Delegates At Agency Seminar Gain Insight Into Search

Aside from broader digital issues, Greg Grimmer, outgoing MD of Zed Media, gave delegates some insight into the world of search, at this week’s MediaTel Group seminar on the ‘Future of the Media Agency’.

He stated that search needed a budget of £250,000 on 15% commission to just break even, so labour intensive had this medium become, with its dynamic nature requiring daily attention.

“I’ve got 23 people in search at Zed – that loses us money because we can’t get clients to pay properly for it. One TV buyer can buy £4 million worth of TV a month, one search buyer can buy £1 million in search a year,” he said.

Unsurprisingly, Andrew Walmsley, founder of i-level, wanted to know if that meant that Zed took on work at a loss. Grimmer implied that this was not the case, as search is only one part of most digital plans, but “Zed has a lower net margin than Zenith,” he added.

Walmsley also confirmed the difficulty of charging reasonably for some digital creative executions, and cited an example of an AA campaign involving Yahoo! answers (a campaign that invited consumer-created content effectively). “It was great work, but for small fees and there is no commission to be charged in this area,” he admitted, so “we can’t make money on it.”

From the audience, Philippa Hayes, group head at AOL, added another perspective to the conversation. Having worked in sales across a number of media she felt digital was “fabulous”. AOL create the media plans for their agencies: “We are becoming a full service media owner now… and nobody negotiates,” she said.

However, Grimmer concluded that they probably don’t have time to negotiate.

MediaTel Group: 020 7439 7575 www.mediatelgroup.co.uk