Media Management

Ebiquity and WFA’s report shows that capability gaps are creating significant challenges for large advertisers

The last 18 months have been turbulent and challenging for media and marketing leaders across the world. As well as coping with the acute and ever-evolving impacts of Covid, CMOs have had to face up to systemic changes in media and marketing that the pandemic has only accelerated. 

From new media operating models to eCommerce, from transparency to sustainability, the CMO’s to-do list grows longer and more urgent by the day.

To assess what’s driving decision-making in the world’s biggest-spending and most progressive advertisers, Ebiquity recently teamed up with the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) to understand the present and so predict the future of global media structures and organisations. 

The report, which can be downloaded here, found that there is an “unsustainable chasm” between the issues that keep global media leaders awake and the current capabilities of their organisations. 

The biggest gap (57%) – the percentage points difference between the respondents who were satisfied with their performance and those who believed the issue was important – was in the area of eCommerce and shoppable media. 

Not one of the 52 respondents reported that they were “very satisfied” with their current capabilities in eCommerce, and many are looking for inspiration from sources as diverse as online retailers from Amazon to Alibaba, as well as D2C brands. Some of this dissatisfaction may reflect the fact that only 28% of media and marketing teams own the budgets for shoppable media formats.

Matt Green, Director, Global Media Services at the WFA says, “This report shines an important light on the discrepancies between where many advertisers say they are versus where they want to be. It is not surprising that there are capability deficits in areas such as eCommerce, shoppable media and environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG), which have come under such focus in recent months”.

Surveying 50 of the world’s biggest advertisers, the report identified three key issues that are shaping how brands are evolving media operating models, often at breakneck speed.

Top trends

1. An emphasis on effectiveness rather than efficiency- Big advertisers have recognised that they’ve got to the bottom of the “cheaper media” bucket, and therefore many are now focused instead on buying the right media in the right volume and the right context, to engage customers on the path to purchase, empowered by the right in-house and external support.
2. More diversity in media models- Only 20 years ago, most brands operated the same media model: they paid media agencies to buy media on their behalf. However, this has changed to some in-housing everything, others outsource; some right-house by task or channel, while others take one approach in major markets but another in the long-tail of smaller markets. In search of both control and agility, global media leaders are adjusting their operating models.
3.  Environmental, social, and governance agenda is driving media operating models like never before. While many paid lipservice to CSR, ESG is set to become the North Star by which media decision-making is guided in the 2020s and beyond. These trends and many more besides – from transparency to agency selection, from control of data to technology – require the global marketing community to adopt and flex new skills. This is true both in their own teams and via their agency and platform partners.

 As Mark Gay, Chief Client Officer at Ebiquity, explains “This research allows brands to understand the present and quantify the challenges we collectively face. It will be helpful for all parties in planning for the future. Issues such as the shift in emphasis from efficiency to effectiveness, diversity and responsibility in media models, the ongoing challenges with transparency, agency selection in a remote, agile, and often virtual world, governance of data and management of technology all require the global marketing community to adopt and flex new skills”.

Read the full report here