M&M RESEARCH Fighting to keep fit
WRITER Martina Lacey
CREATIVE Shutterstock
» ‘TOPIC‘
Last year tested the stamina of every media owner, but it also offered plenty of opportunities for the industry to really prove its worth. M&M’s annual Sales Team Benchmarking survey examines how companies have spread diminishing budgets for better ROI
Pessimism was a familiar emotion among media owners in 2009, and apparently they felt it more keenly than their advertiser and agency counterparts. When evaluating how much the economic downturn had affected their work over the past six months, a huge 70% felt they had been considerably compromised, compared to 62% of agencies and only 47% of advertisers, perhaps reflecting the power of the food chain. Media owners and agencies were equally affected by cost-cutting within their own companies, and at the companies with which they worked. In terms of hard impact though, fewer media owners (41%) reported a decrease in staffing numbers over the past 12 months than agencies (48%). Original headcount will have much to do with it, but the upshot of this will have only increased the expectation on suppliers.
WHAT DID MEDIA OWNERS NEED TO DELIVER AGAINST? Unsurprisingly, the biggest priority for agencies when selecting which platform to use was the media owner’s ability to prove return on investment. Nearly half the respondents ranked it first, while offering a creative and flexible approach came a clear second. Other issues – professionalism, good research resources, multi-platform capabilities
26 M&M Q2 2010
and technological developments – saw a more mixed response. The online sales teams swept the
board when it came to the ability to prove ROI with Google coming out best overall. Its rating of 60%, together with its dominance of the online world, helps explain why it was the most popular (or certainly the most used) media owner included in the survey. Print players also delivered well on the ROI front, with The Economist ranked second overall. Perhaps this can be attributed to the investment most have made in this category to boost multi-platform offerings. Along with The Economist, the Financial Times and Newsweek also dedicated investment to their digital offerings, which resulted in higher scores for them. Digital investment is yet to bring the same fortune to the OOH sector. All the players failed to register double digits on their ability to deliver ROI, although recent announcements regarding measurement initiatives from both the US and Australia suggest that the sector is all too aware it needs to up its game. The heightened importance of ROI
shows very little sign of declining over the next 12 months with the majority of respondents agreeing with the statement that “cost-effectiveness is my top priority, but I expect to give more importance to creativity in 2010.”
Only 5% described creativity as their top priority, reflecting the new reality.
DID MEDIA OWNERS DELIVER MORE CREATIVE THINKING? As recession descended, media owners and agencies alike declared that smaller budgets would produce more creative thinking. Historically, some of the biggest ideas have been born during recession – take Apple for one. By all accounts, the TV, print and online players delivered in the creativity space with National Geographic Channel’s sales team being crowned the most creative across all the platforms.
www.mandmglobal.com
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