Local news ‘matters to people,’ iProspect West’s managing director says

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Like their partners in the Canadian news industry, the country’s media agencies are undergoing unprecedented transformation. The National Post is holding conversations with leaders of Canada’s largest agencies on the fast-changing fundamentals. This week, Ruth Murray, managing director of iProspect West (a Dentsu company), speaks to writer Rebecca Harris.

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How have the fundamentals of media planning and buying changed in the past few years?

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When I started, digital was taking off and programmatic was the thing… It was really focused on quantity and how we can lean into digital and get really efficient ways to reach audiences. And we were thinking broadly in high-level (age) demographics and maybe gender as well. What I’ve noticed now is that it’s back to quality over quantity. So, we’re talking to our teams about: It’s not about how many you can afford, but are you actually reaching people? Are they paying attention? What is the quality of the placement you’re positioning your ad in? Thinking about the ethics around that as well — (for example), are we supporting privacy laws? Is it ethical in terms of brand safety and viewability? We’re understanding individuals and communities themselves and not just (asking) is it 25 to 49? They’re in B.C., but where do they live? How do they engage with media? What matters to them? What motivates them? The other huge thing in doing that is understanding how it works and measurement. We’ve seen a lot more investment in: What did that media do? How did it respond? How did my investments translate into results?

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What are brands that are capturing consumers’ attention doing right?

For us, it’s coming down to what do people trust and what matters to them, and we’re taking a huge local lens on that. We did a lot of research, and it was really interesting because we found the most trusted media in Canada isn’t social media. It’s local news … And the reason for that is because it matters to people. It matters what happens in their communities. It matters what’s happening to people they care about in that community. What was front and centre for us, for example… was the wildfires in B.C. this year — the most devastating wildfires there were. And you couldn’t advertise on Meta because it’s news. But you need to talk to people in a community about what matters because you need to let them know what’s happening for evacuations or are people nearby. So, for us, it’s really important to find what media they pay attention to most, what matters most in that community, and how we can use it to tell them the most important things going on.

What consumer shifts are on your radar now?

I think the biggest is fragmentation in video. That is huge right now for consumers. The growth of AVOD (advertising video on demand); I think we’re going full circle. We started with, we’re just going to have streaming platforms and there’s one platform you need. And now we’ve got several platforms, so we’re just like a cable channel again… There are so many more ways you can get content, you can get your news, but we need to be thinking about what are the most important of those because (advertisers) can’t afford to be in every single platform that exists.

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How has the concept of brand safety shifted?

The concept for us has shifted and it’s become a dealbreaker… We started (an initiative) a few years ago called Clean Supply, where we wouldn’t work with a partner unless they agreed to our terms of what we define as clean supply, which is fraud-free, viewable and brand-safe. And so, every partner we work with agrees (to the terms) as part of this. We’ve never had any issues with partners because I think the goal with everyone is to make the whole ecosystem healthier and more safe…

The big thing we’re thinking about right now is AI in that space. AI moves fast. The made-for-advertising sites are just sites that look like they’re good sites, so your programmatic algorithms might want to spend on them, but they’re just AI-generated content and they’re not quality and not great places to be. So, that’s a big fight we’re working on now — how do we make the industry more aware and think about the consequences of AI and the risks involved in brand safety… It’s important that we have all of our partners on the same page as us because we can’t do it alone. We all have to be agreeing to these terms and moving forward.

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Can you share some predictions on what’s next for the media planning and buying industry?

My hope for us is it’s going to continue with what we believe, which is that every media channel can be a performance media channel. Brand (building) and performance — for so long (the industry) often kept them separate. How we work is that every brand touchpoint is an opportunity to inform a purchase… Clients shouldn’t have to choose between brand and performance. It’s thinking about every media and understanding how that impacts the business, which goes back to measurement… We’re hoping that’s how it’s going to move and we’re evaluating the impact of all media in that way.

The other one we’re thinking about goes back to that local thing and what hyper-local looks like. The trend is understanding outside of core (areas) like GVA, GTA — those are expensive cities. Not everyone can live there anymore and not everyone does live there — Canada is a pretty big country. So, understanding outside of the cities is going to be a big trend to think about and how people are interacting with media in different ways.

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