[cma-l] National Advertising
Two Lochs Radio
tlr at gairloch.co.uk
Thu Apr 21 21:45:11 BST 2011
> Hi Alex and Clive,
>
> This issues I found were that
>
> 1) Agencies are only interested in station with recognisable auditable
> audience figures - read RAJAR
There is of course some of that, but in our experience there are
possibilities without RAJAR. We have advertisers that take MCA figures
combined with audience reach figures from independently verified local
annual surveys, and others who simply want the geographical coverage. But in
any event there are some advertisers (especially public agencies) who are
concerned to have a good geographic and social reach, and they aren't so
bothered about hitting x% of 16-24s or whatever. I guess it is easier for
stations like us where we are the only commercial airtime option in a large,
if thinly populated, area (no other stations for 70 miles around).
> 2) There needed to be fully auditable proof of commercial plays - for some
> stations (not The Bay 102.8) this was near impossible.
No, not at all. All the advertisers we have had are happy to accept that we
record it on log sheets filled in by presenters, with the option of a report
(none ever has, they have always taken it on trust). The most we have ever
been asked for is exact time of airplays on first day, and most don't
inquire at all. Even if 90% of potential advertisers do want RAJAR or proof
of airtime, the remaining 10% is still a big spend (especially, for example,
COI).
> In short most bookers are lazy... if they can tell their client they will
> get near to the desired reach in an area why both with anything else. I
> investigated the very same at the end of last year and got little interest
> from any of the main agencies.
Absolutely, that is the core problem, but by offering a bulk booking option
for the bookers it enables them to offer to reach niches and geographic
areas to their clients for minimal extra work. A niche agency doing this
work would also need to spend time talking to clients and convincing them of
the merits for them to put some pressure on the booking agencies to find a
way to make it happemn. This is what we did with Scottish Government and
numerous other public agencies who have an obligation to reach the parts
others don't.
The bookers then tend to use us to fill in corners in the budget. Eg client
had £50k budget and if a 'neat' campaign with, say, GMG comes to £43,790,
they have £6,210 to spread among a dozen small scale stations, and that's
what they do. That's why we get booking inquiries something like "we want a
two week campaign costing £342, please work out somethign to suit.".
Alex
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