One of the things I’m most thankful for from nearly a decade at Google, was the opportunity to work with a massive and varied list of advertisers. I worked with small businesses run by families and Fortune 500 technology brands. I worked with major federal agencies of the US Government and globally recognized non-profits. I watched how hundreds of brands built and managed their marketing strategies and partnered with no less than a hundred different ad agencies.
And when it comes to ad agencies, I saw the good, the bad, the lazy, the incompetent, and the inspired. Unfortunately for most advertisers, on the surface, it’s incredibly hard to know what type of agency you have. Or more specifically, what type of team you have on your business. Because even at the greatest ad agency in the world, I promise you, there is a staggering degree of difference in quality from employee to employee and from team to team.
I encourage you to audit your agency constantly and to conduct formal agency reviews periodically, but for a quick cheat sheet, I’ve compiled five warning signs that may signal your ad agency partners are missing the mark:
1. The “I Bet We Could Win Awards for This” Agency
Impressions, clicks, conversions, and consideration lift are super boring… But they can also have a tangible impact on accomplishing the business goals of most advertisers.
You know what’s not boring? Incorporating drones or 3D printers into your next advertising campaign. Using a cool celebrity and virtual reality. Having the most tweets during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. A new creative that is unprecedentedly shocking or uplifting or sad. These are the types of ideas that win awards for ad agencies, and for far too many ad agencies, that becomes the primarily goal.
Don’t get me wrong. Novel ideas can be incredibly impactful and so can new technologies. But the impact we’re aiming for should still be grounded in the lame, boring, unexciting thing you’re trying to do as a business. Like… You know… Selling stuff?
The next time your agency comes to you with something outside the box, make sure the target audience of their strategy is your consumers, and not other advertising industry professionals or the judges at the Clio Awards
2. The “We’re Recommending an X Increase in Budget….Because.” Agency
If you’ve ever worked at an ad agency or a media vendor (like my time at Google), you’ve undoubtedly sat in a room discussing how much money you think you can get your client to spend next year. And there’s nothing wrong with that. That the nature of the beast. Everyone has a target. Everyone has a quota. And from my experience, those numbers rarely do anything other than increase from year to year.
So as a client, don’t be surprised when your ad agency comes to you with a 2021 pitch that says you should spend X% more than you spent in 2020. But you should be suprised, or maybe disappointed or concerned, when they fail to offer relevant justification as to why.
10% more spend will get you 10% more impressions is weak. It shows your agency was lazy in their preparation and rudderless in their recommendation. There has to be a why. Because if 10% gets me 10% more, and more is good, why not 8%? Why not 13%? Why not 40%? Push them to tell you what the exact right investment is and why. It doesn’t mean you have to do it, but you should know where they stand and that they stand there for a reason.
3. The “Look How Many Line Items and Vendors We Use!” Agency
When evaluating your ad agency, it’s important to understand that many of them are in a constant state of defending their business and proving their value. Advancements in programmatic buying platforms, machine learning, and other technologies have helped to automate some of the functions traditionally performed by ad agencies. So there is always a risk of clients needing less support or moving things entirely in-house.
And I know first hand from my years at Google, that agencies also have to deal with vendors like Google, FaceBook, and many others who attempt to offer high spending advertisers the same council and support offered by ad agencies, except these vendors do it for free.
For some agencies, the best way to emphasize their value, is to build complicated media recommendations including a myriad of partners. In other words, if a client does all their media buying through Google, then a Google support team is a real threat to an agency. But if a client buys search Google and Bing and buys video from YouTube, Hulu, NBC.com, Roku and Tube Mogul, plus spot cable and broadcast television, then it’s very hard for the client to deal with seven support teams.
Going through a single vendor or a limited number of solutions is not necessarily the right answer for most advertisers. But keep in mind that when working with a smaller number of platforms you get more support, economies of scale, a more unified view of your customer, more consistent reporting, and on and on. So when your agency brings you a complicated media plan, make sure they have strong justifications for “why.” Do you truly need multiple platforms to cover your desired audience? Is there something uniquely valuable about each option? Is there something tangible that we’re testing and learning as we compare these platforms? Or are we complicating things for the sake of complicating things?
4. The “Here’s Why Deeper Attribution Doesn’t Work for You” Agency
Beyond direct response ecommerce, attribution is hard. I might go so far as to say that it’s super hard. And some companies and organizations have unique challenges that make it even harder.
However… If your ad agency spends more time explaining to you why they can’t measure anything related to sales or revenue than they spend working on intermediate solutions, you’ve got a problem.
I once worked with a major consumer gadget brand who sold product online and in big-box retail stores. They knew that the massive amount of online advertising they did would drive foot traffic to these stores, but since they couldn’t measure it, they ignored the in-store impact when evaluating their digital media. Eventually, we just said “Hey, why don’t you just guess what the in-store impact is and use that in your calculation? Just use your best educated guess based on whatever metrics we have available + common sense.”
Now that might sound crazy, but the truth we arrived at, was that the best educated guess, in all likelihood, would be closer to reality than just saying there was zero impact. Based off that realization, we did everything we could to improve that educated guess. It was still a guess. Still based off assumptions, but it was the most accurate data available at the time. Your agency should constantly be finding creative solutions to more accurately measure the impact of your media. If there’s a challenge, they should be showing you the detour around it. If there’s not an exact answer, they should be building you an educated guess and explaining how their models work.
If an agency is willing to settle for not knowing your impact, don’t settle for them.
5. The “Great Idea, That Makes Total Sense” Agency
In theory, this one probably shouldn’t need to be said, but in practice, it absolutely does. The average ad agency is too expensive to just be an instrument of implementing and optimizing the strategy they’re given. For what you’re paying, you have to demand original thought and extra brain power that your staff might not have enough of. In other words, beware any ad agency, or any partner really, who can’t stop confirming that everything you say is correct. Yes-men are nice, but they are not worth paying for.
For many advertisers, the primary reason to utilize an ad agency, as opposed to an in-house operation, is because an ad agency naturally brings an outside perspective grounded in their work with dozens or hundreds of other clients. You need this outside perspective. You’re paying for this outside perspective. If your ad agency isn’t serving as a frequent contrarian or devil’s advocate, you’re not getting all that you’re paying for.