Will a media audit tell you where to stop, start or continue investing your marketing budget?
Is media audit the best way to assess your return on marketing investment, or is time for a new media effectiveness review process?
With Irish marketers expected to invest over €1bn in media in 2018, it’s clear that this level of investment needs to be subjected to some form of independent scrutiny. However, it’s critical to the long-term success (and sanity!) of all players in our industry that this scrutiny focuses on governance and value and is not perceived as a costly burden with little value to clients or agencies.
When we set up Pt78 last year, we were driven by a belief that there was a huge opportunity to innovate around the media audit process. Clearly the media landscape has changed beyond recognition over the last 5 years. Our goal was to evolve the media audit process and to adapt it so that it could play a useful and important role in this new world.
We focus on all marketing effectiveness. As the disproportionate share of spend is in media, we spend a lot of time in this area and work hard to abide by our founding principles (although, to be fair we recently added a 5th!).
Innovation – Use traditional models where they apply but don’t where they don’t. Get creative, think logically – what’s the best way to do this? Focus on process and outcomes and don’t try to shoehorn new media into traditional audit models.
Maximum positive effect – Focus on the big wins and key risks. Look at the entirety of the investment and determine which elements will drive business change. (It’s unlikely to be a 2% improvement in TV centre breaks!)
Streamlined –Lean process designed to save client and agency time and money. Free up agency resource to focus on business priorities, planning and buying media. Reviews should be conducted as quickly as possible. Adopt technology solutions where feasible to expedite process.
Stop Start Continue – This should be a constructive process, it’s not about correcting anyone’s homework. It should be about collaboration; clients, agencies and auditors learning what’s working and what can be done differently next time to increase return on marketing investment.
Expert – In-depth local market knowledge combined with experience in agency and in client marketing organisations.
Our clients tell us that our investment review process adds real value to their decision-making but we’re not about to rest easy!
We will continue to adapt and develop a media effectiveness framework that is fit for purpose in 2019 and beyond. We believe that ongoing industry collaboration on the development of this framework will result in a solution that works better for everyone. We have written to the media agencies to ask for their insight and guidance and hope that together we can develop a process that delivers good governance and proves value and return on investment.
We’ll keep you updated as the new ‘media audit’ principles evolve. We would love to chat further on this topic so please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Sarah & Viv