Trust Issues: Is the Agency/Client Model Doomed?

[00:00:00] It is Wednesday, March 20th. Today, marketing agencies say trust is disappearing in their

[00:00:07] client relationships and client CEOs are partially to blame. Also, some updates for Google

[00:00:14] Media Buyers. Why is YouTube letting any random person edit your brand's video captions?

[00:00:20] Trust me, you actually want this. By the way, yesterday apparently I said it was Thursday

[00:00:25] here in this intro. My apologies if that made your to-do checklist skip a beat today is Wednesday.

[00:00:34] Some new research is shining a light on the growing tensions between marketing agencies and their

[00:00:39] clients. Those strains are denting the quality of creative work. The Lions state of creativity's

[00:00:47] fourth annual survey pulled 3,000 marketers and creatives and found nearly half 45% of agencies

[00:00:55] described their client relationships as difficult. Clients on the other hand seem less troubled by

[00:01:02] the partnership dynamics with 32%, saying they find the relationship easy and only 37% acknowledging

[00:01:08] difficulties. The root of the friction appears to be creatives feeling undervalued, seen merely as

[00:01:16] extra hands rather than strategic partners. Quoting one creative director from Ecuador quoted in

[00:01:22] this study, quote, the agency is not seen as a partner rather a maker that exists only to do what

[00:01:29] they are told, leaving no room for experimentation, feedback or even bold ideas to be executed.

[00:01:37] Plus some agencies don't feel aligned with clients' other external partners and want more of

[00:01:42] a say in choosing these collaborators. Client CEOs were specifically called out with many agencies

[00:01:49] in the study saying that despite talking good talk about wanting to take risks at the end of the day,

[00:01:55] CEOs usually opt for the safe route. Here's how one brand manager from Ukraine said it, quote,

[00:02:02] we're open in new ways of showing our products to our potential and real customers,

[00:02:06] but sometimes our CEO wants our department to lower the level of creativity and use more common

[00:02:13] patterns. The full study is actually a really solid read recommended for anyone who is in that

[00:02:19] agency or client relationship. We have a direct link to it in today's email newsletter,

[00:02:24] which you can sign up to for free by tapping the link at the top of the show notes or going to

[00:02:28] today in digital.com slash newsletter. Google search ads 360 has launched a closed beta that

[00:02:39] is aimed at bricks and mortar stores. The beta has some new options for offsite retail media campaigns,

[00:02:44] specifically what they call a privacy centric way for participating retailers to let brands use their

[00:02:50] first party data as a source for performance max campaigns. It's also testing more self-service

[00:02:57] options in this category and they're improving reporting with closed loop reporting at the brand

[00:03:03] campaign or skew level. Closed loop reporting lets brands directly tie ad spend to sales at the

[00:03:10] individual product level. Loads is one of their early beta partners apparently they're starting

[00:03:15] that testing today so it could be a while before it filters down to the rest of us for now that

[00:03:19] testing is still being done as a managed service. In other words, a Google rep has to plug in the

[00:03:24] pieces but Google said they're hoping that promised self-serve option won't be too far behind.

[00:03:31] If you want to be part of this beta and have a Google rep, the company recommends you reach out

[00:03:35] to them to get on the list. They say they'll be expending the beta to other countries over the coming

[00:03:40] months. Another Google ad announcement they're launching a direct integration between display

[00:03:49] and video 360 and Disney's real-time ad exchange. Google says this will let marketers reach audiences

[00:03:56] across Disney's properties quote at more meaningful moments with great speed and accuracy.

[00:04:03] Google and Disney have been involved in partnerships of some way or another for more than 10 years now.

[00:04:09] So Disney's inventory will now be bookable by all displaying video 360 advertisers. They've

[00:04:13] also expanded addressability with Google audience segments widely across Disney's portfolio.

[00:04:19] Quoting Google's announcement quote beginning in April display and video 360 will be one of the

[00:04:24] first demand side platforms to integrate with DRAX. That's the Disney system creating a foundation

[00:04:30] to streamline premium inventory for marketers across the industry. Among other benefits,

[00:04:36] it will let advertisers reengage their audiences on Disney's inventory using publisher advertiser

[00:04:41] identity reconciliation with Disney's audience graph as the source.

[00:04:51] Penske Media known as PMC which own sites like Variety and The Holiday Reporter,

[00:04:56] and else today it will become the exclusive seller of Vox Media's advertising inventory in Canada.

[00:05:02] This agreement was actually inked about two weeks ago. It will let PMC sell the entire Vox Media

[00:05:08] portfolio. Vox Media will still manage its programmatic and branded content. Quoting adweek.

[00:05:13] The partnership comes one year after PMC invested $100 million in Vox Media in February 2023

[00:05:20] for a 20% stake in the company, but it does not signal any change in the two companies relationship.

[00:05:26] Unquote PMC will charge a fee to handle this they wouldn't say what the fee was. It might be

[00:05:31] pretty high. That week says traditionally fees for similar arrangements are between 25% and 40%.

[00:05:38] Comm score numbers say this partnership now makes the two groups the second largest source

[00:05:44] of digital media inventory in Canada.

[00:05:52] Today's episode is sponsored by Nerdwallets Smart Money Podcast.

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[00:07:29] free boards at m-i-r-o dot com slash podcast. YouTube is planning to outsource the captions on your

[00:07:38] brand's videos to the general public. I know what could go wrong. Actually, probably not much.

[00:07:44] This is going to be a crowdsourcing thing to let people flag mistakes made by the auto-generated

[00:07:49] captions. It'll take some upvoting by multiple people to make a caption change. And even then,

[00:07:54] it won't actually change anything. Quoting Google's statement quote, this test will roll out on

[00:07:59] a small percentage of English language channels with auto-generated captions enabled during the

[00:08:04] experiment suggested corrections to the captions track will not be automatically merged into the

[00:08:10] video for viewers. But creators whose captions received suggested corrections will be able to

[00:08:16] view these suggestions in the transcript panel. Unquote YouTube is also working on letting

[00:08:25] channel managers segment their retention data right now. You can see how long your content has

[00:08:30] retained its audience through its play time, but there's no way to see the difference in retention

[00:08:35] between your subscribers random people and so on. Some screenshots circulating on social media

[00:08:41] today show an update apparently being tested which will let you analyze viewer retention by

[00:08:46] subscribers, non-subscribers, new visitors, returning visitors, organic traffic and paid

[00:08:54] traffic. This is actually really valuable data. YouTube says it expects to roll it out more fully

[00:09:00] soon. This feature joins a whack of other data points YouTube has added including improved video

[00:09:05] earnings display, playlist analytics and alerts for product tag mistakes. Also it's long-awaited

[00:09:12] thumbnail A B testing tool should be coming sometime in the next few months as well.

[00:09:19] Holy moly we have a story for you. Tomorrow an investigation into a new spam technique

[00:09:24] being used by fake businesses to knock your brand out of Google Maps. This was discovered by

[00:09:32] the Sterling Sky Agency. We will have full coverage of this on tomorrow's show. In the meantime,

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[00:09:50] slash social or tap the link at the top of the show notes. I'm Todd Mastodon thanks for listening

[00:09:55] see you tomorrow.