It was interesting to see this week that once again Specific Media topped the IPA’s online media owner survey in terms of ‘overall satisfaction’.

Specific have been a consistent presence at the top of the IPA rankings for three years and even when they were formerly known as Adviva in 2007, they were ranked 3rd – the first year the IPA ran the survey.

Their recipe for success is simple – they look after their clients.

I’ve been in the media game for a while now – 14 years this year and had it drummed into me in my first few months of employment at the DM agency, Brann, how important it was to manage clients properly. I’ve always remembered this and have taken it with me to all the agencies I worked at before setting up Navigate Digital in 2007. First class account management is now central to our proposition and something I hope all of our clients appreciate.

Anyway, I digress. We work closely with Specific Media – yes they have a good proposition that delivers results, but the people they employ and the way they manage our (and clearly other clients) business is excellent. They listen, are proactive, care about the results they deliver and most importantly understand digital.

It’s not rocket science but it seems that with the exception of a few, media owners still haven’t fully grasped what good account management means. Invariably it’s the little things that go a long way – challenging briefs, being innovative, being proactive and something that very few media owners do – supplying post campaign analysis and feedback (as opposed to taking a budget and running).

We’re in an industry that is still comparatively young to the world of press, radio and cinema – but given that digital is now the biggest medium in the country, one would expect the standards of those whose work in it to be exemplary.  However it seems that many media owners have perhaps focused too much on staffing up quickly with junior sales teams that simply don’t know how to sell to or manage clients properly. (As a point of note, it was interesting to see that four companies that showed the most improvement were cross platform media owners – Haymarket, The Guardian, ITV.com and IPC Media).

Hopefully this survey should act as a wake-up call for big brands such as MSN (now Microsoft Advertising) and News International who are bottom of the ‘overall satisfaction’ league table. In 2007 MSN topped the overall satisfaction survey – but this year came bottom. According to Brand Republic a Microsoft spokesman said the company was “committed to improving customer experience”, pointing to the appointment of Ravleen Beeston as its new head of account services group. Ms Beeston certainly appears to have her work cut out.

The IPA media owner survey is a really interesting insight into how media owners are perceived within the industry and is a piece of research that should be taken seriously. In 2008 Marketing Week ran an article with the headline “Online media owners are failing to satisfy media planning and buying agencies”. It seems that 3 years on the same old problems exist – just with different vendors. Admittedly someone will always be last in the rankings of a survey such as this but by listening to what agencies have to say and sticking to some basic rules of account management there is no reason why overall standards within the industry shouldn’t improve.