Media Perspective: It's time for media agencies to stand up to the auditors.

In an industry where the new-business machine revolves largely around agencies' media buying performance versus auditors' pool prices, principles can be pretty hard to find.

No matter what they claim about added value services or 'exciting' research tools, with more than 80 per cent of advertisers using the services of media auditors to monitor relative buying performance, the fate of the agencies usually rests on the discounts they can offer clients against media procurement.

So, of necessity, new-business pitches are a dirty business and, as the influence of the procurement directors and media auditors has increased, so has the importance of the agencies' finance directors.

In order to offer the levels of discount required to attract prospects on the auditors' books, agencies are forced to indulge in creative accounting with existing business. In short, the level of discount obtained by one client from a media owner is usually sacrificed in order to bring new clients through the door. The rationale is that having a healthy new-business record is indicative of a buzz about an agency and will attract further new accounts. And, at the end of the day, as long as the books balance, in the form of the agency deal with the media owner, who is really going to notice?

Well, therein lies the problem. Because the influence of the auditors is now so pervasive that they act as gatekeepers to the majority of clients, they ...