What Is an "Expert"?

The McKinsey piece was entitled Unleashing the Power of Retail Media dated May 18th 2023 I should add that as I donamp8217t subscribe to McKinseyamp8217s reports Iamp8217ve only read the publicly available executive summary Thereamp8217s no doubt more detail in the full reportI agree that retail media is a fast growth high potential channel But I wonder about the efficacy of the support on what advertisers are looking for and expect as quoted by McKinseyThe report asks advertisers to rank channels presumably from amongst a precoded list of retail media options that deliver the highest return on advertising spend and then suggests that the best course of action is to quotknow what works and then double downquotNo kiddingThe idea that you should do more of what works is clearly good advice but asking advertisers to rank channels is flawed especially if as I suspect might be the case here the answers rely more on gut feel than empirical evidence Plus surely respondents would tend to rank whatever they do as best to suggest otherwise would be to infer that theyamp8217ve done the wrong thing which whilst quite probably true would never doElsewhere McKinsey tells us that advertising dollars quotflow towards transparency and performancequot Up to a point Lord Copper and yes you would like to think so But if advertisers really cared that much about transparency and performance would they have spent the last decade investing so much in platforms whose data is both unvalidated and hidden from objective investigationBut again if you were asked the question I imagine quottransparency and performancequot would be well up there on the wish list even if your actions suggested something differentLast week I cautioned against badly thoughtout survey questions leading to misleading conclusions Itamp8217s always a good idea to go back to the sourceWhen I worked in media agencies we all wanted to be McKinsey How we asked ourselves could they charge so much and gain such privileged access to the top of organizationsNo doubt theyamp8217re geniuses but even geniuses can learn from subject experts in this case researchers expert in building questionnairesMedia agencies used to be subject experts Their leaders were forever popping up in the national press on broadcast TV in the trades pontificating about this or that media topicMaybe I read the wrong titles follow the wrong sites and watch the wrong video channels but the current crop of agency leaders seem to be rather more bashful more wary of upsetting a vendor or ad tech supplier than in impressing with their expertiseHeaven forbid itamp8217s because there are holding company deals at stake somewhereNick Manning39s Media Leader piece makes the point that quotadvertising as a basis for the funding of many Internetled businesses including ad tech may amp8230 prove unsustainablequotIn other words some people responsible for spending money may have made some bad betsAd spend is not elastic it doesnamp8217t miraculously expand to fill the options available Yet many quotexpertsquot especially those from outside the industry seem to believe the oppositeManagement consultancies VCamp8217s and private equity funds do sometimes seem to support adfunded businesses which anyone with a few years in the ad business would tell them wonamp8217t workAdvertising can never fund everything budgets are finite and as a rule of thumb if a new thing comes along requiring funding from advertising that money will have to come from an existing channelOne example of this sort of narrow thinking is that the only thing that matters is big numbersSome years ago a wellknown media industry investment advisor tried to convince me that embedding a paidfor message within a telco service was a great idea If I called you and you didnamp8217t pick up immediately I would be played an audio adThink of the millions of calls not answered immediately he said You should be recommending this to all clients immediatelyMy argument that this would be a massive source of ad invasion and irritation didn39t wash Think of the numbers he kept repeatingAs far as I know it never happened but I would be prepared to bet that that was nothing to do with the argument that context matters at least as much as gross numbersMedia professionals are by no means immune from making mistakes but I like to think that if I was advising someone to invest in a sector in which neither I nor the investor had any direct experience I would have the humility and selfawareness to seek out those with direct experienceMind you where to find them is a whole other questionPosted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership selfpublishing platformClick 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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What Is an "Expert"?

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Brian Jacobs

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