When will Internet vendors learn how to service their clients? (page 1 of 2)

The figures are slowly coming in and as the year wraps up it's clear that 2005 is yet another growth year for Internet advertising in the Middle East. Furthermore, the recent showing by both agencies and vendors at the latest "Media & Marketing Show" in the Dubai Trade Centre, it may be argued that 2005 will be seen as the year Internet came of age in the Middle East.

But does this hold true for region's Internet vendors? Have the websites which have driven the early years of advertising in the Middle East still hold up to their international peers with regards to service levels and ad offerings?

It's a little confusing to answer this as one could say YES with regards to a hand-full of websites who are likely leading the way with market share, and an unfortunate NO to everyone else. And the scary part is that the "everyone else" group seems to be growing fast whilst the small YES group seems to be getting even smaller.

Ask most Media Agencies in around the world what the three most important factors are when deciding which media channel to use for a given ad campaign and you would likely get a mixed bag of answers around the following:

1 - Audience relevance and size: This of course is singularly important as all other factors pale in significance if the media channel cannot provide this key component.

2 - Ad offerings: And by this I mean more than just sizes, but prices and variety as well. Especially important in Internet advertising as accountability is maximized with regards to performance and even final business value contribution.

3 - Service: Do vendors reply in a timely fashion? Are they knowledgeable with regards to their products and pricing? Can they add value and give input to even improve a campaign or are they just there to sign the booking orders?

To quote Waseem Afzal, in an earlier article in AME's Digital Marketing:
"Campaign management is as important as planning". It is argued that only 50% of a media planner's job is actually planning the media and getting the client signoff. The rest is down to trafficking the ads, managing and optimizing the ads delivery (through the vendors), and ensuring that all elements work together to achieve the objectives set out in the tight timelines.

Now just to be clear, that remaining 50% is a lot of work. It requires coordination across 20+ companies and involves up to 40+ individuals all working together to achieve this common goal. Add in the fact that we are all managing many campaigns at the same time and you have nothing short of bedlam ready to break out at any given opportunity. Clearly if a vendor is switched on and understands what a mess this can be, there is an opportunity here to be had by offering superior service levels to their advertisers and agencies to ease this process. As long as they have traffic, their service could mean the difference between 2% and 20% market share of online ad spend.

More revealing is if you ask most professionals in our industry what the biggest differentiator is amongst vendors they will likely answer their service. Yet I mentioned earlier that this is the one biggest area of problem across 95% of vendors operating in our region. For that sharp vendor out there, this means great service can be an even bigger opportunity to success.

So what are the major areas that an Internet vendor can offer that differentiating service to build relationships with advertisers and agencies alike? As always there is likely too many to answer but if you concentrate just on the following you will see quick results (forgive me if I'm being obvious but you'd be surprised):

1.