Sign up for afaqs! Newsletters
How brands are taking back control of media
Brands like Pernod Ricard, O2 and B&Q are taking steps to ensure they have a better understanding of where their spend is going.
After the Google and Facebook scandals hit marketers’ ad placements last year, brand managers of companies are taking a closer look about media spends.
LinkedIn recently ran a survey to find out the most desired skills recruitment companies look for when hiring for new marketing roles. It found the most desired skills to be programmatic media buying, machine learning and data mining – three disciplines that are now paramount in the quest for control
According to the World Federation of Advertisers, which surveyed 35 global brands with spend in excess of $30 billion, 65 per cent have improved their internal capabilities – such as hiring a head of programmatic – around brand safety over the last 12 months. Around 40 per cent are developing in-house resource to help tackle ad fraud, with 34 per cent saying they started doing this within the last 12 months and just 6 per cent saying they were already doing it 12 months ago.
Pernod Ricard, for example, has brought more of the day-to-day operations of buying media in-house and has its own data management platform (DMP) so it can better understand where ads appeared and how much they cost. At B&Q (a do-it-yourself supplies company), new hires have been to improving the safety of its digital advertising.