Friday, March 29

Airef asks Manueco to change the advertising law and reproaches him for investing 60% in the written press, the one that has lost the most audience


The Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF) suggests to the president of the Junta de Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, that he change the Institutional Advertising Law -something that was planned in the previous legislature when the government partner was Ciudadanos and that was forgotten after the coalition with Vox- and reproaches him for allocating 60% of spending to the written press, something “little justified based on audience criteria.” “Spending in this medium remains stable over time,” he observes, “despite being the medium that has lost the most audience in recent years, in all age segments and in all headlines” . The report, which was published this Tuesday on the Airef website, analyzes the Board’s institutional advertising management between 2014 and 2019, a period in which it invested between 10 and 12 million a year. Specifically, Airef makes 19 proposals to improve management.

The report states the importance of institutional advertising in the media system because it is a “relevant instrument for any administration” due to its potential to contribute to improving the effectiveness of its public policies. Although spending represents a modest part of the total for each government (in Castilla y León it does not reach 0.01%), in many countries the administrations as a whole are the main investor in this activity year after year. According to Airef, public spending on advertising “is frequently the subject of discussion due to its effects on the media system and because it can end up compromising the plurality of information.”

Airef analyzes institutional advertising in Castilla y León around five axes: governance and planning of needs; contracting criteria and mechanisms; the procedures for evaluating its effectiveness; transparency and accountability; and the destination of the funds. The first four axes are also analyzed in the cases of the General State Administration (AGE) and in the autonomous communities (CCAA) that have legislated on institutional advertising and, from the analysis as a whole, proposals are extracted from each one of them. the axes to reinforce this public policy in the autonomous community.

AIReF’s evaluation shows that the importance of institutional advertising has been “the main factor that has determined the regulatory reforms of this public policy instrument in Castilla y León in recent years.” The effectiveness of advertising as a public policy instrument has also been another of the elements taken into account in these reforms. The analysis of the regulatory changes from 2009 to 2021 “shows interest in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of institutional advertising and reveals how the Board has tried to balance these requirements with other types of criteria, although the combination of both at all times It has been able to make it difficult to make it clear to what extent other purposes are guaranteed, such as reaching the public in the most effective and efficient way possible”.

Strengthen the audience criteria

In order to improve efficiency, Airef proposes a review of the model of distribution of powers differentiated by media and a greater professionalization of the management of institutional advertising, in particular the design of creativity and its evaluation. It is also necessary to draw up a more detailed advertising plan, which includes a more precise description of the scope of the problem that you want to address or correct, the target population you want to reach, and the media and media most adequate to convey the message to the target population. Additionally, Airef proposes to reform the Institutional Advertising Law, “in order to incorporate clear and common criteria for the distribution of spending among the media for the different ministries and also specific measures”, such as the publication of a report submitted to parliamentary control, which allows guaranteeing the efficiency and transparency of the management of advertising spending.

In addition, it proposes to clarify the relative importance of the objectives in each campaign, in order to be able to design an adequate media plan in each case, establish the appropriate metrics and evaluate their compliance. In addition, it suggests reinforcing the application of the audience criterion in the allocation of campaign funds between supports and the media, taking into account the territorial, sociodemographic or thematic affinity dimension necessary depending on the target population of each campaign. analysis of governance and planning of institutional advertising needs, Airef has verified that only in Castilla y León the campaigns that are included in digital media are managed predominantly from the Ministry of the Presidency, even though they are sectoral campaigns of other ministries, but does not assume the management of the rest of the supports (written press, radio, television), except for specific campaigns of this Ministry.

Campaigns whose impact is not measured

In most cases, the justification for the need for campaigns is “quite generic”, without setting clear or quantifiable objectives. These absences make it difficult to do any of the later phases of campaign planning, measuring impact, and even assessing whether the campaign is being implemented properly. It also detects that “unlike what happens in other communities, where there is more homogeneity”, there is a lot of heterogeneity in terms of the legal instrument through which the purchase of space in the media is contracted to disseminate institutional advertising, since it is decides in each of the different ministries and, in some cases, even at the management center level.

