Digital Media for Governments:

Reaching Audiences in an Age of

Fragmentation and Austerity Rob Norman Chief Digital Officer, GroupM Global

Digital media has fragmented audiences exponentially. Rather than watching a handful of TV channels or reading a limited selection of magazines, citizens today have almost infinite media options: hundreds of cable and satellite channels, millions of YouTube videos, social media, Video-On-Demand, personalised music streaming services and more.

With people spread so thinly across media channels, the reach of individual units of advertising has plummeted. This is a particular challenge for governments, who often need to reach mass audiences. This article considers two key questions for government communicators in the digital age:

• How can governments reach mass audiences in a fragmenting media landscape?

• In an age of austerity, how can governments reach audiences more efficiently and effectively?

Luckily, digital media is both the challenge and the solution. By harnessing data and technology, digital media enables governments to reach the right audiences, at the right time, with the right messages, in the right channels – for less taxpayers’ money than traditional media.

First, we take a brief look at the evolution of media and what it means for governments. We then look at one of the most important recent developments in digital media – audience buying – and how governments can use it to reach and target audiences.

Digital Media in the Age of Austerity: Doing More for Less

Image by Photocapy

licensed under CC BY

Digital Media in the Age of AusterityAs public budgets are tightened, the mantra everywhere is ‘bought as last resort.’ This means that governments should only pay for media when they really have to, using earned media like PR, social conversation and word of mouth whenever possible to communicate with citizens.

Yet paid media (i.e. advertising) will always have a role in government communications because it guarantees the scale, speed and message discipline that earned media cannot. The role of paid media is changing though. It is increasingly used to initiate awareness, spark conversation or encourage citizens to engage directly with government through digital channels.

The challenge for government communicators in an age of austerity is to get the biggest bang for every paid media buck – and that is where digital is potentially transformational.

Digital media can be more efficient than traditional print or broadcast advertising. The same reach can be achieved for less money by more accurate targeting or by paying for results rather than airtime or column inches. So digital is good public value, reaching the same number of citizens for less taxpayers’ money.

But the benefits of digital advertising can go further than efficiency savings. For governments in particular, digital media can be more effective than traditional media. Governments can now engage citizens in the time, place, device and context most likely to create a result - doing the weekly family shop; searching for information about chest pain; before a predicted flood in their area. So digital media can effectively influence citizens’ decisions to deliver better policy outcomes.

First, a quick look back...For newcomers to the world of paid media, here’s a quick canter through the evolution of the advertising industry to put what comes next into context. Readers who know their history (or lived through it) should feel free to skip straight to audience buying (page 4).

Advertising in the broadcast age

Advertising was originally a product of the broadcast age. In developed markets, advertisers have had a reliable supply of large audiences since the mass penetration of TV in the 1950s. Screen-based entertainment (except video games) was a passive activity that drove popular culture and conversation. By combining a few channels with mass audiences, governments could quickly reach large populations.

Advertising was targeted using context, time of day and geography as proxies for audiences. For example, governments could reach elderly people by targeting daytime reruns of classic serials, or small business owners by targeting the financial pages of local newspapers. Everyone knew that this method of targeting was only modestly accurate. So advertising in the broadcast age was about shouting as loudly as possible in the general direction you hoped your audience was.

Technology has fragmented audiences

Advertisers have always reached mass audiences by combining reach from several channels. This has become increasingly difficult as media audiences have fragmented exponentially.

In decades past, media was limited to a handful of terrestrial TV channels, radio, print, cinema and outdoor advertising. There wasn’t much choice of entertainment, so the reach of individual units of advertising was high as audiences were concentrated.

Now we have seen an explosion of channels and an inevitable decline in audiences for each. At any point in time, citizens could be watching cable or satellite TV channels, online news, social media, YouTube, time-shifting technology like DSTv in Africa or TiVo in US, or video-on-demand services such as iTunes or Hulu.

“TV Shows We Used To Watch - Opportunity

Knocks 1956-1978” by Paul Townsend, licensed

under CC BY

With audiences so fragmented, how can governments reach people in large numbers? Policymakers often need to reach mass audiences – the over 60s, voters, or mothers, for example. And unlike businesses, governments can’t settle for just reaching the share of the target audience they can afford – governments need to communicate with all citizens, including those hardest to reach.

Audience buying for public sector communicatorsOnline advertising is bought and sold very differently to traditional column inches or airtime. Much digital advertising space is now sold through real-time auctions, in which advertisers bid via algorithms to serve adverts to people online (see below). The combination of ‘biddable’ media and big data have driven innovation in the way advertising is targeted. In this section we look at one of the latest technologies - known as ‘audience buying’ or ‘behavioural advertising’ - which is being rapidly adopted across the private sector and some public sector organisations. Audience buying can enable governments to find and target their audiences with greater precision than ever before.

