On this episode of #MediaSnack (not that anyone in adland will see it having decided to boycott of YouTube), Tom and David sink their teeth into the big juicy story that won't go away, the ‘scandal’ of Google allowing advertisers to be placed against extremist and unsavoury content.So, who is actually to blame? Well, its marketers of course. We will explain why and what can be done about it.
There has been plenty of indulgent pot-stirring from excited agency execs and auditors keen to jab at Goliath whilst they have a rare opportunity.
We have to see this issue for what it is, an inevitable symptom of a “crappy media supply chain” (thanks Marc) which has been engineered around a common desire from marketers to continually reduce media costs and ignore media quality.
Advertisers have sought cost-efficiency at the price of effectiveness, agencies have been financially incentivised to reduce the unit cost of media, auditors have charged big fees to validate that costs were cut to the bone and everyone’s happy. Until, that is, advertisers start seeing their brands against unsavoury content and call for “brand safety” reassurances. Yet the entire supply chain working for them has been aligned and incentivised to a desire to buy audiences not people, to reduce costs and to measure discount not effect.
As David says, we need to get back more to the craft of media buying, where context was as important as negotiating a good price.
Which means, when you ask who is to blame? Well, it is ultimately the marketer. But this is easily solved for those advertisers keen and willing to make some change.
Read more: We don't need brand safety, we need brand care.