Media Buying Briefing: How the recession is affecting independent agencies

In at least one case, an independent media agency lost clients who could no longer afford to market because of supply-chain issues. The head of strategy and planning, who declined to speak for attribution, confirmed client losses. “We’ve had clients who said, we literally can’t sell anything, we don’t have any more product to sell, we have to shut off advertising,” said the exec. 

Meanwhile, other agencies have experienced client pullbacks on spending, or had clients award RFPs, only to pause any work that was supposed to be started. Said the head of investment for one major holding company: “The economic uncertainty and continued supply-chain issues and now new spikes in COVID have major categories pulling back,” including automotive and telecom advertisers.

The CEO of an independent mini-holding company said about half of all independent agencies just don’t take the time to read the tea leaves of economic uncertainty, and those are the ones who may struggle to survive. “Inevitably clients are going to peel back 10, 20, 30 percent of brand advertising and peel back some social,” said the CEO. “What they’ll peel back last, of course, is the acquisition media because that’s the bread and butter. But especially for the independents, who might be working on a 10% margin, if their clients simultaneously are 45 days late on cash flow, while their employees have gotten raises and budgets roll back 30 percent, It doesn’t take a whole lot to create a lot of uncomfortability very fast.”

Digiday spoke with a number of independent agency leaders to get a handle on just what kind of damage could hit the media agency world, and how bad it will be. A few common factors stand out: 

Specialization is endangered

Specialty shops that align with a single or narrow avenue of clients may well be in trouble, and should think about either diversifying their client base beyond one or two verticals, or expanding their services into other areas to reduce risk.

“Typically, you see, you know, experiential advertising and some of the more upper funnel brand building take some of those initial hits,” said Jared Belsky, CEO of digital agency Acadia. “It’s not always gradual — usually those cuts go deeper. So sometimes they’re caught flat-footed.”

Seth Hargrave, CEO of independent Media Two Interactive, said he’s been able to avoid a serious downturn despite being a digital specialist shop. “We’re a specialized agency in terms of media buying and technology, but the flip side of that is we want as diverse of a client base as we can possibly get,” said Hargrave. “Because that insulates us to a certain degree, and gives us opportunities when times are tough.”

DTC falling out of favor

Agencies are pulling away from direct-to-consumer advertisers, especially startups, which often sell luxury products (that don’t sell well in a recession) or aren’t strategic in their approach. Several agency execs said they’ve deprioritized DTC as a category, after it was red hot for the last two years.

“There was this big flourishing of small brands, DTC brands and independent performance marketing companies, that was driving a lot of performance marketing, independent agency growth. That side is shaking out,” said Michael Stich, CEO of Court Avenue.

“We aren’t as interested in DTC opportunities anymore,” said an executive at a digital agency who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We’ve had some before. While we love their entrepreneurial spirit, the rigor isn’t there and sometimes the expectations aren’t there. Sure, you can have 1,000 percent sales increases in year one, but guess what that meant? You sold 1,000 units — that doesn’t mean you really have a sustainable business.”

Pressure on the client leads to pressure on the agency

Agencies need to be ready for clients to exert greater scrutiny on planning and execution because CMOs and marketing departments are getting that same extent of scrutiny from their CFOs and procurement people. 

“The CFOs are running the show,” said the strategy/planning head that lost clients. “They’re like, ‘We need to conserve cash.’ And this is one of the easiest place for them to pull from.”

“CMOs and marketers are going to be backed into a corner to show proof of return,” agreed Hargrave. “They always are, but that constriction is going to be significantly higher over the course of the second half of this year” because of the financial pressures of the recession.

It’s even happening with RFPs, said Dan Eisenberg, CMO of Blue Chip, an independent brand, media and shopper agency. “We’ve seen some RFPs around where there is a lot more scrutiny from client side financial leadership back on the marketers to make sure that everything is is bullet proof in that business plan,” including market analysis, supply-chain concerns, distribution and sales forecasts, he said. “It’s forcing the marketers who are ready to get in the market to have to circle back and be involved in a lot more internal reviews, additional layers of scrutiny. Sometimes they might even need to go back and rework that business plan, because of what they’re being asked.”

