The latest report from the Billett Consultancy seems to be implying
that there’s a rather pernicious class system evolving in the television
airtime market, with advertisers targeting women or older people being
treated like second-class citizens. Many observers have always suspected
that the advertising industry tends to favour only the beautiful people,
but according to the Billett study, this strategy isn’t down to some
ageist blind prejudice. And we’re not exactly talking chair-lift
advertisers here - we’re talking about mainstream, the ones that target
mass audiences.
Advertisers in growth sectors like telecoms are specific about their
target audience - it’s young and largely male. Only certain types of
airtime are appropriate to them, so television companies tend to
schedule their airtime first. Way at the back of the queue come the FMCG
advertisers who are actually the medium’s most loyal supporters.
Because all sorts of airtime can be appropriate to them, they don’t have
to make really picky demands about the programming they need. And
because they are easiest to schedule by the TV contractors they are
therefore scheduled last. As a consequence, they tend to get some pretty
unattractive airtime.
This process, by which advertiser demands are prioritised and airtime
allocated in the most efficient way possible, is computerised these days
and the system is called ’optimisation’. The problem, according to the
Billett document, is compounded by another type of optimisation carried
out by media specialists. Called the agency deal, this involves buyers
committing to take a certain amount of airtime from a broadcaster and
then trying to find the right home for it among its portfolio of
clients.
Somewhere along the way, says John Billett, chairman of the Billett
Consultancy, TV’s best customers are being sold short. He states:
’Television has to appeal to a broad range of clients and it’s not in
anyone’s interest to see well-established advertisers being pushed off.
The medium may have to offer them bigger discounts to tempt them back.
What we’ve been seeing is that this is not an even playing field.’
But hang on a minute. When was the airtime market ever fair? Isn’t it
like most things - don’t you tend to get exactly what you pay for? After
all, isn’t everything negotiable? Surely we’re just talking about lazy
advertisers who’ve allowed commodity thinking to permeate their planning
and buying. Don’t they deserve everything they get?
Billett responds: ’They may be getting what they negotiate but not what
they are entitled to. You might negotiate for 25 per cent centre breaks
when in fact you can get 40 per cent if you know how, because there are
many advertisers, especially those chasing young male audiences, pushing
harder than others. All I am doing is airing these issues in public. I
am saying that you have to know how the system works these days. You
must make sure you are getting what you want by design rather than by
default.’
Is it true that in the wide scheme of things, mainstream advertisers
deserve better? Are the new converts to TV treated better than the old
faithful followers? Mick Desmond, the chief executive of Granada Media,
doesn’t think so. He states: ’It’s true that we have become extremely
sophisticated at maximising our product. I think it’s also true that
what we’ve been seeing is a large influx of clients which are
male-biased and which will not be buying weekday dayparts. But it is our
job to deliver audiences by demographics and most of the buying points
have optimisation systems that are just as sophisticated as ours. It’s
always the case that good buyers will do better than not so good
buyers.’
And the people who should really take care, Desmond says, are the
advertisers who buy ratings packages on satellite, where it’s common to
see products aimed at adults scheduled on to children’s channels.
The report seemed to draw a far more heated reaction from the buying
community, some of who were tempted to question the role and primary
motivation of auditing companies like the Billett Consultancy. ’They
trade on fear and do anything to sell their services to clients by
creating worries that are usually groundless,’ one said. Another source
who declined to take part in Forum, stated: ’Those who can, do; those
who can’t, teach.’
Ground-breaking research that would help produce better media buying
will always be welcomed. But according to Chris Locke, the joint
managing director of MediaVest, words like ’grandmother, eggs and suck’
spring to mind when you read this latest report. He adds: ’We buy
programmes; contractors sell audiences. This is not a new dichotomy. It
is unusual for a TV plan to have only one target audience and agencies
are well versed in developing plans which target, for example, ABC1
adults biased towards 16-to 24-year-old males, even though they will
only deal against ABC1s as a whole. We are used to pretending to buy
apples when we want oranges.
Daypart, day of week, channel mix, specific programme access and
repetition - or lack of - can and are built into TV deals.’
Locke insists that plans are called plans because they are precisely
that - media specialists do not stumble into TV activity. Everything is
carefully thought out and optimised before negotiations begin. He does
concede, however, that clients targeting a broad audience do find it
hard to justify being choosy about their airtime while still hitting
their audience targets. ’That’s the reason most brands buy a
sub-audience or audiences. There will always be some point of conflict,
but the key is in setting the communications targets and aims, as much
as in the actual buying.’
Tom George, a managing partner of Zenith Media, agrees with some aspects
of the report. But he states: ’Contractors have become very good at
optimising schedules to generate the most amount of revenue. But you
make an assessment about the schedule you are given and the cost of it,
and make a judgment accordingly. It is our job to address precisely
those concerns.’
