Media Mix Modeling ‘Nonsense,’ Says Panelist
Even though “media mix modeling” was the title of our session, Erwin Ephron dominated the session with arguments that intelligent mixing isn’t happening. TV-think still dominates the way advertisers and agencies understand online audiences, so any pretense of intelligent mixing is bogus, he said.
Television is a reach/continuity model, he said. Agencies are combining
television dayparts to reach all viewers. When you don’t know much, as is the case with television, it is important to reach everyone. But with more targetted media like the Internet, reach is less of any issue, Ephron said.
Telivision planning seeks to avoid overlap - online should seek overlap to best reach target audiences with synergistic messages. “If you try to integrate media on today’s terms, you doing on TV’s terms,” said Ephron.
Dave Smith chimed in: “The reason we don’t know more today is, for the last 40 years, 95 percent of the fortune 500 have spent their money on day-after recall performance testing. Even the big guys have not tested enough money on media mix.”
Although people want integrated media planning, “The idea that all media have to be integrated and work together right now is nonsense,” Ephron said. Given the still rudimentary knowledge of audiences, the best idea is “disintegration of media planning.”
First, establish your goals, then allocate dollars to the goals. “Then when you have those budgets, you look at what media most serves those goals.”
“We are far better off today, letting each medium operate on its own and letting the agencies allocate based on tasks,” said Ephron.
Ephron argued that the end is near for television arrogance. “Advertisers are becoming aware that you can’t do it all through telesision. Prices have constantly escalated. TV advertisers were terrified by a research report saying TV commercial exposures reduce by 30 percent over next four years. TV prices have increased by 30 percent over the last four years, what the hell is the difference?”
TV costs too much, is too fragmented, advertisers have got to look to other media. Don’t say “we are like TV,” because we are not.
When asked whether there isn’t too easy to assume that there are just three players in the media game: audience, publisher and advertiser. Doesn’t this ignore that the most interesting stuff going on online is p2p? Whether Napster, eBay, Slashdot, Drudge or blogs, billions of new page impressions are being created and these impressions are far more important to audience than those served by traditional media. Ephron agreed: “Everyone is panicked. Nobody is dealing with it.”
Participants were: Dave Smith of Mediasmith: , Erwin Ephron of Ephron, Papazian and Ephron: , David Song MPG/Media contact , Karen Anderson