Places to cut back

Agencies, particularly publicly traded firms that have to worry about Wall Street punishing them, have a few things at their disposal to minimize risk if incoming revenue drops: freeze hiring, cut back on travel & expense budgets before you get to layoffs. 

“Focus on your people, protect your people, ensure that if we have a recession and come out of this recession, that you are well positioned with your clients and your teams to be able to support,” said John Harris, CEO of independent agency network group Worldwide Partners. “ That’s versus, ‘We’ve cut 10% of our staff — Oh my God, now we’re back into trying to hire people again’,” which is harder than it’s ever been.

Color by numbers

We all know that streaming services carrying advertising can sometimes flood us with too many ads —particularly when the ads repeat over and over again. Ad platform Infillion, with the help of researcher Ipsos, surveyed 2,500 people to better understand consumer preferences and what gets their attention. Findings include: 

• 73% of consumers say the ads they see are repetitive.
• 61% of consumers say they multitask during ad breaks in streaming content.
• 67% of consumers prefer ad-supported streaming options to ad-free ones.
• 50% of consumers see tailored ads as good or helpful if they’re in sync with their interests. 
• Over 70% would likely offer more detailed personal information in exchange for more personalization in streaming ads.
• The top five pieces of data consumers prefer to divulge are: 
  • gender (69%) 
  • age (65%) 
  • interest and hobbies (63%) 
  • ethnicity (60%) 
  • household size and detailed data about purchases (56%)

Takeoff & landing

• Independent media agency PMG came out the biggest winner in Nike’s review of its $1 billion media business. The Texas-based shop will handle North American integrated media duties, as well as global digital work. IPG’s Initiative also came out a winner in the review, handling integrated global media. WPP’s Mindshare, Stagwell’s Assembly and Wieden + Kennedy all lost some of Nike’s business in the review. 
• Internationally, Publicis Media won consolidated media, creative and digital duties for PepsiCo India, following a multi-agency pitch. Losing agencies include WPP’s Mindshare and WundermanThomson, which had lost the remit back in the spring. 
• The Association of National Advertisers released a report on procurement that found, somewhat unsurprisingly, clients find it a healthy and improving process while agencies don’t to anywhere near the same degree. Among other stats, the most telling in the report is that, almost half (49 percent) of procurement respondents agree completely that they are “knowledgeable” regarding advertising/marketing, not a single agency respondent agreed. 

Direct quote

“It’s clear with Google’s announcement [that] the industry is struggling with implementing and testing alternative strategies to third-party cookies, but marketers cannot continue to wait until cookies are gone to seek out alternatives. Cookies were always an imperfect mechanism for making ads more relevant and personal. What’s more, is that many of the proposed alternatives are premised on companies knowing even more about consumers’ identities.” 

— Ken Weiner, chief technology officer, GumGum, reacting to Google’s latest delay in replacing third-party cookies until 2024.
 

Speed reading

• Digiday intern Carly Weihe, with the support of senior news editor Seb Joseph and senior tech reporter Ronan Shields, crafted a thorough analysis of the tech platforms’ recent economic stumbles, and the effect that will have on the global economy.
• You must give a listen to senior marketing reporter Kimeko McCoy’s first installment of a new  podcast series called The Return, which addresses work/life balance as agencies open up offices again. Episode 1 points the mic at Atlanta agency Fitzco. 
• I took a look at how the out-of-home industry-backed organization Geopath is working to update and advance the state of OOH measurement at a time when the medium is kind of hot. 
• Finally, I’m happy to welcome Antoinette Siu to Digiday as media agency reporter. She will be helping me to cover the media agency world and all the industries and business lines around it. She can be reached at antoinette@digiday.com.