Digital media has fragmented audiences across many channels, making it difficult for governments to reach mass audiences with their messages. However, digital media also provides solutions through techniques like audience buying, which uses people's online behaviors to precisely target them. Governments can now reach specific audiences more efficiently and cost-effectively than traditional media, while also improving the effectiveness of their communications. Audience buying allows governments to engage citizens with important information at the right time and place to influence decisions and achieve policy goals.

1. Digital Media for Governments:
Reaching Audiences in an Age of
Fragmentation and Austerity
Rob Norman Chief Digital Officer, GroupM Global

2. 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,digitalmediaisboththechallengeandthesolution.Byharnessing
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

3. Digital Media in the Age of Austerity
As 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).

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

5. 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 communicators
Online 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
serveadvertstopeopleonline(seebelow).Thecombinationof‘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.

6. 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.
Audiencebuyingusesbehaviourratherthancontexttotargetaudiences.
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

7. 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 goods
In 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.

8. Digital Media: ‘Big Data’ in practice
We 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

9. 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 Norman
Chief Digital Officer
GroupM 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).
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