GroupM and the Master Plan for Ad Spending
(Graphic via Computerzen.com)
On my way to Allendale the other night I was just lucky enough to be situated behind a business to business sales rep for GroupM. For the uninitiated, GroupM is the unholy union of the major ad buying systems Mediacom, MediaEdge, Mindshare and Maxus. For the true neophyte to the world of television advertising an ad buy system is like a stock market that allows major buyers to purchase spots and package in an auction-like system. This is how ad spending is mostly handled on the DMA Market scale.
While I twiddled away on my G1 phone and looked out the window I heard a tale unfold between a media buyer and this system sales rep. I overheard a tale of a glorious day when Verizon would roll out a data-mining solution via their Fios boxes that would track the viewing habits of individual boxes at individual times and calculate on what types of ads that box skipped. For example if say, I, was watching Animal Planet at 7pm and skipped the commercial for dog food but lingered on the cat food add the box would start vomiting up more ads about cat junk to me around 7pm every night. To a marketer this sounds like the holy grail of demographic sampling. It shines far and away above anything Nielsen has been able to muster and on the surface sounds reasonable. It’s not. This concept completely removes the idea of discovery. There have been many products I’ve purchased simply on the strength of the ad. I’m not ashamed to say it. But if I saw a ugly, boring or otherwise uninspired commercial for the same type of product, like soap, my box would automatically assume I don’t like to wash and thusly refuse to show me the offending reach medium placements. As a seller I’d rather an educated guess than a truly targeted ad for just this reason.
To fully grasp why someone would think this is a good idea in the first place you have to understand how TV viewer habits are currently tracked. Of the two hundred or so million homes in the united states a group of people fifty thousand use a small box which monitors what’s running on their television at any given time. This is the infamous “Nielsen Box” and it’s really that small of scope and inaccurate. This is why your favorite shows are cancelled and why you always wonder why Valtrex ads get paired up with Saturday morning cartoons.
In the end is it a brand new day for the world of the ad buy when you’re only limiting the pool of viewers who see your brand message? Do you really want to go head to head against your competing products in rapid-fire succession day in and day out? Do you, as a seller of goods who’s invested millions in a sharp and funny ad campaign really want to run the gamble that it’s being seen by someone who already has brand loyalty and a well-defined opinion about your product category? To me all of those things spell disaster.