Buy the Plan

To understand the importance of what39s happening needs us to take several steps back What39s audience measurement for What exactly do we need to know Who benefitsI think this is really about the growing importance of planning Up until recently media agencies and those who sell to them had one thing to worry about what to pay for whatever it was you had decided to buyThis may be unfair after all agencies and vendors have extensive resources tied up in research designed to help them decide what channels are best suited for their clients39 needs But let39s be honest The game has for an age been all about buying and justification Not planning and buyingThe focus has traditionally been on what many me included see as a too comfortable relationship between buyer and seller Don39t rock the boat don39t ask awkward questionsBut this all changed with the Mandel affair Once Jon threw a rock into the still pool of that comfortable relationship life changedFirst the ripples hit the whole topic of rebates Buyers had to accept an era of transparency or literally lose business Margins fell and trade press headlines around Agency X declaring war on Channel Y stopped as the realization dawned that Agency X had always really been playing war games with someone else39s moneyIt also became obvious to everyone in the cozy old world that money was drifting away from them towards the online giants In fact not so much drifting as floodingMeanwhile the old guard continued to do what old guards always do stick their fingers in their ears and hope the problem goes away Keep talking about buying mechanisms shares and so on even if the caravan has moved onNow the Mandel ripples have hit measurementWhat we need what we39ve needed for literally decades is a measurement infrastructure to support planningFor agencies to do what they often argue particularly in public they have been doing all along needs them to plan first and then buy the planAnd how should they do thatThey need to convince their clients that planning is something worth paying for then they need the confidence to deliver those plans a confidence that comes from knowing there is a research foundation in place on which they can buildYou still need the currencies the BARBs PAMCOs and the rest It39s just that way back when in an era of limited supply and excessive demand when buying was all that mattered that may have been all you neededPlanning stuff was for new business pitches and conference speeches The quotreal worldquot as those charming exbuying chiefs would remind us all was about the price you paid and the margin the agency could make to fund all quotyour flowery planning stuffquotquotPlanningquot was front of house window dressing to distract from the real business going on in the back officeSlowly but relentlessly we are waking up to the importance of being able to explain how to balance advertising with events with sponsorships with PR To split ad budgets between online platforms TV in its many forms print OOH DM audio and the restThis is why ISBA39s Origin initiative is so important and why how it39s funded is key Advertisers should always have been at the forefront of these matters the fact they weren39t for so long is their failing but better late than never Far betterIt never made any sense to write a plan then buy something different to justify the agency39s Upfront commitment We need the measurement experts to help us throughout the new flow build the plan justify the plan buy the planNot just with the last bitClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet

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Brian Jacobs

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