Magic, Logic and Technology

The best ad campaigns have always combined magic and logic It is not logical to put a guy dressed as a gorilla behind a drumkit if what youamp8217re doing is selling chocolate but once you take the mental leap that what youamp8217re selling is selfindulgent pleasure it becomes more understandableOver 50 years ago the thenBMRB came up with the idea of a largescale UK survey combining claimed product usage and media consumption It was called the TGII remember discussing this newfangled tool with the creative founder of the agency I was in at the time This is brilliant I said We can target campaigns at people who use Brand A versus Brand B His response was telling You donamp8217t want to take all the magic away from advertising on the back of some numbersAnd yet here we areOnline advertising offers a number of wellknown positives A huge audience identifiable down to the individual in theory the ability for the audience to respond immediate feedback and so onThese positives are real but like most things thereamp8217s a downside And in this case the downside is both huge and largely ignoredOver the last few days the grownups have it seems noticed whatamp8217s been going onReporting at Cannes the US advertisersamp8217 body the ANA highlighted the high proportion of programmatic impressions 21 that end up on madeforadvertising sitesThis week the Wall Street Journal highlighted Googleamp8217s failure to meet its own standards when placing video ads on thirdparty channelsAnd the ad fraud expert Dr Augustine Fou continued his tireless campaign to make advertisers aware of the extent of fraud in online media As he says quotAs far back as 2015 AppNexus admitted thatamp16092 of the impressions they sold were fraudulent httpswwwadexchangercomadexchangenews6monthsafterfraudcleanupappnexusshareseffectonitsexchange But none of their customers ever got refunds Ad fraud has been a 90 problem since at least 2015quotFor years media departments in ad agencies and the media agencies that emerged from them rightly promoted media planning and buying as a specialism much needed in an evermore complicated worldAgencies were the experts they were trusted by their clients to be objective when it came to evaluating new research from media vendors Over time theyamp8217ve ceded ground to the platformsamp8217 ambition to deal direct with advertisers quotGive us the budget weamp8217ll plan it buy it and evaluate the results for youquot And if you believe that Iamp8217ve got a bridge to sell youMany advertisers have fallen for this Their erstwhile partners the media agencies have shown themselves to be more interested in deals for themselves than in objectivity Sadly an element of trust has been shatteredAd fraud is invasive Nonspecialists at advertisers are being cheated out of significant portions of their budgets and donamp8217t know who to turn to for objective adviceNobody wants to admit that this problem has arisen on their watch The agency experts who were once relied upon to give their clients objective advice donamp8217t show any appetite for any real investigation into ad fraud and so the cycle continues round and round ever downwardsFor this to end advertisers have to go back to basics They advertise after all to achieve something The quotsomethingquot has to be an identifiable business benefit Not reach not impressions not media metrics These things are checkpoints along the way but theyamp8217re not in themselves the end goalMy Crater Lake colleague David Beaton from the advanced analytics business NavigationME puts it like thisquotOnline media planning and buying suffers from badly aligned incentives combined with poor analyticsquotThe chase for cheap reach served by agencies using reach and other media metrics as a proxy for business success has led to a perfect storm of waste and fraud on a massive scalequotUnless these incentives are addressed the waste and fraud will continuequotBots Donamp8217t Buy is a targeting model and system of measurement designed to plan and buy online media in a way that directly impacts client business outcomesquotThere is no reason for the waste to continue the technology and knowhow exists to address it We just need the will to stop pretending media metrics are the same as business successquotAs an industry weamp8217ve created a system that enriches the fraudsters encourages the funding of ad tech businesses built on sand now duly collapsing emboldens the holding companies to prioritize profit over building their clients39 businesses legitimizes media auditing of the wrong things and misleads advertisersquotMagic and Logicquot was published in 2006 It was optimistic full of promise for a collaborative quantifiably measured future between businesses and the agencies that serve themWe39ve fallen way shortPosted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership selfpublishing platformClick the social buttons to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageorgMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Magic, Logic and Technology

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Brian Jacobs

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