MRG Evening Meeting: Media Auditors
Last night’s MRG meeting tackled the issue of the auditors’ role in the media industry. The evening was titled “Media Auditors: Big Brother or Agony Aunt”. This title, explained the event’s organiser, Taylor Nelson Sofres’ Lisa Beaumont, was designed to reflect two of several ways in which the auditor could be viewed by the industry- as a policeman figure watching over performance, or as a confidante, advising on how efficiency can be maximised.
Speaking up for the auditors was Judith Warn-Ford, director at Fairbrother Media. She argued that while members of her profession are called upon to play both the Big Brother and Agony Aunt roles, among others, they prefer to see themselves as complimentary to the media process.
The media auditing process has been around for just over a quarter of a century, but running through a brief history of the media industry during this time, Warn-Ford pointed out that the role of the auditor has necessarily changed in this time, in line with the changes that have occurred in the industry as a whole- the number of media supply points, the way that agencies work and the demands of clients. “The media industry now [compared to 26 years ago] is smarter, more complex and more pressurised.” she concluded.
The role of the auditor, then, was originally to provide accountability where self-assessment was unrealistic. However, while the perspective of the auditor was originally to provide accountability in issues of cost, the focus has now changed, said Warn-Ford, to cost and quality. Because of this the auditors remit has widened to take in areas such as PR assessment, marketplace updates etc. However, she insisted that the auditors role remained an element in a three way partnership with clients and agencies, and that while auditors may influence the media process, they are not necessarily involved in planning, but rather in assessing potential efficiency.
The second speaker of the evening, Agostino di Falco, business director at Starcom Intelligence, was less convinced that auditors operate at such a remove. Increasingly, as their services come to include involvement in every stage of the media process, they are becoming involved in future based planning and therefore treading on the toes of agencies.
Falco argued that unless auditors are accountable for output as agencies are, they should not be commenting on input. “In which case, either you should stop calling yourselves auditors and compete with agencies, or stop future-based consultancy and work in complement with agencies.”
Should they choose the former, Falco questioned whether it would be “one challenge too far” for auditors.
In terms of the future, Warn-Ford suggested that the knowledge of auditors would be invaluable as clients made increasing moves towards globalisation, and that this area of the media industry would help to establish best practice. Falco pointed out that as it seemed inevitable that the number of buying points will reduce as consolidation increases across the media and suggested that as a consequence, we will see a similar reduction in the number of auditing companies.
One point of agreement was that like it or not, auditing is now a requisite “tick box” for clients, especially in cost-conscious times. As a result agencies are better off seeing auditors as their friendly Agony Aunt than their scary Big Brother.
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