It has been since 2020 when the hiring criteria for institutional advertising in Castilla y León have evolved, especially in the regulations of that year, which have been clarifying them “in terms of audience and territorial balance while introducing new objectives and criteria for institutional advertising” that recognize the importance that this has for the media, but that can sometimes limit the effectiveness and efficiency in the transmission of the institutional message.

Airef affirms that in Castilla y León, as is also the case in other autonomous communities, the vast majority of campaigns are not evaluated. In the case of the Board, it evaluates “some of its most expensive campaigns, but without publishing these evaluations.” This is the case of the evaluation carried out in a large-scale campaign such as ‘Las Edades del Hombre’ and in a smaller one such as ‘Don’t Do’, which yields the same conclusions as the general analysis: generic definition of the objectives and groups of campaigns, concentration of spending on print media, widespread distribution among the most widely distributed media, and little or no impact evaluation. On the other hand, the absence of professionals with experience in the evaluation of institutional advertising in the ministries has not helped to start evaluation initiatives.

Regarding the transparency of the Board, on its Open Data portal it publishes the annual planning of advertising, including that of 2022. A section appears where the amounts allocated to each medium by each department between 2014 and 2021 are collected. The data is available in treatable format, although they are heterogeneous, as they are codified differently from each department, and “they do not appear sufficiently disaggregated to allow knowing exactly how the expenditure made among the media is distributed.”

Digital and radio advertising, with no relationship between diffusion and spending

In the last section on institutional advertising in Castilla y León, Airef analyzes the information provided by the Junta on institutional advertising to try to determine how investment in advertising is distributed among the media. In addition to this note about the written press, which takes 60% of the budget despite its clear decline, a smaller amount is observed that is distributed more or less generally among the other media. In the case of digital media and radio, “the positive relationship between dissemination and spending is also weak” and on television, spending is low and is due to a limited number of advertising campaigns. In fact, the report states that from the analysis of the diffusion of the community media, it can be concluded that “the media with the greatest penetration among the youngest (up to 35 years of age) are digital media, followed by television. Individuals between the ages of 35 and 64 show a predilection for television, followed closely by digital media. While in those over 65 years of age, television and radio are the media with the greatest penetration”. For this reason, it is proposed to reinforce the application of the audience criteria in the allocation of campaign funds based on the target population of each campaign.

In order to know the distribution of spending on institutional advertising, it is not enough to know who spends it and how they do it, but for Airef “it is essential to know who the recipients of this spending are, specifically among which groups and media are distribute the investment in institutional advertising”. Thus, it detects that there are three media groups that are the main recipients of this expense: Edigrup (which a couple of years ago passed from the hands of José Luis Ulibarri, convicted in Gürtel, to those of his children), Promecal and Vocento in front of to the category of others that encompasses almost 300 small-sized media. In the analysis period, these three groups hold a very high joint market share, close to 60%.

Most of the media that are part of these three groups are those that receive the highest income from institutional advertising in Castilla y León. The first five positions correspond to the written press and are held by the media El Norte de Castilla, with revenues close to 8 million euros during the analyzed period, El Mundo de Castilla y León, with earnings of 5.7 million, ABC CyL, the Diario de León and the Diario de Burgos, with income ranging between 2.5 and 3.2 million. The five belong to the Vocento, Promecal or Edigrup groups. In the following positions appear various radio stations, Cadena SER, Onda Cero and COPE and later other newspapers. Airef not only reflects in graphs the economic allocation they receive. Also the evolution of its audience, and points out: “there are media that enjoy a wide diffusion in which significant spending is made. However, a set of media with reduced diffusion is also identified in which a heterogeneous distribution of spending is carried out”. Or what is the same: the low number of readers that some newspapers have is not taken into account. According to the Junta de Castilla y León, this 2014-2019 report is hardly related to the management of Mañueco, who assumed the presidency of Castilla y León since the last six months of 2019. From 2020 to 2022, they say, the written press has passed to take that 60% of the institutional advertising budget to 42%.





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