The Hindu Business Line : Reverse trend

WHILE unbundling of media and creative functions and offering of specialised services have become sought-after mantras for the ad world today, there is a reverse trend in digital advertising — analysts feel the integration of creative and media is imperative for the media to succeed.

Online media planning and buying is getting increasingly specialised, and most media agencies today are looking at it as an independent division and not merely as one of the functions of a larger agency.

While agencies such as Starcom and Grey already have their independent units - Starcom IP and Grey Synchronised Services (the direct and interactive division), the latest entrant into this sphere is Neo@OgilvyOne, the digital buying and planning division of OgilvyOne. This launch has lead to the break-up of mOne, which was a 50:50 joint venture between OgilvyOne and Group M.

How different is online media buying from traditional media buying? Pranay Anthwal, General Manager, Starcom IP, says in online media, planning, buying and creative are much more integrated. "The difference lies in metrics, speed of campaign tracking, real-time reconfiguration of plans and buying currency. For instance, in online media, you can count the actual number of ads served to computers.

"With the exception of TV, in all other mainstream media, you can at best compute opportunity to see, from average readership/listenership data. Similarly, targeting through online media is far easier, because quite often users leave demographic and interest information about themselves and opt to receive information. You can achieve far greater levels of geographic targeting. You can also have far larger number of messages running as part of a campaign and you can continually change the messages, keep what works, and drop what doesn't, almost without any constraint. Therefore, plans can be fundamentally different."

Renuka Jaypal, President, OgilvyOne India, says that as digital media enables the creative and planning team to decipher the number of times a particular creative has been displayed to an individual and which creative unit he/she is exposed to, it allows companies to woo a prospect with different messages each time; therefore, the buying and planning exercises are quite different from those in the traditional media. As online media is all about speed and helps assess the efficacy of the communication almost instantly, analysts feel that it is crucial that the creative and media team work together as a team.

"The speed with which you know about the success or failure of a campaign on the digital platform is dead quick. If you release a communication in the morning, by evening you would know whether it works or not. So, if there is an integrated team, you can post corrections quickly and put out a new campaign," says Atul Phadnis, Chief Evangelist, Media e2e.

Sudhir Nair, Associate Vice-President, Grey Synchronised Services, says the overall results that a campaign can generate on the digital platform, if the media and creative teams work together, is much better. "If the creative and media are done separately, there will be a force-fit and the communication will definitely backfire."

Anthwal of Starcom IP says, "If you look at a consumer's viewpoint, there is no way creative and media can work separately, in any media. Who produces creative and who does media has more to do with how we are organised as an industry and less with consumer market realities.

In online, in particular, as many classical creative agencies have not built online creative expertise, specialist online-only boutiques have sprung up. As a result, in many cases, the media agency takes the overall charge of the campaign, including creative conceptualisation and supervision."

How different are digital creatives from those done for the traditional media? Nair of Grey says that since the time span to capture the consumer's attention on the digital media is just seven-eight seconds, the creatives are quite different.

"The digital media has to be treated differently. You can't do a master concept and use the same on digital also."

Phadnis of media e2e agrees. "In mass media you create a communication and adapt it to different platforms, the images are consistent and the lines are consistent. But on the Web, the entire formula can crash. A digital campaign needs special attention."

But, do we have the talent to continuously churn out wacky creatives for the media? Jaypal of OgilvyOne says that since there is not too much of a supply of talent, the agency has hired freshers who have an interest in the media and is giving them digital training.

On the kind of talent that is required for the digital media,

Anthwal says, "One needs to have a deep and insightful understanding of a consumer's life and media behaviour, a holistic view of communication, comfort with technology, a certain rigour in tracking data in the absence of industry standard databases and non-linear thinking. They also needs a certain evangelical mindset and a diehard attitude to convince cynics about the utility of online media. Since online is as much about media as about marketing, one also needs a keen appreciation of the marketing discipline."

The online advertising market

Nair of Grey says the online advertising market, should grow by at least 50-60 per cent this year. He says that though the bulk of advertisers in this segment are from financial services and the travel sector, he says that 2006 would see the FMCG and auto sectors too investing on digital in a big way.

"The growth is going to come from search engine marketing, as it is much more measurable. The advertisers can buy adwords and keywords," says Nair.

Though digital advertising is definitely on a growth path, analysts feel that there are still a chunk of advertisers who don't look at the medium as a branding platform.

In fact, Phadnis of Media e2e points out that there is also a gap on the agencies' side.

"While some agencies have a proactive approach and have a specialist team in place, there are a few who get their digital media plan executed by an outside specialist agency. At the same time, there are also a number of agencies who are yet to react to the demands of the digital platform."

The digital media, say analysts, has finally arrived, not to forget the wireless platform, which is also growing rapidly. Therefore, it is high time agencies sharpen their skills and offer complete digital solutions.

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