Google and Facebook guilty of 'extremely low' standards says Martin Sorrell
- 11th September 2015

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"You have to change the engines on the airplane as you're flying" ... Sir Martin Sorrell. Photo: Nic Walker

By Max Mason

Advertising guru Sir Martin Worrell believes brands are waking up to poor audience measurement standards of companies like Facebook and Google and are shifting back to traditional media to find more engaged audiences.

Mr Sorrell, the chief executive of advertising and marketing firm WPP, which buys $US76 billion ($108 billion) worth of media around of the world on behalf of clients, said that Facebook's video viewership standards were "ridiculous" when being measured by against traditional television.

"The standards that are applied to viewership are extremely low, the hurdles are very low. For example, about half of all video is watched online without the sound, the scale that is used for viewership is three seconds," Mr Sorrell told The Newspaper Works Future Forum via video conference from New York.

Facebook defines a video view as a view of three seconds or more.

"That, I would say, is ludicrous in relation to the hurdles that a traditional TV viewer, or newspaper readership has to meet."

GroupM, a media investment group owned by WPP, is pushing aggressively to get a measurement of video viewership that extends across seven days on all screens, Mr Sorrell said.

"Measurement standards have to be raised, particularly for online. The pendulum is moving back, in some respects, not all respects, to traditional media and giving them a little bit of a boost and potential advantage," Mr Sorrell said.

"Engagement, the quality of readership, that even traditional newspapers have, let alone digital newspaper, is far greater than we thought possible or we thought relevant."

Mr Sorrell said that media companies and journalists need to be prepared to work across all platforms, radio, print, television and all their digital arms.

Engine change needed

"We're experimenting and the same thing applies to legacy media companies, you have to change the engines on the airplane as you're flying," he said.

"People are still going to read, people are still going to watch but they're going to read and watch in different ways."

Fairfax Media chief executive Greg Hywood said legacy media companies were adapting to change and while there is a continued push for reduction in costs due to a changing business model; quality journalism still remains to key.

"We have to carefully nurture that, we have to carefully grow that. It is the source of credibility for our brands."

Incoming News Corp executive chairman of Australasia, Michael Miller, said that traditional rivals will need to start working together for the benefit the industry.

"It amazes me that we will all work with competing media, if need be, by our clients request to get campaign away but we won't work together as an industry in getting an effective print campaign away."

Mr Hywood called on the media industry to stop taking shots at each other.

"We caused ourselves a lot of damage by emphasising each other's reduction in circulation. We got ourselves past that. Now … we're starting to attack each other on each other's relative quality … We've got to get together to sort it out."

APN News and Media chief executive, Ciaran Davis, who was previously the head of the company's radio division Australian Radio Network, said working together was one of the radio industry's strengths and it now needs to be done in print.

Outgoing News Corp Australia chief executive Julian Clarke said he remained "bullish" about the prospects of print and online newspapers.

"I think there's an overblown sense of negativity within our industry, nearly always created internally," Mr Clarke said.

"I think when you look at the fact that this industry has been hit earlier and harder than anybody by this disruptive nature of the digital world, yet the irony of that is the digital world is in fact our salvation."

(The Sydney Morning Herald)