Truth matters in media planning. How can we get it back?
Opinion
Media planners need to use data, analysis and good old-fashioned common sense and judgement as a trusted advisor to advertisers, not as a credulous spinner of the established narrative or for commercial gain.
The concept of misinformation and disinformation in media content is long-established and intractable.
We have grown wearily used to the idea that impartiality and evidence-based reporting are now thin on the ground, soundbites seem to count for more than actions and discord sells.
So it is refreshing to occasionally read some positive, data-led, thorough analysis with a healthy dose of common sense.
This article by Fraser Nelson in The Times is a textbook example of what we generally lack. It is an antidote to the misleading narrative that life in the UK today is a shadow of its former self, that crime is rampant and there is a massive undercurrent of civil unrest.
Yes, I know things aren’t great right now — there are lots of problems not being solved and people who work in advertising are generally not on the front line. But those who remember urban life in the 1970s and riots in the 1980s know that there has been a huge improvement in people’s daily lives.
Increasing over-claims
Unfortunately, the increasing absence of truth is also infecting the advertising industry, especially in media.
There is a strong trend towards over-claiming that can and does affect the balance of our delicate ecosystem in terms of where the money goes.
A couple of recent examples stand out.
WPP Media is touting its Open Intelligence platform, built on the “industry’s first large language marketing model”, ostensibly trained on the world’s largest set of audience, behaviour and event data.
We are told that this is informed by “trillions of signals from 350 partners in over 75 markets”, enabling WPP Media to reach up to 5bn adults globally with “relevance, speed and precision”.
Given that there are roughly 5.5bn adults alive today, that’s a bold claim, especially when inequality is still widespread and the “world consumer class” is not expected to reach 5bn until 2031. A significant proportion of the world’s population is wondering where the next meal is coming from, not which brand of rice to eat.
To be charitable, it is just about conceivable that WPP’s new systems may have a potential reach (note the “up to”) of 5bn adults. But that’s not the same as connecting with them effectively, or at all, and most advertisers wouldn’t want or need to.
It is understandable that WPP wants to big up its data capabilities, but that 5bn figure is now out there and will feature in pitch decks as well as analysts’ calls.
“Relevance, speed and precision” is an interesting claim, given that this isn’t even present in highly developed economies and the people on my train just now are all seeing different ads but hardly any that are truly relevant.
Methinks they doth protest (much) too much, as Queen Gertrude might have said in Hamlet.
Potential vs real audience
Then there is YouTube. In Cannes, the company announced that it is achieving over 200bn “views” daily to YouTube Shorts.
I’m no statistician, but that’s a hard number to take in, given the world’s population and alternative uses of time, such as eating, sleeping, working, studying and the other ways we spend our days.
And this, supposedly, doesn’t include bot traffic. So what might the gross number be once the machines are added back?
I loathe anecdotes, but just this once I’m going to use two.
Once upon a time, a client asked me to meet a sales rep for London Greek Radio because it had “3m listeners”. Sure enough, this wasn’t the audience number but the coverage area. Londoners of Greek extraction hadn’t mysteriously multiplied by 10, all listening to London Greek Radio every week.
An earnest sales rep from MTV once told me they had 2bn viewers. Again, this was the potential universe in countries where MTV was available and presupposed they were all watching MTV instead of doing important things.
No-one knows whether YouTube is TV or social — not even YouTube
Exposing the truth
One of the media agency’s traditional roles was to expose this nonsensical over-claiming and act as the client’s trusted advisor on the truth about audience size and composition using research and proven facts, often through co-funded panels and other statistically reliable means.
Obviously, data of many kinds has taken over a lot of the previous lifting done by panels, so we have to be highly attuned to the sources of data, how it was acquired and whether it makes any sense.
What media agencies shouldn’t do is add to the misinformation mountain and/or take media vendor self-reported claims at face value.
This is especially true in times when such data may be used to justify a media plan based on trading incentives, including principal media.
The need for absolute rigour in interrogating data is underscored by the coverage of Adalytics reports that have acted as a counterweight to media vendor claims and supposedly unreliable verification audits.
World of pain? Further evidence that principal media is harming the ad industry
Trusted advisor
The absolute truth is hard to find in the world of media planning as much as it is in the world of media content.
So, what to do?
It helps to prefer media where audience numbers are properly measured, of course, but also to ask basic questions.
Is the research or data valid, probable, sensible and statistically robust, given the many variables at play? How true is any of it? How relevant is it to what we’re trying to do?
In short, media planners need to be like Nelson and be prepared to use data, analysis and good old-fashioned common sense and judgement as a trusted advisor to advertisers, not as a credulous spinner of the established narrative or for commercial gain.
Asking the right questions and seeing through the bullshit was always important. And with AI agents likely to massively inflate the numbers being touted by the carnival barkers at media vendors (and some agencies), healthy scepticism is now mandatory.
Great media planners can spot an over-claim a mile off and know what is likely to be real and what isn’t. So advertisers should hire the best media planners they can find, pay them properly and know what questions to ask them.
Yes, it is that simple.
Nick Manning is the co-founder of Manning Gottlieb Media (now MG OMD) and was chief strategy officer at Ebiquity for over a decade. He now owns a mentoring business, Encyclomedia, offering strategic advice to companies in the media and advertising industry, and is non-executive chair of Media Marketing Compliance. He writes for The Media Leader each month.