From Conscious to Added Value Media Investment

Recently, I listened to a WARC podcast on what they call Conscious Media Investment and I couldn’t help to think: finally! It seems this is a topic WARC is highly interested in. And since WARC is all about increasing marketing effectiveness, it’s fair to say that this topic isn’t some kind of fad. On the contrary, it addresses a problem that’s been shaping the internet for the past decade or so (not entirely coincidental in line with the rise of programmatic media buying if you ask me).

The premise of the term is pretty simple: we need to be aware where we spend our media budgets. Like duh! It seems too obvious, but that’s what makes it so important in a way. The fact that it seems so obvious but really isn’t the usual practice is a sign of the sickness of the industry. But we can turn this around, I’m sure! Having WARC on board is a big help if you ask me!

Let’s share the definition as provided by WARC. “Conscious media investment is about advertisers deliberately choosing to invest in quality and inclusive media, and actively ensuring they defund media that promote dangerous narratives.”

Our sector is addicted to cheap impressions and clicks, the quality is of secondary importance. If of importance at all. And you know what happens when demand is high... Supply happens. Supply in the form of crappy media, clickbait, fraude, cookie bukake, fake news and propaganda.?So your trusted shampoo is funding all these sources. If you don’t believe me, just check which local advertisers make it to Breitbart and the likes. You’ll see.

Conscious media planning is a movement to be more aware. Use ad dollars to fund credible sources and news media that are having a hard time in this dog-eat-dog world. The reason it’s not common practice is because it demands more effort. If all we care about is impressions and clicks, the thing that hinders us most is .. hours. Every hour spent on a campaign removes media budget from the pot, so we try to minimize the service fee to maximize the spend .. and following on this the impressions and clicks. This is plain stupid, but it became the name of te game. You get what you asked for, we call it death by KPI, remember?

It’s stupid because really everybody can see that it makes sense to think things through, spend more time on research, strategy and testing, and get a far better result with a substantially lower media budget. It’s also good for the economy: it’s people’s jobs we’re talking about, not Facebook’s and Google’s earnings statements. But still, in a world where performance buying has become the synonym for online media spend, you need clients that are confident and smart to go against the grain.

it’s people’s jobs we’re talking about, not Facebook’s and Google’s earnings statements.

At AdSomeNoise, we don’t use the term conscious media investment but it’s the de facto standard way of media buying. We like to bring it one level further though. We operate in a way that we call added value oriented media management. It’s conscious for sure, but we integrate creative and production services. The idea is the following: to get the most out of a certain budget, it makes sense to not only consider the environment and the quality of the impression, but also the message. This is something that can change over time, on a global or individual level. By integrating everything into the same approach, we can optimize the full ad experience and get results that are better, more qualitative, more effective, less annoying and not only focus on a conversion but also on building the brand. We believe that this will be the future of media. For now, in a world dominated by silos, it’s still a hard sell. But more and more clients are willing to test this approach, and once they do, they don’t go back.

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