Optimizers, software products designed to make media buying more exacting and efficient, are promising to revolutionize the agency business, making media planners – not creative or account people – the hub around which the advertising process revolves, says a prominent media expert.

Sunni Boot, president of Optimedia, the media operation of Publicis Canada, says the use of optimizers – analytical tools that allow planners to achieve specific reach and frequency goals at the lowest possible cost – will fundamentally change the role of planners in the advertising process.

Boot says planners will effectively become ‘macro-strategists’ who select the best media mix for reaching the client’s target audience, and then pass that information on to the creative department to be used in the development of campaigns suited to the chosen media vehicles.

Boot says Optimedia’s parent company, Publicis Group of France, is already using optimizers in some of its European offices. She says a unit called Media Conception chooses – or invents – the best media or means for distributing the client’s message; all buying and creative then flow from that plan. She adds Optimedia is currently testing the software to see whether it can be adapted to the Canadian market. Competitor The Media Company and Media Buying Services introduced its own system, called MaXis, last month.

There’s just one hitch.

The success of optimizers here hinges on their ability to be customized to the Canadian market using detailed audience measurement data. And that costs money. Lots of it.

Not surprisingly, both Nielsen and BBM Bureau of Measurement – which is currently installing meters using PictureMatching technology in Vancouver homes for a fall rollout – are enthusiastic about working with media companies to supply such data.

Mike Leahy, group vice-president, sales and marketing for Nielsen Media Research, says the cost of respondent level data – which tracks viewing habits every minute of every day in every metered household – is substantial in part because the process goes far beyond the cost of providing raw numbers. He says Nielsen’s senior programmers must work closely with agencies to convert and develop their proprietary software.

‘They worked for months with one agency to educate them on viewing rules, scenarios and time-zone issues. It’s a lot [more involved than] saying here’s a piece of data from one home between 5:05 and 5:06.’

As Boot sees it: ‘It’s not just cost, it’s optimizing what you’re going to get for that cost.’

Sidebar: WebTV presents measurement challenge

Just when Canada’s media measurement companies had finally mastered new television technologies such as digital and satellite, WebTV comes along and poses a whole new set of problems.

Launched last month in Canada, Microsoft’s WebTV Plus Network (see ‘WebTV merges TV and Internet’, Strategy, June 22, 1998, page one) seamlessly integrates television programming with Internet content and services to give customers more choice and control over programming.

In a nutshell, this means viewers can watch tv and surf the Net at the same time, customizing the screen with picture-in-picture capabilities.

Mike Leahy, group vice-president, sales and marketing for Nielsen Media Research in Toronto, says Nielsen has solved the WebTV measurement issue, thanks to its collaboration with Microsoft Corporation during the development of WebTV.

Leahy says the Nielsen Software Meter recognizes the tv content displayed on the screen, as well as the size and location of the video window. It can even discern if the tv content is hidden by another open window or application.

Leahy says meters which use PictureMatching as the primary method of identifying programming – such as the ones being launched by rival BBM Bureau of Measurement – won’t be able to recognize personalized screens because they won’t be on file in the PictureMatching library. He says this means there will be unattributed viewing.

For his part, Ron Bremner, vice-president of television for bbm, says WebTV is not a big concern right now because major penetration remains in the distant future.