[Radio Posting ... it's FINALLY HERE! (We Hope!)]

In the TV media buying world, posting has been a long-established practice. Through posting, advertisers, buyers and ad agencies can hold the stations accountable. For a variety of reasons, posting the performance of a radio campaign has never been the standard in the world of radio. Until now.

Last year, Philadelphia was the 1st market in the nation to make the move to PPMs. Portable People Meters (PPMs) are small beeper-sized devices that record radio listening habits. This new electronic (and real-time) measure of radio listening habits is a great improvement over the old diary method. This opened the door for the potential of doing radio posts.

When PPMs went live, we immediately asked our radio reps, “Are you going to post?” The answer was a resounding, “No.” This was unfortunate and even troubling.

It’s been over a year and PPMs are live in Philadelphia and Houston. The national rollout, however, has been stalled for a few different reasons. Some of the larger station groups in New York have (rightly) questioned the sample size and composition. Younger and ethnic demographics aren’t as likely to wear the PPM device, hence skewing the ratings of certain stations. Given the importance of the New York market, station groups dug in and resisted the implementation of PPMs.

One of the other barriers to implementation, it seems, has been the battle over posting. However, it was just announced that “The RAB Board has passed a resolution enhancing radio's accountability that includes recommended selling and schedule verification guidelines (posting).” According to the news release published by RAB on 28 May 2008, “Recomendations include selling and schedule verification guidelines to create a stronger relationship with advertisers and accommodate the diverse and highly targeted nature of the Radio industry.”

Stations and buyers will need to work on the method of evaluation. Certainly stations will want to look at broad measures of audience delivery. Buyers should be looking for more intense levels of scrutiny. Also, both will need to agree to an acceptable margin of error prior to placing a buy.

Locally, it remains to be seen how this will play out since Philadelphia is still only one of two markets with PPMs. Gillespie Group is asking the Philadelphia Ad Club to structure a symposium on the topic. By bringing together agencies and advertisers with stations, Philadelphia can establish a leadership role in the industry.

Regardless of the nuances, posting radio buys will certainly give agencies leverage when planning and buying. And more importantly, advertisers will benefit from the accountability.

[ Media Choice Today]

Years ago, before the explosion of the Internet, and the descent of newspaper circulation, I argued that television was the most powerful advertising and communication vehicle available for general marketing. Over the past 10 years, much has changed, and yet I continue to make the case for TV. Why? Because of the Internet – and, because television is actually stronger than ever.

Time spent viewing TV has gone up each year. Statistics from the US Census Bureau suggest that trend will continue. The average individual 12 and older will spend 4.7 hours watching television each day in 2008. That is up from 4.1 hours in 2000. Nationally, consumers will spend $365 on cable and satellite delivery next year. That’s up from $174 in the year 2000. Cable television and broadcast television both produced about the same revenue in 2006, approximately $38.5 billion each.

As other methods of communication have lost ground, TV has improved. Picture and sound quality advancements make commercials technically stronger. They just look and sound better. Advertisers with smaller budgets can now make high quality commercials for a fraction of the cost that was once associated with presenting the “right” advertising image.

The question for television has never been “if” it worked. Rather, it has always been about how to harness its awesome power. For more marketers than ever, TV is the best advertising investment. What’s changed? In addition to driving people to your store, television should be driving customers to your website. The two do not compete, they complement. I recently read an article suggesting that 70% of online activity is driven by offline media. That is, people see an ad on TV and then go to the website to get information, compare, and even make a purchase.

A smart way to consider going forward is to take a look at what seems to be working. The spending parity between broadcast and cable suggests that both TV delivery methods perform equally well. Just a few years ago, the Sunday paper carried three or four large sections of automotive advertising. Today it typically carries just one. Color, price cuts, and position guarantees have all been used to get advertisers back to newspaper. The effort has not worked because people are no longer relying on the paper for information. They are getting all of that and more from the Internet.

TV should not stand alone. In “Serving Other Media with TV Ups Appetite for Products,” (Advertising Age, June 2008) Megan McIlroy reported on research conducted by Adverting Perceptions. The research suggests that consumers’ “intent to buy” increases when they are exposed to a combination of ads. In the research, TV was paired with various other media. In general, the conclusion was that TV, combined with other media greatly enhances the “intent to buy” as compared to those consumers exposed to ads in a single medium. Many have found The Internet to be that “other media.” Clever marketers are using television to ask consumers to visit them online.

Broadcast TV continues to deliver huge numbers each day. Cable provides geographic and psychographic targeting in large numbers because of the growth of cable viewing. Yes, television (both broadcast and cable) has improved tremendously. It is clearly the best place to introduce customers to you and your website.

[ Gillespie Group Edits In-House]

Gillespie Group is proud to announce that it has expanded it partnership with ShadowBox Pictures of Yardley. Through the relationship, Gillespie Group now has an Avid editing system on-site. Gillespie Group (with ShadowBox) has hired video editor Vincent Bilotta. Vince hails from New Jersey and studied video editing at Temple University.

The in-house editing capacity will be used for select clients and will greatly improve production efficiencies. The in-house editing system will also help Gillespie Group offer expanded production services for potential new clients.

