1)      Data Capture

2)     Witnessing Their Production Process

3)     Understanding Advertising Production Spending

We know that many advertisers are struggling to integrate their procurement departments into their ad production spending. Typically, for marketing, their funding is fiercely defended turf. However, in recent years we’ve seen management becoming more serious and demanding accountability on marketing spending.

We recommend data capture as a first step. This can get granular and the more granular the better but to begin with we recommend focusing on the big picture; budgets, vendors, schedules and final costs. Built up over time this data can become the basis for benchmarking and many other initiatives.

Becoming familiar with the ad production process clarifies roles, the decision-making process and the mechanisms for putting those decisions into action. It allows procurement to compare their current production process to Best Practices and understand the steps that may be required to get there.

Ad production spending has many hidden facets that can take many years to master. But just mapping the individual spend areas and tracking them holistically, project to project, helps clarify cost drivers and build awareness.