Media Week

It's IPA Digital Media Owners Image Survey time again and, after 18 months, the data is starting to bed down and show some trends.

Judging by the amount of calls Media Week gets from worried sales directors in the days running up to the release of the results, the media owners - both digital pure-plays and the digital arms of "traditional" media owners - certainly take the survey seriously.

ITV will be pleased that it is at last posting an improvement in its digital service, although it still languishes in the mid-30% level for agencies saying that their overall experience of dealing with the supplier is a good one.

MSN had a good six months, dominating the rankings in the online display ad sector. It is also catching up with Google in search. Yahoo, on the other hand, is suffering from low morale and its service levels are reflecting that.

In social network-land, Facebook showed particular improvement, presumably reflecting that it now has a full-time UK sales team. But Bebo fell more than any media owner for overall satisfaction levels, perhaps distracted by takeover fever.

For cross-media opportunities, which are profiled in the survey for the first time, offline media behemoths Channel 4, Guardian Media Group, Telegraph and Times performed best, which is encouraging news for old-school media types.

It's important to remember that this is still a young industry. Staff turnover is high and there is a shortage of suitably skilled staff. Some processes are long-winded and administration is difficult - and there is still the odd fax machine whirring away in the corner processing orders.

It is unlikely that the IAB's desire for there to be one electronic trading system to cross the whole of the sector - such as J-et in radio - will come about. Omnicom has plumped for MediaTel's Delta system; WPP's GroupM is using Addazzle. And there are other players out there such as DDS and IMD.

If there are to be four or five systems, the relevant IAB technical committee can play its part by making sure the electronic interface that links media agency trading systems to media owners is easy to manage. If media owners have to man- age multiple gateways to multiple trading systems, they will definitely continue to find it difficult to improve their services.

This was another frustrating weekend for those sports fans that have chosen not to – or can’t afford to – supplement their Sky subscription with a Setanta package.

The big three sporting events of the weekend – the Joe Calzaghe versus Bernard Hopkins title fight, Manchester United versus Blackburn Rovers in the Premiership, and the launch of the Indian Premier League cricket tournament – were all on Setanta, leaving Sky’s second-rate fare looking distinctly end of season in comparison. And it’s not the only weekend when this has been the case recently.

Because Sky only has the rights to show very limited highlights of Setanta’s live weekly football game on its sports news bulletins and review shows such as Goals on Sunday, it tends to come over as if that game never happened - and it is definitely downgraded in Sky’s overall coverage.

That’s fine if it’s a meaningless fixture, such as the Manchester City versus Portsmouth match Sky featured on "Super" Sunday yesterday, but when it’s one of the top teams it gives Sky’s football coverage a lop-sided and slightly odd feel. And God only knows what would have happened if by some chance the Man U v Blackburn game had turned out to be the title decider. It could potentially have scuppered Sky’s whole coverage of the season.

Sky Sports subscribers have seen the value of their package gradually whittled down in the last 18 months (Setanta also poached Sky’s PGA Tour golf coverage), with the price gradually creeping up. They were used to the quality declining in the summer, when the big driver of Premiership football goes into hibernation. That is something they put up with. But it is a new experience to be missing out on significant sporting action during the football season.

How long will it be before punters vote with their feet and decide they’re not getting enough value for their monthly sub? Sky could do with placating its loyal sports punters - who let’s face it have driven the success of the business - by signing up a couple of exciting new rights deals.

As the old Cockney comedy and 1960 Max Bygraves hit pointed out, Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be, and this is especially true of what we once regarded as our day of rest: Sunday.

Once upon a time, not that long ago, the nation filled the Sabbath with church and a leisurely stroll through a selection of Sunday newspapers, possibly nipping into the local for a pint between noon and 2pm before heading home for a traditional roast dinner with the family, a snooze and more papers.

But now we are more likely to do the weekly shop, watch big sporting events (in stadia, on satellite TV or in pubs now open all day) and engage in active leisure pursuits. I know one TV sports reporter who has made a good career but refuses to work on Sundays for religious reasons. One can only assume his pro-gress will be held up in future as more and more sporting events move to the second day of the weekend. But he is in a minority.

Saturday papers have responded and expanded their remit, positioning themselves as a solution to weekend reading that negates the need to buy a separate Sunday newspaper.

TouchPoints data shows consumers' reading habits are changing to reflect the more active modern Sunday. The peak reading time is between 9.30am and noon, especially for the mid-market tabloids. This diminishes throughout the day, remaining slightly higher for the qualities.

The Sundays have responded in different ways. The News of the World launched Fabulous, a quality magazine aimed at young ABC1 women. But it continues to combine this with old-style sex scandals, which is a difficult balancing act to pull off.

In March's ABCs, the News of the World was down 1.9% month on month and 2.7% year on year, so the jury is still out on this strategy. The Sunday Mirror, down 0.7% month on month, and 3% year on year, is reinventing itself, going back to basics and concentrating on good old-fashioned news values.

Among the qualities, The Observer is performing best, up 1.3% to 461,739. The Sunday Times fell 2.5%, but has cushioned this with its £2 cover price.

People still want Sunday papers, or at least, a weekend read, but those papers have to respond to cultural shifts to ensure they deliver what readers want on the modern Sabbath.

Media is a people business. It relies on relationships forged over years of trading and negotiating, among people who have interacted with each other in different guises, at many different media owners and agencies, at different times.

There have been some fascinating developments in the world of media agencies documented in Media Week in recent weeks that provide indicators about the way the industry is set to develop.

WPP is launching its Signposter outdoor trading portal. ZenithOptimedia has restructured its buying operation around client teams rather than specific media. IPG has finally bitten the bullet and forced some changes through at Initiative and Universal McCann. Phil Georgiadis has sold his remaining tranche of shares in Walker Media to parent company M&C Saatchi. Then there's the rise of CHI & Partners as a media player, outlined in this week's feature (page 24), and other start-ups such as Hurrell Moseley Dawson & Grimmer. And, in this issue, Media Week breaks the story about the new Media Equals online trading platform for offline media.

You sense a jostling for position, perhaps brought on by the imperatives and disciplines imposed by the wider economic situation, as the large agency groups flex their muscles, and nimbler project or consultancy-based outfits set up shop, hoping to prosper in the slipstream of the networked giants.

In an interview that goes live today on Media Week TV, Dominic Proctor, chief executive of MindShare Worldwide, describes how the agency business has changed since he set up the WPP-owned network a decade ago. He says back then it was fundamentally quite narrow. Now, however, there are many more media opportunities and a far greater level of knowledge and understanding within the client community.

Clients want agencies to have a broader skill set, take a holistic view and contribute more widely. To do this, the big agencies are getting bigger - either by grouping together or growing organically.

Proctor recognises that the business is more global and the media agency is becoming the enduring global hardwired partner for brands. Media agencies require volume and scale; otherwise they don't have the time, revenue or resource to properly address clients' problems. As head of a global media network, he would say all this wouldn't he? Nevertheless, it's a compelling insight into the issues facing modern media agencies and well worth checking out at Media Week TV.