Who's Responsible for Good Ads?

I credit Wayne Friedman for this headline as the title for his column on Friday was Stuck in Neutral: Who Is Responsible for Bad Ads? With the upfront and commercial ratings soon upon us, networks don't want to be accountable for how ads perform. After all, being accountable would require them to charge less for their program ratings.

Arguably, the answer to who's responsible for bad ads is the same as the answer to who's responsible for good ads. The ad agency that created the ad. Since we don't blame ad agencies for bad programming, why would we blame programmers for bad advertising?

One can only be held accountable for what one has control over. As such, only the creator of the ad can be held accountable for whether the ad is actually good or bad.

But is that really the issue here? Is the real issue whether an ad is bad or good, or is it whether viewers leave the programming when the commercial pod comes on? Why is this important? Because if it is the latter, it has nothing to do with the quality of the advertising itself.

The reason is simply this. Viewers aren't skipping advertising. What viewers are skipping are interruptions to their programming. Unfortunately, most interruptions happen to be ads. It could be argued that people, in fact, like advertising. What they don't like is the way that advertising is currently marketed to them.

And, to that end, the programmers are responsible for skipped ads. And until they change the intrusive manner in which commercials are marketed to viewers, they should be offered less for the program impressions that they sell. The interruptive broadcast model was designed for a time when viewers had no voice and no control.

That time is long gone. As will be advertisers, if the intrusive model doesn't change.

But will people opt-in to commercials on their own accord? Certainly. Who? Well, those who are interested in the product or service. But won't these numbers be much smaller than the current impression figures advertisers spend so much for? Of course. After all, waste will be eliminated.

Is there proof that viewers will opt-in? There was a test recently completed on a VOD platform that allowed viewers to opt-in to commercials of interest. These commercials were still targeted to certain programs, they just were not intrusive to those programs.

The opt-in rate? 18%. Most advertisers would take that. If, of course, the broadcasters would allow them that option.

There once was a adman in San Francisco called Howard Gossage. While Howard was known for saying many brilliant things, he had one particular saying that is frequently quoted. "People don't read advertising. People read what interests them. And occasionally, it happens to be an ad."

To steal from the master - "People don't skip advertising. People skip interruptions. And usually, those interruptions happen to be ads.

Advertising isn't broken. The ways that advertising is delivered is broken. To solve a problem, one first needs to understand what the problem actually is.

ROI 2.0?

It seems that everything has a 2.0 at the end of it these days. Except for perhaps the most important thing - the advertising business model. That's not to say that people aren't starting to touch on this issue. At the 4A's Conference in Florida last week, a more expansive concept of ROI was discussed. According to the 4A's, ROI now means return on ideas, return on involvement and return on investment.

In other words, there are now three things to try and measure instead of just one. My question is, what's the difference between the three? How is a return on ideas measured any differently than a return on investment when it comes to how an agency is paid?
Return on involvement, on the other hand, is directly measurable in the digital marketplace. Second-by-second commercial ratings are now becoming more prevalent. As they do, advertisers will know how long viewers choose to be involved in their commercials.

Once advertisers know that viewers watched say, only 10% of their spot, I would think that they would be hard pressed to pay their agency full fare for the other 90%. Could a sliding scale be created so that the more involving the work, the more the agency gets paid?

I ran this idea past some of the more creative agencies in the country and their response was quite positive. After all, they equated viewer involvement to good work. And, in their opinion, a sliding scale would allow good work to be worth more than bad work. I also ran this idea past some of the more traditional agencies in the country and they, not surprisingly, thought the idea was abominable.

Traditional agencies, it seems, would prefer to continue to be paid based on how many work on a commercial and for how long versus how many watch a commercial and for how long. In other words, to continue to be paid based on effort, rather than outcome.

And this is where a mindchange needs to occur. The industry's current business model is set-up around labor-based fees regardless of results. Whatever ROI 2.0 turns out to be, it will need to be set-up around results-based fees regardless of labor.

A difficult change if yours is a large agency.

But as measurement becomes even more granular, viewer time spent with a message, i.e. involvement, will become more valuable than agency time spent working on it. If involvement, as creative agencies seem to believe, is a by-product of good creative, then what we need now are advertisers willing to pay their agencies on this basis?

These would be the same advertisers who were nodding in agreement at the recently completed 4A's conference in Florida.

