Far from being dead, GRPs look very much alive these days -- at least for advertisers and agencies dealing with large brand focused advertising budgets. True, GRPs are not the only answer, but they are instrumental in the evolution of digital from a narrow, direct response medium to a broadening brand-oriented medium.
The switch from click-oriented measurement to audience-oriented tools is becoming a reality in more and more places every month and for more and more advertisers every quarter. Thanks to tools such as our Reach and Frequency and AdEffx Campaign Essentials, the availability and application of audience-related measures such as reach, frequency and GRPs creates the right environment for a revolutionary change, aimed at changing the stance of those marketers currently reluctant to go digital because they don´t understand or simply don´t see the communications effectiveness and cost efficiency of going digital.
For advertisers this is a clear opportunity to finally develop their digital knowledge in close relationship with the traditional non-digital knowledge. Similar KPIs, and a richer and deeper list of additional KPIs in the digital side, beyond audience, create a shared vocabulary – which means no more translators making a living of their translating skills.
For media agencies it´s an even clearer opportunity: recovering the position of media planning leaders. Since the beginning of the ad-serving era, media agencies have been working basically under only two key measurements: impressions and clicks. Rather than big multimedia surveys or sophisticated planning optimizers, everybody was told the new reality boiled down to number of impacts and ratio of reactions.
Wrong.
Neither of these two measures explains all the different steps to be taken from impact to sale. Neither of them is the best way to measure the long-term brand-building value, which is the aim of many campaigns. Even worse, the simplicity of these measures and their naïve application creates a situation in which the only competitive advantage open to media agencies is to be cheaper - which means buying cheaper. This is bad for them – prestigious companies with great strategy and media knowledge; bad for the media because it pushes down their costs; and bad for advertisers, who end up not knowing whether what they buy is the best or cheapest option.
This is changing right now. The ultimate impact of these changes (will they just affect KPIs? Buying and selling? Or will this create a GRP-driven media market?) remains to be seen…