[ Online Media Planning and Buying]

Mike Gillespie Jr., and Debbie Field attended an all-day seminar on online media buying and planning and they came back with some interesting insights…The big news from the Online Media Buying and Planning conference, hosted by Paragon Media on 16 May 2008 in NYC, is really, really big! Here it is: There’s NOTHING NEW!

Well, not really, but there’s not much that is new.

There are a few developments worth noting, but let’s first look at the things which seem to be the “same.”

Six things that are the same…

1. Online ad spending continues to grow. This isn’t new. Online ad spending was literally at zero just a few years ago. It had nowhere to go but up. The same is true today.
2. Online media planning and buying really follow the same steps as offline planning and buying. The advent of the digital world has not impacted the fundamentals of advertising.
3. Search engine optimization should come first. The successful application of an organization’s website begins with optimization. This is an effort to ensure that the site appears high in the list of “natural” searches.
4. SEM campaigns are the “direct response” of the online world. Adwords campaigns, and the like, can be important, but should be very much supportive of larger campaigns.
5. The more intrusive, the more expensive. This should not be a surprise. The same is true, in a sense, for offline media. Stronger ads cost more to produce. Bigger reach and frequency numbers require bigger budgets. In the online world, highly targeted ads, ads with rich media or other design nuances are more costly to create and to place.
6. Viral campaigns, social networking sites, blogs and vlogs, etc. can be effective ad vehicles and “buzz makers.” The targets for these campaigns are very narrow, but those targets are major “influencers.” That is, people listen to them.

The good news is that some things have changed. There is a move in the industry for increased accountability. Also, newer technologies or applications are improving online campaigns. Here are a few things that have developed over the last year or so.

1. The Internet Ad Bureau (IAB) sets standards. Not unlike the RAB or TVB, the IAB is instituting standards of performance and delivery. This is a welcome development for advertisers interested in measuring ROI.
2. Offline terms become the online standard. Terms from offline media buying are now being applied to online campaigns. Online vehicles, buyers, planners and advertisers are using concepts like GRPs, TRPs, impressions and CPM to evaluate a buys impact.
3. Online works best for response-based campaigns. Most online advertisers are coming to understand that the media is most applicable to performance based campaigns, and less so for branding efforts.
4. Stronger targeting. Improved technology allows for even stronger geo-targeted campaigns. Similarly, psychographic targeting is more and more of a reality in the online world, given the enhanced profiling possible in the online world.

There’s no doubt that the internet is an incredibly powerful advertising and marketing tool. That said, it is just one of many, many options available. Its effective application for ad campaigns can be a challenge given the fact that the medium itself changes at an incredibly rapid rate.

But, the basics remain unchanged: identify your target, evaluate the best way(s) to reach them and do it as frequently as possible. This is the secret to good advertising.

Perhaps the bigger challenge is on the clients’ end. They’re the ones that need to better figure out how do handle online leads and how to effectively manage the dynamic, two-way communication available through the web.

[ More Animated Films at Movie Theaters ]

Is this a positive sign for the industry?

Is the movie feature animation business reaching it's saturation point? In 2004 the average box office for an animated film was $149 million. More recently the average has been well below $100 million. The lower box office is certainly due, in part, to more animated films and therefore more competition for the family movie-going dollar. Hollywood is asking the question: How much is too much?

CGI (computer-generated imagery) - animated films were once seen as the safe, failure-proof arm of the movie industry. No more.

Animated films grossed over $1 billion in 2004 thanks to "Shrek 2" and "The Incredibles", which together grossed $698 million. Other animated titles that year included "The Polar Express" and "Shark Tale". There was a precipitous box office drop in 2005 with "Madagascar" from DreamWorks Animation as the only bona fide hit. The genre rebounded in 2006 to the level of 2004 with "Cars", "Happy Feet", "Ice Age: The Meltdown" and "Over the Hedge". Animation box office expanded further in 2007 with the release of "Shrek the Third", "Alvin and the Chipmunks", "Ratatouille", "The Simpsons Movie" and "Bee Movie" (interestingly, with a domestic box office gross of $126.6 million, "Bee Movie" did not make back it's estimated production cost of $150 million until the worldwide release).

The industry may be going through another cycle. After Disney's "The Lion King" broke box office records in 1994, both Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Bros. entered the animation market. The experience was not profitable and the two studios pulled back after the costly flops "Titan A.E." and "The Iron Giant".

There are twice as many animated films available for U.S. screens in this decade compared to the 1990's. Tightly bunched release dates have played a part in keeping more than one or two titles from becoming break-away blockbusters. In past years animated films had at least a two month buffer with no CGI films in the mix. ("Toy Story" in 1995 was the first fully computer-animated film.) The key beginning of summer or traditional Disney November release dates are no longer open windows. Since the openings are now so close together, with some scheduled on the same day, the challenge becomes making each film stand out in the consumer's mind. Especially when so many of them feature wisecracking talking animals. Can the movie studios consistently present animated film that is truly compelling and unique from a pack of movies that, more often than not, look the same?

As production cost grows and competition mounts, expect animated films to remain a solid bet for the movie studios. The reward is worth the risk because these films can be marketed to the widest audience and have a lucrative life in home video. Just ask Pixar.

Return to Gillespie Group home page.