It's time to stop nodding guys, and start doing.

Denying The Future

I flew to Chicago this week for a presentation to one the industry's leading media agencies. The topic of the presentation - as audience size continues to fragment, how do media agencies continue to offer value to their clients outside of impressions?

There were six in the meeting from the media agency - most of them from the new media division of the agency. Four of the six did not have a DVR or a TiVo in their homes.

I started my presentation with what I assumed to be a fact. As viewers gain more and more control over their viewing options, our industry will need to evolve from intrusive platforms to more opt-in platforms. And as opt-in platforms will offer fewer overall impressions, we will need to evolve from impression-based business models to something else.

The leader of the agency team corrected me. "Maybe," she said.

"Maybe? Maybe what?," I replied.

"Maybe our industry will evolve from intrusive platforms to opt-in platforms," she said.

Maybe?

I felt like a scientist at a global warming meeting explaining to a group of businessmen that the polar ice cap is melting at an frightening rate. And their response being maybe it's melting. Maybe it's not.

Did I mention that four out of six did not have a DVR or TiVo in their homes? Yes, I did mention that.

There was a wonderful article written by Joe Marchese yesterday called "Web 2.0. Where's the Business Model?" In the article Joe said, "Pretty much everyone will agree that we are not selling eyeballs anymore."

Everyone, Joe, except those that make money selling eyeballs.

Unfortunately, that pretty much defines the leading media agencies in our industry.

You can't solve the problem within the same mindset that created it. There's too much self-interest involved. Our industry has its own inconvenient truths.

Impression-based models losing value is one of them. The sooner media agencies face up to this truth, the better for their clients.

Ad Agency's Responsibility Versus Network's Responsibility.

There was an interesting article in Ad Age today, Clutter Pollution Solution: Make 'Em Pay for Bad Ads. The argument put forth in the article is that networks should reward marketers for ads that viewers love and penalize marketers for ads that viewers hate.

The reason being that a network's objective is to hang on to viewers during commercial breaks so as to be able to charge more to the advertiser for those viewers.

Left out of the discussion was whether the ad was effective in selling the marketer's product or not. Which, of course, is the reason agencies are retained by a client. Or, not.

The question that comes to mind is this. What is an ad agencies responsibility? To sell their client's product? Or to solve the problem of a declining viewing audience now facing the networks?

The proposed solution, as stated in the article, is for networks to charge advertisers more to run "bad" ads and less to run so called "good" ads. Good, in this case, being the ability to retain an audience.

But what seems to have been completely overlooked is the networks' acceptance of their role in the problem. Viewers aren't avoiding commercials only because they're boring. Viewers are also avoiding commercials because they interrupt their programming.

And as control continues to shift to viewers, interruption becomes the more pressing of the two issues.

If the networks want the ad agencies to create better work, then the networks need to provide a platform in which "good" work has a better chance to be seen.

It seems unfair on the networks' part to ask advertisers and their ad agencies to solve a problem that is not totally of their making.

To Jon Nesvig, Fox Broadcasting's President of Sales

Dear Jon,

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal you commented on the short, animated clips that Fox is planning to run during commercial breaks in an attempt to retain viewers through those commercial breaks. As most know, Nielsen Media Research is soon scheduled to release a new measure of ad veiwership that will show a noticeable drop-off in audience levels during the commercial breaks.

While this has always been assumed to be the case, there has, until now, been little hard measurement data to prove it. And now that the blindfolds are being removed, so to speak, it's only understandable that the networks are becoming proactive.

But what struck me as most interesting, Jon, were your comments. In regards to the animated clips that Fox will be introducing, you said, "It's something that pops up that is unexpected and the viewer says, 'What the hell is that?' It may keep them (the viewer) around for a while longer."

Pardon me, Jon, but isn't that pretty much the definition of a well-crafted, entertaining commercial?

You then added, "Fox wants to discover what we can do to make commercial breaks a more interesting experience for our viewers? What can we do to get them to hang around through the commercial breaks?"

A noble goal, certainly. But before attempting to solve a problem, it helps to understand what the problem actually is. And the problem with commercial breaks isn't that people dislike advertising. What people dislike is interruptions in their programs.

It is the intrusive nature of advertising that is the problem. Not the advertising itself.

