ID Comms has released its 2018 Global Media Trading Report—the seventh and final study as wave one in the 7Ts Global Research Project. The two-year study examines media behaviors of successful marketers across the world in seven “Ts”: Transparency, Talent, Training, Terms, Thinking, Technology and Trading.
When it comes to media trading, marketers agreed that while it’s easy to purchase cheaply, it’s more challenging to buy well. Cost-focused behavior, the respondents added, is somewhat led by media auditors and client requests for lower prices. Media trading must balance quality and price but the quality is more important, marketers said in the report. A majority of respondents—88 percent—agreed that advertisers who treat media as a quality buy rather than a commodity buy are at an advantage.
“We need to go from treating media as a commodity to be much more of a quality buy because agencies were just being incentivized to buy cheap media,” Stéphane Bérubé, CMO for Western Europe at L’Oréal, said in the report.
The disconnect between advertiser and agency priorities is apparent in ID Comms’ findings, particularly in what each group classified as the most indicator of successful media trading.
A majority of respondents classified “business results/ROI” as the most important indicator of successful media trading in 2018. However, 68 percent who did so were made of advertisers, compared to 32 percent of agency respondents.
The importance of financial transparency was especially disparate, with 91 percent naming it a top measurement of success compared to only nine percent from agencies.
Different opinions were also found between respondents in charge of procurement and marketers, especially when it comes to whether a media plan dictates the buy or vice versa.
Overall, participating marketing professionals agreed that traditional media auditing is less relevant in an age of digital auctions and hiring the best talent is a challenge shared by all.
Conducted over a two-week period in January and February, ID Comms received 130 responses from marketing, media and procurement professionals located in Europe (75 percent), the US (15 percent) and the remainder in other areas of the world.
