Reach wretches

Marketers, media agencies and media owners are in rhetorical solidarity on what more effective advertising and media formats looks like – yet media owners across most categories privately are pointing to a resurgence in advertisers executing and benchmarking successful media plans purely on price and cheap, low interest, low impact ad impressions.

It can be risky telling your customers they’re doing an average job, but clearly there is frustration in the camp at Val Morgan. Although the channel that talks often about having the highest advertising attention and impact scores in media might be particularly vocal, it is not alone among media owners perplexed by the “quality” debate being sidelined by a cheaper reach obsession in market.  “In every other part of our lives we do pay more for quality. We understand it. We don't question the premium,” Burbidge told 650 media agency and media execs. “We understand the value, whether that is fashion, cars, coffee, Ubers, this conference... Yet somehow, we've managed to create a culture where paying more for better is genuinely suspicious, where the value is questioned at every step and the cost is too often mistaken for inefficiency. I think we may be the only industry in the world that values the wrong proxies as a proxy for success."

Oxford University associate professor Felipe Thomaz said the same in this week’s podcast and feature – his recently peer reviewed and published paper forensically rips apart two foundational, decades-old measures for advertisers determining where they spend – audience reach and cost per thousand audience benchmarks [CPMs] – usually favouring the lowest price regardless of environment. 

“I don't know a single company that makes any profit out of just reaching people – you need a behaviour, you need them to go and do something about it," he told Mi3. "You need an 'and so what?'”

Thomaz has developed a more complex methodology for choosing channels which differ wildly by product category and audience “influenceability” – their state of mind and mood – but like Burbidge, challenged the practice by advertisers who view cheap advertising impressions as getting the job done for their business. He said no-one in marketing would countenance selling a premium brand like Nike or Chanel in a $2 discount store – but that approach remains a primary behaviour in the advertising market. 

Consumer signals

Burbidge suggested the “three new power levers in media are going to be mood, moment and meaning”. But advertisers and media buyers, he said, are still ignoring all the “consumer signals” about their exposure to advertising. 

“Ad avoidance isn't just a stat, it's a signal,” Burbidge said. “It's a genuine signal that context matters and audiences are telling us what kind of experiences they want to engage with from an advertising perspective.

“We know that at low ad loads reduce clutter, enhance attention and deliver and boost better effectiveness results,” he said. “And yet we continue to flood interrupted spaces that people actively trying to avoid with ad blockers, ad skipping, endless scrolls, audio, silence, click to sound – they’re all real problems.”

And consumers know, he said.

“We do need to talk about environments we place our brands in because consumers notice. We know that premium content drives a better emotional response, which is better for brand outcomes. So when you place your brand in a high quality environment in front of premium content, you're not just buying attention, you're earning the association and the resulting outcome.”

The equaliser

News Corp’s Pippa Leary said likewise, warning of the commoditisation and blending of long-form video environments with lower quality formats that are being given equal weighting in advertising impact to meet pricing demands. 

“How do you compare reach and frequency in a 30-minute piece of long form compared to a one-second view or a six-second short video? There is a clear divide now between the different kinds of video and you can clearly plot them on a spectrum from user-generated content (UGC) to ultra premium. Is there one measure of success or do we need to think about how these might act differently on the video continuum?"

Leary said if the market does move to an “outcomes era” rather than “replicating channels that reward last-click attribution”, it means recognising that screen size, device, context and audience will contribute to outcomes.

Easy vs effectiveness

For Burbidge it also puts more onus on creative, not just the channel or environment. 

“No matter how smart the strategy and how efficient the buy, if the creative doesn't connect, the impact will never happen,” he said.

“Creative isn't just about the quality of the idea, it's also how well the creative is adapting to fit the platform, to ensure the user experience. We don't need AI to tell us this. We don't need more algorithms. All the data we need is right in front of us. We just need to get on and do some more critical thinking about what really works for our brand and the outcome in mind.

"Stop buying what's easy and start investing in what works. And if you haven't guessed it, it's not reach or CPMs.”