Advertising: Ad Alley

The following article ran in a previous edition of KUTD
Advertising Round Table generates a spark.
Originally billed as Agency Roundtable II, the 15-20 publishers present took full advantage of the unavailability of invited agency personnel and settled in for a frank discussion on issues surrounding advertising sales.
Subbing for the clients, Jeff Beardsworth presented highlights of the AdWest agency survey completed in November of 2009.
The presentation also provided an opportunity for the publishers present to see how Ad West activity dovetails into AWNA sales activity to result in sales, and where opportunities lie going forward.
Key points:

• #1 thing clients want is “Opportunities”. Access to Special Supplements, online opportunities, Regular Feature positioning are some of the areas identified by clients as ‘Opportunities.’ The plethora of new media competing for national ad budgets has raised the bar in terms of what’s viewed as unique, attractive and marketable.
• online demand is growing – agencies want to include us as they look for online opportunities. Today approximately 10 AWNA members have stepped up to the Ad West Online program including 0 corporate members. This is a weakness in our product offering that hurts credibility and perhaps even supports negative stereotypes about our industry.
• A challenge here is that each of the three provinces gather supplement data differently and according to available staff resources. AWNA for instance, surveys their members 1X/year for information on planned supplements. Given the fluid nature of supplement planning there is little confidence in the collected data and its accuracy after time goes by. Ultimately bad or outdated data is worse than having no data. AdWest is currently investigating development of tools that will result in a more direct conduit between the members and the national marketing effort. In other words, replace the disparate systems

In terms of what agencies see as their SINGLE biggest need when it comes to community newspaper planning:

• 27% of those surveyed reported Geographic Data that illustrates the relationship between target market and newspaper coverage area.
• 26% reported Readership Data
• 26% reported Consistent Delivery of Rate, Mechanical and Spec related data.
• 21% reported that Demographic, Psychographic data describing the composition of the market served by the publication.

Of note, NONE of the 38 participants in the survey reported that a ONE Order One Bill system represented their single biggest need. This shines significant light on how dependence on One Order One Bill – the flagship AWNA service, while still having value, is not the nail we can hang our hats on going forward. Clearly planning assistance is the key to accessing budgets. AdWest has become the source for the Prairie Provinces and agencies have made it clear that having the same resources available for campaigns planned nationally would open doors.
As far as rates are concerned, agencies were also asked to describe their PRIMARY NEED insofar as community newspaper rates and booking contacts are concerned.
47% of the 38 participants stated that the BEST RATE from MULTIPLE BOOKING CONTACTS represented their need.
Only 21% of agencies report that they would be satisfied with a REASONABLE RATE FROM A SINGLE SOURCE FOR BOOKING.
This comparison also shows agencies are motivated not to be caught on the pricing side and are not afraid of multiple relationships. If the expectation is revenue maintenance and growth, the AWNA faces a challenge here. Without a rate structure that reflects the needs of the majority of our audience, AWNA’s efforts are trumped.
Greg described how the AdWest contact brings clients to AWNA in a primed condition and the job at the AWNA level is to fine tune the Alberta experience, answer Alberta specific questions about the markets or policies and service offerings, complete their transactions and provide after-care. Further to this the AWNA sales office works to locate opportunities to sell to direct clients.
The challenge faced with the vast majority of direct clients is that they have had direct contact with community newspapers already. Usually there is a paper or two (or many more) they are very familiar with and have prior knowledge of their rates. Those rates are significantly lower than what shows up on an AWNA-generated proposal. Pursuit of these clients by AWNA has proved frustrating as a spotlight is directed at a weak-spot in our offering – national rates. In fact going hard after direct client relationships without this question solved is damaging to the Association message.
Questions were asked about AdWest’s ability to know what their closing ration is and how the volume could be doubled.
Closing, and therefore the value of a closing ratio, is not a straightforward concept making the ratio of uncertain value. To begin with, final transactions or ‘closing’ is done by the provinces whose data is not available to Ad West making it impossible for AdWest to compare to original presentations in order to make this calculation. This could be rectified to a degree by unified software. Whatever the number is, it varies with how early in the planning stage the inquiry comes (and therefore how speculative it is) and also by the pricing and other policies of the provinces – all out of AdWest control. (commission models, VIP programs, booking software, deadlines, invoice systems, tearsheet systems, office hours, association staffing etc. are just a few examples of how operations that look similar on the surface – like provincial newspaper associations – can vary wildly when you scratch beneath the surface and look at all the factors that affect a placement. All of these issues provide cracks that can leak business.
At the agency level, the ‘closing ratio’ question is also made moot by how national campaigns ultimately get placed. On Main Street it’s reasonable to expect that a $250 campaign can be ‘closed’. A $250,000 national or regional campaign on the other hand goes through a significantly different process. Firstly, the campaign is ‘proposed’ by AdWest at a pre-determined collection of rates. The ‘proposal’ is then submitted to the client for ‘approval.’ The campaign is either ‘approved’ or it’s ‘not approved.’ There is no traditional ‘close’ opportunity. Once again the AWNA’s rate structure handicaps us as at the point where the campaign is actually approved, the discussion is between the agency and their client. We aren’t present to argue our value or even to make adjustments. We would be far better represented if it was our policy to always submit proposals that are based on our Best Rates as opposed to artificially inflated ones. Seen from this light, where an agency has called around to papers to get best available rates, they have actually done leg work to get community papers to fit more attractively into client plans – only without AWNA relationship and with the loss of future influence.
To attract more agency business and especially direct business, the clients must not be getting different rates from individual members than they get from AWNA/AdWest. This kills credibility and causes agencies to rely on grinding individual papers rather than working with the associations. The assembly charged Ossie Sheddy with forming a committee to come up with solutions to recommend for the Convention.
Besides the rate issue, Greg revealed that a challenge in attracting more direct business is that the prospects and the opportunities they represent are not visible from the AWNA office. Members see opportunities way before the AWNA office can. To bridge the gap, a program is in development to encourage members to identify and forward seed information on those businesses who operate in their markets but whose advertising decisions are made elsewhere. This will give the AWNA office a means of targeting opportunities.
Greg also identified the AdWest investment in co-op data as a useful tool for developing co-op advertising at the AWNA office level. These programs can provide forward momentum once the rate question is addressed.