Advertising, Promotional, Marketing Budget Analysis

Advertisers urged to shine a light on ad expenditure. ADVERTISERS are being urged to audit their media buyers. At present, up to 80 per cent of companies are failing to track the effectiveness of their media spend amid concern that messages are being lost in a crowded digital market….He said that while media audits were increasingly popular in European and US markets, Australian advertisers were lagging… Mr McClellan said advertisers could be wasting millions of dollars a year because of a lack of understanding about how media budgets were being allocated.

Curious why would an advertiser choose not to audit and evaluate performance of advertising? On one hand virtual advertising allows very accurate analysis through Google Analytics etc. which is a significant improvement over print media, radio and tv. One has always been alarmed at the leaps of faith in big campaigns e.g. national tourism marketing, where even those without a stake in the industry as either client or advertising channel, rush to claim any outcome as directly related to a specific “campaign” (especially when they are not privy to any analysis), and those stakeholders actively spruik the “campaign”.

As a former employee of a multinational advertising agency once explained, ‘we in advertising work in the world of “bullshit”, whatever your budget is, give it to us and we will promise the earth and make you look good’. And therein lies the ‘Gordian knot’, those commissioning, analysing and selecting advertisers are hardly going to turn round and admit they got it wrong and look the fool?

Within the international education industry, I have dealt with Australian institutions for over 15 years but have never been privy to any marketing strategy nor analysis of outcomes. Outcomes are designated as agent recruitment targets or sales, whilst the (mostly state) institutional marketing spend is independent of agents, predominatly on travel and offshore fairs or events. Seldom if ever have I been aware of any evaluation, and after involvement in 15-20 education fairs in Central Eastern Europe and Turkey, zero candidates.