Boycott of unaudited publications needed

A boycott of unaudited publications seems to be the only workable option for advertisers and agencies after a long-running campaign in the UAE failed to yield the desired results.

The rationale behind such a move would be that the publishing industry in the UAE is at its weakest in the marketplace, and a renewed effort by advertisers and agencies would convince more of the unaudited publications to rethink their status.

Media buying house Mediaedge:cia Regional Managing Director Mohan Nambiar said: "Advertisers need to know what they are paying for and can no longer remain content with numbers given by unaudited media".

"Does it mean we should start all over again? Maybe," Nambiar said.

And the ‘B' word is being used frequently as the only option left for advertisers to pressurise publications in the UAE to be audited. But calling for a boycott of publications which do not comply and ensuring it is heeded by advertisers and agencies, requires a lot of planning.

But leading advertisers are willing to consider it, however unpleasant a task it might be.

"The leverage that advertisers and agencies have to force the situation will not be there forever, they have to use the present unique circumstances to get the publishing industry to listen to them seriously," said a member of the Advertisers Business Group (ABG) who declined to be named. "Any improvement in the economy and consequently in ad spend will see a return to the status quo where the media is concerned. We cannot allow that to happen this time."

The opportunity is there because publications are at their most vulnerable in the face of vastly reduced advertising spends in the past 18 months. This has taken a heavy toll on local publications with many shutting down or making do with greatly reduced print runs. More than 50 odd publications have gone off the advertising radar due to the downturn.

In another jolt to the local media sector, just the other week Emirates Business 24x7 decided to pull the plug on the print edition and only have an online version.

With the onset of summer and an accompanying decline in ad spending during the period, there could be more casualties on the way.

For the process to work this time, advertisers need to wield the stick of boycott with impunity rather than continue to hope indefinitely that unaudited publications will see better sense now on their own. As it is, this time, publications could be more inclined to heed the demands of advertisers.

The ABG (or the GCC Advertisers Association as it was then known) has had previous success in trying to make local publications audit. It was the driving force in the formation of an industry grouping — the Castor Committee, which was to drive the adoption of media auditing among local publications.

Though it came into being in 2004, the committee had been working overtime since 2006 to get the process into a higher gear. (Castor — or Circulation Audit Steering Organisation Committee is made up of representatives of some of the region's leading advertisers, agencies and media buying units.)

In this regard, the Castor Committee had identified 2007 as the year when a good number of UAE publications should have got on the audit bandwagon. But that was the point when these good intentions came up against entrenched mind sets among media houses.

There are the newspapers such as Gulf News and 7 Days as well as two of the leading magazine publishing houses — ITP and Motivate, who are audited. In all, there are 77 member titles and a further 11 applicants. But the feeling persists among industry insiders that a lot more needs to be done.

"On a one-to-10 scale, I would say the committee managed to achieve a three in all these years," said Nambiar. "Personally, I will not be happy with that kind of return for all the effort that went in."

Here, the blame should rest with the advertisers themselves. The whole market was riding on a high in 2007 and 2008 and there was a lot of ad spend to burn through. The joke going around at the time was that even a publication with a print run of one would have got ads. Another joke from those times was that a publisher just needed to register a title and he would be able to sell space in it.

In such an environment, the consensus among representatives of advertisers and agencies is that much of the good work done initially by the Castor Committee has come to nothing. So much so, there is even muted talk in industry corridors about whether the Castor Committee still exists.

Media houses would not have lamented if that were indeed the case. Then came the downturn, and with it any remnants of the enthusiasm for the audit campaign.

Principal initiatives

• Advertising agencies should give preference to an audited media over an unaudited one if both are targeting the same audience.

•If an advertising agency does use unaudited media, they should not "value" them in the same way they would audited media. In other words, pay the same or higher ad rates for unaudited media.

• But if an unaudited media has sought an application to get formally audited, then they should be given the benefit of the doubt for the period during which the process takes place.