Which means by adding your proposed 16 seconds of animated fare to the already 3-minute commercial pod, you're only going to exacerbate the problem.

The preferable solution would be to deliver commercial messages in a way that isn't intrusive to the program. And while that is possible in the nonlinear, digital world, I understand that it is less doable in your linear, broadcast platform.

Interestingly, on the same page as your article was the Google story about getting into TV. Google, it seems, will delve much deeper than Nielsen by offering second-by-second viewer measurement data.

In other words, Google will let advertisers know whether most viewers watched only 10% of their spot, or 90%. And once advertisers know, for example, that viewers watched, say, only 10%, don't you think they will be hard-pressed to pay their agency full fare for the other 90%?

And therein lies your answer, Jon. It's not less accurate measurement data that you need, it's more accurate measurement data. It's second-by-second measurement data that broadcasters should be demanding. Because once advertisers know how little their commercials are actually watched by the viewers, they will be able to hold their agencies accountable.

And, pay them accordingly.

Commercials that actually involve viewers will be worth more to the advertiser, and hence, worth more to the agency that created them.

This will lead to agencies creating better, more entertaining and, one can only hope, more engaging commercials. In other words, Jon, they'll be creating what you want to create. Something "that pops up that is unexpected and the viewers says 'What the hell is that?'"

Which, of course, good agencies have been doing all along.

All the best, Jon.

All the best.

The 5 Tenets of Digital Mindchange

The other day I was asked if there were any tenets that one needed to follow, or believe in, to go through a Digital Mindchange. In other words, to stop thinking like a Traditionalist when it comes to advertising and to start thinking like a Digitalist.

To be honest, I hadn't thought about it that way before. But upon reflection, it became apparent that there are some beliefs that need to change if advertising is to smoothly transition into the digital marketplace.

I came up with five.

1. In the digital marketplace, time spent with a piece of advertising is more valuable than the number that see it.

2. In the digital marketplace, people aren't skipping advertising. People are skipping interruptions (which more often than not, just happen to be ads).

3. In the digital marketplace, the only way for advertisers to regain control is to give the viewer complete control.

4. In the digital marketplace, accountability is the new creativity.

5. In the digital marketplace, failure will no longer be lucrative.

What did I miss?

Why Dynamic Insertion Will Fail Unless...

Dynamic Insertion, the more precise targeting of commercials, is currently being touted as the answer to viewers not paying attention to, or skipping, commercials.

The logic behind Dynamic Insertion is quite straightforward - it's the lack of relevance between viewers and commercials that motivates viewers to skip the advertising. Dynamic Insertion solves this problem by allowing golf club commercials to run only in the homes of golfers.

Granted, this is an easy sell to advertisers, desperate for solutions to viewers being in control. But, unfortunately, it ignores a critical component of control.

Viewers aren't skipping commercials because they aren't relevant. Viewers are skipping commercials because commercials interrupt their programs.

For proof, and for those of you who are TiVo users, examine your own viewing habits. Let's say that you've time-shifted the TV show "24" and are now settling in to watch it on your time. As most know, "24" can be rather intense. First two and a half minute commercial break comes on. What do you do?

Do you fast-forward through the commercials one at a time, stopping at each one to determine relevance? Or, do you put the pedal to the metal, or in this case, thumb to the fast-forward arrow, speeding through all five commercials in around eight and a half seconds so that you can get back to the program?

Granted, it's only mother-in-law research, but most people I've talked to, do the latter. Hemingway could have written one of the commercials and nobody would have noticed.

Why? Simply because when the viewer is in control, the viewer determines relevance. Not only in regards to what is relevant. But, when it is relevant.

When I'm watching "24", only thing relevant to me is to get back to see what Jack Bauer is going to do next.

By interrupting the program, advertisers are still working under the assumption that they have some control.

False assumption. Viewers now control both the "what" and the "when" of relevance.

On the other hand, if advertisers made the golf club commercial something that viewers could opt-in to on their terms, deciding when to watch, well, then dynamic insertion would become extremely valuable. After all, only households with golfers would have the option of accessing the golf club commercial.

But to say that Dynamic Insertion is the solution to viewers skipping intrusive-based advertising is to misdiagnose the problem. People are skipping commercials because they intrude. Not because they aren't relevant.

First we need to make it so that advertising doesn't interrupt. Worrying about relevance beforehand, just isn't relevant.