Time for a Reset

21 February 2025

The ad industry has always been framed by different factions shouting ever louder – from the pages of the trades and conference platforms. No change there then – from the days of arguments around commission versus fees, to the ‘no longer a need for account people’ and the merits and demerits of social media this has always been a business fuelled by strong, imaginative opinions.

But where we are now feels different, certainly as far as the media agencies are concerned. Putting individual companies aside, and making the case as objectively and dispassionately as possible:

• The largest media agencies have long promoted their strategic and planning capabilities – with good reason. By so doing they have sought to position themselves as competing in the same high-margin space as the management consultancies. This ambition seems no more.
• At the same time, they’ve become in effect sales agents for the large platforms and the adtech businesses – being paid by them under all sorts of labels (including consultancy, training and in one case apparently selling space for promotional posters on the agency’s office walls).
• And they’ve developed their high-margin, low risk principal-based buying practices – seen it seems by some of their CEOs as central to the case for a giant merger.

These are incompatible aims.

The first one relies on an investment in time and resource, the growing and nurturing of a group of skilled practitioners who are aware of and absorb the latest research and thinking around how media works and as such are of potentially great value to clients’ businesses. It relies on objectivity.

The second and third rely on putting the agency’s interests first, whilst seeking to convince clients otherwise, using the argument that what matters is buying the most basic set of media metrics at the cheapest rate, regardless of any other evidence. This ‘once in a lifetime’ offer is available only if the client foregoes any right to audit or third-party investigation.

In trying to square a circle the largest agencies have managed to lose the trust of their clients; cause embarrassment amongst some of their most skilful strategic thinkers; and I would argue bring the ad business into disrepute.

There is an irony in this obsession with short-term financials (which is what drives this – without their media arms the holdcos are deep in the mire) given all the evidence produced by many of the very same organisations on the value of long-term brand building.

It’s time to take a breath and reset.

When media agencies first emerged from the old full-service model, they were buyers. That’s what they did; that’s what they were called (still are by many clients).

Planning and strategy stayed within the creative agencies.

It was essential to ensure that what was planned was bought. It made no sense to separate the planning from execution and sure enough it changed.

But what if the plans and the buys aren’t linked? What if the agency plans one thing, to suit its clients needs and then buys something else to meet its own commitments?

That is what happens now in far too many cases. It was at the heart of the case made by Jon Mandel to the ANA in 2016; it’s still the case.

It was the basic principle that fuelled the Japanese media industry for years. The biggest agencies acted as both buyer and seller; plans were more a post-rationalisation, measurement atrophied, based on gross impressions.

Sound in any way familiar?

Then Nielsen introduced people meter audience data into the Japanese market, bringing target audience ratings (TARPs) to a market previously limited to gross ratings (GRPs).

Suddenly plans based on target audiences became a thing. A planning agency, called Strategic Planners International, or SPI emerged.

SPI started using the targeted data to audit actual delivery against plans.

In due course SPI started doing the planning themselves for clients, with the buying remaining with the giants. SPI audited the buys made against their plans.

We’ve come a long way from TARPs and GRPs but if plans and buys aren’t linked, why do they need to be done in the same house?

A specialist comms planning agency could be hired by a client for the quality of its thinking and expertise. The planning agency doesn’t buy but it could be made responsible for its plans being executed. The client relationship is with the planning team; the buying team is accountable to the planners who are held to account by the client.

Like most models this will appeal to some clients more than others. For some a relationship with a media agency that plans and then buys what it plans, openly and transparently would make more sense.

Also like most models this needs scrutiny, detail and constructive criticism. Perhaps this post can start that discussion.

When something isn’t working, we shouldn’t be afraid to break things apart before putting them back together.

As to SPI, the business was bought by Aegis (way before Aegis itself sold to Dentsu), merged, then demerged, was subject to a management buy-out and most recently has been sold again (in 2023) – to Deloittes.

It’s Founder, Kim Walker created and now Chairs Aprais, a business that ‘works to build stronger business relationships’.