Digital Media Innovators
This panel focused on where we're going in terms of the growing importance of digital in the media mix. Three agency executives and one network exec weighed in on their vision of where things are going.
Digital Media Innovators
Moderator: Scott Schiller, CRO, Glam.com
Panelists:
Karen Anderson: VP and Director, Media, Modem Media
David Cohen, EVP, US Directlor of Digital Communications, Universal McCann
Bob Flood, Senior VP Integrated Media Platforms, MTV Networks
Mitch Oscar, EVP, Carat Digital
Scott Schiller started with some statistics. Online: 33% time spent vs. 8 % spending. There's fear about media cannibalization. It's not the first time one medium cannibalized another: TV robbed audience from radio. We're moving from mass marketing to micromarketing.
How do we define innovation? The first banner ad was for AT&T on Hotwired. It was innovative because it was never done before. Innovation is game-changing when it's done at the right time, for the right reason, for the right application.
According to David Cohen, digital still represents under 10% of the advertising market. According to today's Ad Age, P&G spends a lot more on magazines than in online. This industry is more quantitative than qualitative. In Europe it's the opposite. Universal McCann does more qualitative.
There's a lot of underexploited media: MySpace page for film, GMail targeted ads, IM. David then showed a video about entertainment marketing for Sony Pictures. He's amazed about how self-aware consumers are about how they are being marketed to. It's not about mass-marketing, it's about giving me something relevant at the right time and place.
Bob Flood came to MTV from the agency world because MTV was dedicated to research. It's not about TV content but about playing to each. TV is the most impactful platform but complementary simultaneous usage in other platforms gives an exponential effect. MTV looks for the champions.
Mitch Oscar of Carat said that 10 years ago, tech people deployed something then came to the advertising community looking for a use since they had so much money (build it and they will come). Everybody has picked the easy/innovative things to do, now they need to do more meaningful things. The same content is being shown on TV as online (online video), then on mobisodes etc. but it's always the same thing. We need to put it together from a consumer-centric point of view.
Nobody loses their job by buying TV. Is this true? According to Bob Flood, the status quo approach will be marginalized. Real power is when media are integrated. Investment in TV is the cornerstone of a media plan but focusing only on that is nearsighted. Work done by some agencies like CP+B and R/GA, is really creative and targeted to digital. You need to differentiate between branding messaging and a call to action. Mitch Oscar quoted statistics: TV is $60 B, online $15 B. Very slow shift but next year it will be $59 billion vs. $16 billion - the tortoise and the hare?
Visibile World has a modulization technique to do targeted TV ads; MTV is doing and experiment with Cablevision on sending targeted ads to household. Spotrunner is doing something similar.
According to Karen Anderson it's about integrated. At this year's upfronts, she was learning about TV + other media. David Cohen's conclusion is that you might not get fired if you buy TV, but you will get fired if you don't have a good idea of how to use digital as well.
What are advertisers expecting from online media and what are their criteria for success?
Karen Anderson believes expectations have always been higher for digital than for TV and print in terms of what clients get out of it. It's about driving sales and dollars invested will yield a return. How it's measured is different, but we need to talk about how to measure it the same way. It's a question of integrating it all together. For David Cohen, the metrics of success are very different from client to client. It's wide open in terms of metrics.
People are not flocking to give their profiles. What kinds of methods can be used to target without being invasive? Behavioral targeting is huge and moving to TV. There's lots of data about people which advertisers have access to. Mitch Oscar joked that with Republicans in office, we have a lot of access to data via wiretapping, etc.
What's blocking us from having the online piece of the advertising pie grow bigger? David Cohen believes that one of the key issues is that creatives are creating content/messaging for those specific channels. Insight about awareness vs. purchase intent that would help. Mitch Oscar was a TV buyer for 12 years. He'd never seen a creative brief. Now that we have to connect with consumers all over the place, we need to hit the consumer all over the place, a complete experience. He refers to this as economies of scope: "here are the touchpoints, how do we reach all of them?" Karen Anderson thinks it's going to be generated from consumer insight. The best work is where a combination of media and creative people get together to determine where the consumer insights are vs. "I need a TV ad today". More innovative marketers will allow consumers to control those executions.
How can we understand consumer intent? Karen Anderson said she can't give specific examples but would say this: in situations where you take the time to do the research (focus groups, testing), with clients who are actually willing to spend the money to test and are willing to apply lessons learned, it's much more successful. You need to test and learn execution. We can do this with pretty rapid evolutions. It's a universal truth that consumers want to be in control today. David Cohen talked about taking that universal truth and applying it to the Sony Consumer Electronics/Bravia experience with a TV ad which just launched in which you can pause the ad and then pick an ending. How do you get consumers who have ad avoidance technology to engage? Mitch Oscar saw the and liked the creative-- but didn't understand how it worked for selling Bravia.
How do the agency people feel about budgets? Networks play a role in many buys. Most clients are interested in customized programs. Why are we still at 8% of total media spending? The soft underbelly is that it still is very inefficient to do business in the digital space vs. other forms of mass media. The emergence of online ad networks is an enormous aid to efficiency. If we were to go from 8 to 28% overnight, we'd be crushed. We're getting there slowly from a people and an infrastructure perspective.
What will happen next year that the industry is not ready for? Karen Anderson's wish is that it could all be in one device: productivity tools. She said "I need it in one place", there are too many gadgets: phone PDA, iPod, etc. David Cohen believes that in 2007 we'll finally see a lot of money come out of upfront and go into other media. There will be a growing emphasis on doing business 52 weeks per year, not just in the upfront. According to Mitch Oscar, next year will be a crossover of data mining and interactive TV.