The challenge: How can governments reach mass audiences?• Aggregate smaller audiences across multiple channels to

recreate simultaneous mass reach

• Use the few remaining opportunities where mass audiences still exist, such as live sport or premium live TV like popular reality shows. But this is very expensive unless governments can access non-commercial advertising deals.

• Apply better, faster data to increase the precision of targeting.

• Shift advertising spend away from traditional channels into earned and owned channels in the ‘stream’ of social media.

How real-time bidding works

Audience Buying targets behaviour, not context

Traditionally, context has been used as a proxy for audience behavior: young people are more likely to take drugs; young people watch music videos on YouTube; so buy anti-drugs adverts in music videos on YouTube.

Audience buying uses behaviour rather than context to target audiences. If you can identify a potential drug taker’s individual profile by their online behaviour (for example, drug-related search terms or visiting websites of nightclubs known to have high levels of drug use), you can serve anti-drugs adverts to that profile on any website.

Divorcing context from audiences frees advertisers to buy media space on much cheaper websites without losing any precision of targeting. Audience buying is based on a simple premise: that the behavior of individual profiles provides a better, cheaper and more efficient proxy for an audience than the context in which we find them. This will more than compensate for any benefit of advertising in a specific context.

6. Winning ad served If you win the auction, your content (advert) is served and the citizen sees it on their screen.

1. Citizen visits a page Every time a web page

is loaded, an ‘impression’ becomes available.

5. Auction You typically have milliseconds to respond to a bid. The highest bidder wins.

2. Impression announced When an impression is available, the exchange

asks whether you would like to bid.

4. Bid decision Based on the information available, you determine the value of the bid to you. You don’t have if the impression is not valuable to you.

3. Impression evaluated You get a range of information:

what site the impression is on, page content, time,

information about the user.

Whole progress takes 100 milliseconds

Source: Google and WPP

From a government point of view, there are a few specific but entirely surmountable challenges to successful audience buying.

1. Privacy – In some markets, there are concerns that behavioural advertising (another term for audience buying) could threaten individuals’ privacy. Audience buying does not require personally identifiable information; it uses pseudonymous profiles. The regulation of consumer consent to share this pseudonymous data varies by market and is in flux in many.

2. Content verification – Automated bidding means that advertisers do not know in advance where their adverts will be shown. No government wants their content to end up on a porn or gambling website. Rigorous content verification systems exist to ensure that government only places advertisements alongside appropriate content.

3. New business models – Traditional media buying is a relatively straightforward transaction between advertiser and publisher, usually via a third party media agency. Providers of audiences, however, are compensated from a spread between the costs (inventory, data and technology) and the price of the audience or outcome created. To harness the opportunities of audience buying, governments and the industry will need to work together to ensure that these new business models satisfy governments’ requirements for transparency whilst reflecting the reality of a new, technologically driven model of transacting media space.

More broadly, audience buying is a technology-driven business that requires sophisticated ‘big data’ management and analytics. The paybacks are more accurate targeting and less wasted advertising spend. That means more effective government communications and, ultimately, the austerity nirvana of ‘doing more for less.’

Case Study: Stopping holidaymakers from importing illegal goodsIn the Netherlands, the government recently ran a campaign to educate holidaymakers about customs regulations on bringing restricted goods back into the country. The campaign tagged users of popular holiday booking websites and served them humorous videos reminding them that it is illegal to import certain products. The campaign used user behaviour (visiting a holiday booking website) to identify the target audience, but served them advertising as they browsed other websites. This reinforced the message and ensured effective targeting.

Digital Media: ‘Big Data’ in practiceWe often hear that ‘big data’ will be a panacea for governments and businesses. In practice, it can be a challenge to collect and analyse massive datasets with the speed, scale and intelligence needed to extract real value. Digital media is one of the practical applications of big data that is established and works. This could make it an interesting ‘sandpit’ for governments to trial new approaches

Data for good• Identifies where messaging is most needed

• Identifies audiences most likely to be engaged

• Enables personalised, one-to-one relationships between citizen and government

• Increases efficiency by reducing wasted media spend

• Enables government to track, attribute and evaluate public value against spend

As Chief Digital Officer of GroupM Global, Rob oversees the activities of the world’s largest buyer of online media with close to $10 billion in billings. In this role, he develops the digital capabilities within GroupM while establishing thought leadership positioning in the digital space and contributing to each agency’s business development.

Rob NormanChief Digital OfficerGroupM Global

GroupM GroupM is WPP’s consolidated media investment management operation, serving as the parent company to agencies including Maxus, MEC, MediaCom, Mindshare, Catalyst and Xaxis. GroupM is the global number one media investment management group (RECMA, July 2012).

WPP Government & Public Sector PracticeWPP helps governments to achieve their public missions by communicating effectively. The Government & Public Sector Practice brings together our best thinking and expertise for policymakers and communicators in national and local government, public institutions and international organisations.

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