Do agencies care about media research?
The panel at MediaTel Group’s Future of Media Research in London had mixed views on the importance of media research in agencies.
While most agreed that senior agency management do care about media research and are willing in to invest in it, Mark Greenstreet – joint managing director, aevole – said they might not fully understand it.
James Whitmore, managing director at POSTAR, said agencies ‘get it’ but from a narrow perspective – “it is a way of generating income and agencies often do research for their own ends, not for clients”.
Roger Gane, research director at RSMB Television Research, admitted that agencies often use bespoke media research “to give them an edge” but said it is important that they fully understand and remain interested in research “because they pay for it”. He added that if agencies “don’t want to pay for media research, there is a danger of no research”.
Meanwhile, Andrew Bradford, VP, client consulting, media, The Nielsen Company, said there are commercial pressures, with some agencies viewing media research as a cost rather than an investment.
“The trend is to drive margins, which means cutting costs. Agencies have been questioning all costs recently and the problem is, research is termed as a cost, not an investment,” he said.
However, Linda Grant, director of commercial development at A&N Media, said agencies do recognise the potential of research – “they care about the value of media research, because it basically means sales,” she said. “Agency business models are under pressure and they are constantly looking for ways to drive new revenue streams, one being research.”
Agency management (indeed management across the spectrum of the industry) may or may not ‘get it’ but one thing is for sure is that they, to a certain extent at least, resent the ‘policing’ part of the media research world.
The JICS don’t just measure what’s going on they also police what might happen in the future. That means, as the BARB presentation (at MediaTel’s Future of Media Research event last week) so ably showed, that no stone is left unturned to make sure that even currently insignificant bits of audience delivery are investigated just in case they turn into something that all parties regard as important further down the line.
Agency chiefs may have less sympathy with the decision to spend time and money looking at what might, or might not, be important in the future. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned, especially in more recent years, is that you can’t assume anything and that nothing can be swept under the carpet in the hope that it will go away.
The view that the media researchers are just making jobs for themselves (and spending ‘my’ money doing it) is very old fashioned and backward looking. And surely no agency management would ever want to be accused of that?