OMD tests KPI-oriented planning tools beyond pure media metrics

Currently, the impact of each media type is measured by metrics such as reach, frequency, cost and cost per rating point (CPRPs), which are not the best options according to Bhasker Jaiswal, managing partner of OMD China's business intelligence unit.

"The amount of data available is so much more than a few years back," he told Campaign Asia-Pacific. "And clients are slow to adapt, finding it hard with data overload, and having difficulty making decisions. They have been too comfortable with old media currencies which have been tried and tested across every country over the last 60 years."

For TV, the industry is used to a single media currency, which made it easy for everyone. For the internet, there is no standard currency as one can use data from iResearch, Comscore, DoubleClick, AdMaster or Miaozhen. Outdoor is in a similar situation where multiple currencies exist.

Marketers are eager to know the connection between media metrics and argubly more valuable brand-KPIs like top of mind awareness, unaided brand awareness, and purchase intent. With a changing media consumption landscape and increasingly cluttered media market, marketers have been clamouring for a more accountable approach to media planning.

Nowadays, consumers spend nearly 39 per cent of their time on the internet, with TV coming in second place at 30 per cent in 2011. Time on online videos has grown rapidly and is about 27 per cent of total time on the internet, according to CNRS and iResearch.

When faced with two media plans with the same cost and reach, marketers have struggled to pick the better one before this. Furthermore, separate post-buy reports do not help cross-media evaluations.

OMD is attempting the incorporation of brand KPIs into media planning to bridge the gap between the two, which the agency stated is the first initiative in the industry to help marketers decide on the best media mixes regardless of current data constraints.

By harnessing existing quantitative databases from CSM, Sinomonitor, CMMS, Rentrak and Kantar Media TGI, and then enhancing them with its own qualitative research, OMD said it has achieved scale in data that is "a significant advantage" in their media plans.

"The way forward for the Chinese market is the fusion of databases, where similar or complementary data should be used together for planning," said Jaiswal.

To power its proprietary research, OMD appointed IFOP Asia to measure consumer responses to 90 brands across nine categories, taking into account real media costs in 60 Chinese cities including Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Chengdu, Wuhan, Hefei, and Kunming.

OMD's proprietary research, to be updated on a yearly basis, collates a total of 12,211 responses from 1,845 people in product categories such as mass and premium skincare, carbonated beverages, infant formula, snack food, body wash, digital cameras, HD TVs, fast-food restaurants.

The media agency said its questionaire is more representative—exact about media platforms and comprehensive on market tiers—than internal surveys that clients may have conducted by themselves.

"Our own research also maximises one single respondent's answers to different categories, say for skincare and fast food, and logs them as two responses," Jaiswal said. All in all, the combined databases allows multi-faceted segmentation for different target permutations, he added. "Now there is no need to plan for each media type separately".

"We want to move clients from a cost-focused mindset caused by the global recession to a value-based effectiveness proposition," Jaiswal explained.

Marketers can prioritise intended audiences based on penetration rates and brand loyalty. OMD's orientation is towards key business performance indicators (KPIs) of brands–a spectrum varying from highly complex targeting such as actual life stages to relatively simple targeting such as users of competitive brands. These users are identified in CNRS's rolling research which is fused to the TGR database in China.

Evidently, efficient media plans are not necessarily the most effective ones. Take Biore for example, unaided brand awareness is weak while purchase intent for it is low—both need to be driven versus other brand KPIs, so effective planning should do just that.

"When media plans are constructed, the normal practice is to do it on the basis of a broad demographic definition (like 25-45 year-old males as a buying target), but it does not accurately reflect the brand's core source of business," Jaiswal said.

For example, only nine per cent of 25-45 year-old females are pregnant women, which clients like Johnson's Baby will care about. It was also found that pregnant mothers prefer news programs and TV dramas, compared to movies and entertainment shows watched by the general demographic audience.

Saurav Bhowmik, executive director of communications planning and insights of OMD China, elaborated on how focused targeting accurately identifies prospects and creates programming-level differences in media plans. "The resultant media plans have very big differences in terms of TV GRPs, and can increase the value of marketing end-deliverables," he said.

According to the agency, clients like Sony, PepsiCo, Amway (Artistry and Nutrilite), McDonalds, Danone and Johnson & Johnson are interested in smarter planning for their future campaigns.

Granted, OMD's planning tools, while being able to increase the net value of a GRP by up to 30 per cent for mass brands, are geared towards TV media plans. "Given that most clients still spend 70 per cent of their media budgets on television, it makes sense to dedicate resources to it," said Bhowmik. 

Still, OMD emphasises its edge over other media agencies, which "may have a lot of historical buying data to justify current media metrics, but essentially recreating media currencies," he said. "Buying benchmarks should be aligned with brand KPIs".

That said, media planning will need to be expanded to a multi-screen approach across mobile devices from now to 2015. "That won't happen until consumption, of say tablets, gets higher, which will then trigger advertisers to start spending. Only then can we start collecting data about that media type, and enhance our media planning methodology," Bhowmik concluded.