Read Ephron on Media

An occasional email I get in my inbox comes from Erwin Ephron, who writes about media planning. His latest post says what everyone in the game knows, and I have been warning advertisers since I started this blog.

He wonders why the Upfronts are not "Open, Candid, Honest", like you can get from eBay (Google, MSN, etc.).

In the national buying party called Upfront, Ephron says:

"Most advertisers do not know the market price of TV, they know only what they are paying compared to last year. A real dollars-paid database like the performance monitoring service MPMA’s shows cost differences of 30% for identical TV inventory bought by different advertisers, Upfront."

In fact, sellers' entire planning process centers around what each advertiser paid last year --- no thought of a transparent market!

In fact, at a local TV level, prices can vary by more than 100%! In other words, because TV ad sales are NOT "Open, Candid, Honest", sellers can charge what they can get, and non-vigilant advertisers get fleeced.

No wonder that as smaller advertisers who sense they are getting fleeced are fleeing to the aforementioned Open, Candid, Honest alternatives, like Internet.

The sales tactics practiced by the TV sales organizations have to be changed to allow them to thrive in the accountable ad market ahead.