The MOST survey was released on Friday … and researcher Brad Aigner from Freshly Ground Insights already has 50 completed surveys in hand.
As the man who has conducted the MOST Awards research from the get-go, marking a 13-year run in 2025, Aigner is delighted.
“I think maybe people realised that they missed the MOST Awards last year, you know? Well, the feedback I’ve got was that it was much missed. Got a lot of calls to that effect,” he says.
As Aigner points out, the MOST Awards is the only advertising and media awards event in Africa (if not the world) in which media owners and media agencies rate each other in terms of performance. It’s is a peer-to-peer survey in which everyone from CEOs to junior account directors’ responses carry equal weighting.
Credibility and value
“I’ll just put it on the table: the MOST Awards have a huge amount of credibility and and value . from the industry itself. They have built it up to be a really, really valuable thing, and they use it in their marketing,” says Aigner.
“To be rated best in a category or the best-of-the-best benefits the companies from a business perspective,” he adds. “It’s a very serious business kind of tool that you can use.”
As always, a MOST stakeholder focus group of highly skilled media professionals was consulted ahead of the survey being released. Categories were interrogated in light of the ongoing changes within media businesses.
To that end, an additional seventh category has been introduced to the 2025 edition of the MOST Awards, the Effective Use of Data and Insights. It applies to media agencies and media owners.
The data category
“It talks to leveraging audience data. For example, reachability, behavioural patterns to match advertiser objectives with the right inventory and segments, persuasive sales narratives grounded in campaign performance data, audience insights, and category trends demonstrate value to clients,” he explains.
“You know, in the digital age that we’re in now, data and and being able to measure campaign performance is a big thing,” Aigner adds. “Data provides clients with tailored insights and transparent reporting that highlight delivery, engagements and ROI, uses industry and client specific data to uncover challenges and opportunities, enabling more strategic media solutions, and so on.”
Then the print category now combines newspapers and magazines. The fact is that there is only one major magazine publisher “of substance” left in South Africa, Media24.
“We’d have had a magazine category with pretty much only one company in the running,” says Aigner. “The focus group agreed it made more sense to bring back the print category.”
Availability and engagement
FGI also responded to a call from media owners to include an extended criteria for agencies, availability and engagement. “It’s all around that age old criticism that media owners have, that their media agency partners are difficult to get hold of and don’t engage… except ahead of MOST Awards season,” he quips.
“Media owners wanted that criteria to work harder. It includes things things like responding promptly to media seller queries, ensuring smooth work, avoiding delays, maintaining consistent engagement through scheduled check ins, briefing sessions, follow-up,” he explains. “Owners want briefing sessions, clear direction, constructive feedback, etcetera, etcetera.”
After a year’s absence, Aigner believes the tweaks to this year’s MOST Awards are sufficient but that more ringing changes will be made next year, an approach agreed to by the stakeholders’ focus group. This could look to influencer marketing and programmatic platforms, just as an example.
The rush to complete surveys
Meanwhile, the rush is on to get surveys in before the 25 July deadline. Aigner’s call to respondents is to be fair and honest in their responses, and to judge the work and relationships over the period of a year.
Of course, the individual categories are a vital part of the MOST Awards. Survey respondents are asked to nominate their choice of industry leaders in the various categories. These are then counted and assessed by an objective chairperson. Agencies and owners have no idea who will finally be awarded top honours.
Aigner hopes to receive over 500 responses to the 2025 survey. “My estimation is that we’ve got between 800 and a thousand people in the whole industry actively involved in the buying or selling of media, so getting a 500 is a 50 to 60% response rate, which is which is huge,” he says.
He’s not being overly optimistic. Response rates to the MOST Survey are high. “We’ve been very lucky to get those high response rates over the years, but it’s because the industry supports the Awards so well. They’ve got gravitas, credibility.”
The link to the survey is here.
For any queries, contact brada@fgi.co.za
For advertising and sponsorship queries in The Media’s October magazine, in which the results will be announced, contact Tarin-Lee Watts wattst@arena.africa.
