This is my statement : ‘Media agencies have the responsibility to pre-test the advertisements of their clients.’ 

Why do I believe media agencies have a responsibility in pre-testing advertisements? Not because I want to throw oil on the fire of the battle between creative and media agencies. On the contrary! I think pre-testing can help both parties to create added value for their clients.

In my view pre-testing advertisements is about measuring the capacity of  an ad in drawing and holding the attention of the target audience and in communicating the relevant message and right emotion. I think you can still agree... But why should the media agency measure this?

Because, it simply is crucial information to develop adequate media plans! Besides selecting the right media vehicles, the media planner is supposed to determine the reach and frequency level a media plan should attain in order to be effective. It is, amongst other elements, the strength of the creative material that determines the weight, and thus the budget, that is needed to be successful. Take a look at the two response curves below (screenshots from SESAME media planning software). The first case typically illustrates the response curve of a strong campaign: the target group picks up the message very fast and no heavy repetition is needed.

The second graph shows the opposite: learning is slow and the message needs to be repeated heavily.
 

       
Without pre-testing the media planner has no idea about the real performance of the advertisements and has to plan as if every ad were ‘average’. This logically results in half of the media plans over performing and the other half underperforming. By spending a small research amount on pre-testing, wasting bigger media budgets can be avoided. That is why I think media agencies should stimulate their clients to pre-test their advertisements!

But, what do you think?