some clients have concerns over whether their media agencies are doing under the table deals with media owners. referring to “transparency in agency remuneration,” the AANA said: “Advertisers seek confirmation of this through complete financial transparency, and expect agencies fully to declare the revenue stream directly or indirectly related to their business, for example via commissions, cash rebates or free advertising space provided by the media to the agency.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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This whole issue of clients not trusting their agencies on remuneration comes up from time to time. There are some parts of the world where diddling the fees or reselling space is par for the course, but Australia is not one of those markets. Clients have directly asked me the question and until then, it had not occurred to me that they might assume that some of the practices very common in lesser developed markets would be also practiced here. I know of only one, maybe two examples in the industry where I believe clients have a right to be concerned although they’ll ultimately find the issue is an ethical one, not a question of legality or ownership. The devil is hidden in the detail and clients need to be responsible to make sure that what they’re signing benefits them as much as the agency. The vast majority of media agencies are working their guts out for lower levels of remuneration than ever before. Look at many large accounts and often the media agency is servicing it at a net loss (and keeping it only to increase overall agency muscle and to maintain their win/loss rankings). And clients wonder why they get shitty service and inexperienced juniors to deal with.
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I simply look at how many click throughs I get to our site, the general site stats (i.e. length of time on certain pages, bounce backs etc to measure quality) and how many people subscribe to our newsletter.
Online Ads have to be punchy as you are often limited for space and are competing with alot that is happening on the screen.
As my budget is limited, analysing the Google stats in depth helps me look as to where I get the biggest bang for my buck and let me say, I have found a few little gems, but also had some shockers.
Marketers have to learn to take the time out, create the right reports and simply have their grounding in the numbers.
Online advertising, Email marketing and Google analytics has allowed us to truly understand our ROI (in terms of worst case scenario).
Take this oversimplified example. An ad costs $1000, you get 50 contacts subscribe to your database, therefore each subscriber costs you $20 for that campaign.
This $20 cost per subscriber is your worst case scenario as you simply are not measuring the fact that many more consumers have viewed the Ad which in turn increases brand awareness…..however, at least you have a solid number to show the bosses when trying to justify your next budget.
So, “Whatever” to autorefresh, yes it is misleading, but you quickly learn which advertisers to abandon if Google is not showing results.
Call me simplistic, but online has taken away alot of the guessing of the past, and agencies cannot afford to be misleading as they quickly get dumped. In general, agencies do work hard.
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@ 1-.I know nothing
I have never worked for an agency that wasn’t diddling its clients – mind u I am talking about creative agencies….
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I don’t understand why agencies should have to provide their P&L to a client. It doesnt happen with architects or lawyers or virtually any other service provider.
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