As online ad spend continues to grow, the performance of sales teams at online media owners is in decline. That's according to the Digital Media Group of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising's second Digital Media Owners Image Survey.
It reveals that agencies' satisfaction at the overall performance of digital media owners has dropped. In April, the first time the IPA survey was carried out, the percentage of agencies that declared themselves satisfied was 43.5% (Media Week, 24 April-1 May, page 26). The latest survey, conducted in September, showed this figure had fallen to 40.3%.
When the inaugural survey came out, IPA Digital said that 50% should be the standard across the board, but only two media owners - AOL and MSN - were rated above this figure this time around, compared to five in the first edition of the survey.
Overall agency satisfaction has dropped, but it's the performance of individual companies that Nigel Gwilliam, head of digital at the IPA, is most interested in. Two of the biggest success stories came from unexpected sources in the form of AOL and Emap.
Resounding improvement
Gwilliam says: "When we did the original survey in April, Emap, ITV and Telegraph Media Group said there were internal restructures going on that would affect their results.
"Credit to Emap for a resounding improvement - it's important to register when a company realises things are going badly and that it has turned things around."
Ex-MSN executive Michael Steckler, who now heads AOL in the UK, can enjoy some good news early in his reign, after his new firm topped the survey against the odds.
At the other end of the scale, Google's video-sharing site, YouTube, came in for the most stick. Bebo was the social network and video-sharing site that agencies were most satisfied with, with MySpace second, Facebook third and YouTube a distant fourth - and bottom - of the entire survey, which included social networks for the first time.
"You have to worry about YouTube," says Gwilliam. "It has offered appalling service and, in Facebook, it has finished behind a rival that doesn't even have a UK office and has faced industry scandal regarding BNP ads."
Channel 4, top in the last survey, fell from 58.8% to 47.7% in approval ratings. Satisfaction ratings at European portal Lycos were up 10%.
"The survey has led those performing worst to evaluate what they're doing, but those at the top have rested on their laurels and dropped down," says Gwilliam.
In search, Yahoo! experienced a drastic downturn in performance as it rolled out Panama, its new paid-search platform. It now languishes 30% behind market leader Google, which fell slightly.
"MSN is improving, but Yahoo! is clearly going the wrong way. It has fallen off a cliff," says Gwilliam. "Service to agencies is suffering because of internal changes and it has become a real problem."
The rollout of Panama is the main reason for Yahoo!'s performance slump. It dropped 25%, compared to the April survey, when people were asked to agree or disagree with the statement, "the sales team demonstrates an excellent understanding of their own products".
The survey rounds off a tough few weeks for Yahoo!, which has seen four senior sales executives depart. It performed steadily in the display advertising front, however, equalling its previous position of eighth.
Satisfaction ratings
Within traditional media owners, C4 lost its top spot and ITV performed poorly again, dropping three places in the rankings to 16th. Times Online clawed itself off bottom spot and towards a satisfaction rating of 30%.
Ad networks Adviva Media and Ad2One stood out from their competitors. Adviva Media again finished third overall, while Ad2One, which relaunched this summer, rose from ninth position to fifth place.
AOL, Emap and Ad2One can take heart from an improvement in service. MSN and Adviva Media have maintained consistently high levels.
However, the digital sector as a whole should be definitely concerned.