Looking into the Crystal Ball
It is rare that a session on “The Future of Advertising” actually yields useful insight. Fortunately, Tuesday’s panel on this very topic was one of the best in recent memory. Perhaps it has something to do with the all-star cast: Ted McConnell, Interactive Innovation Director of P&G, Stuart Elliot, Columnist with the New York Times, David Rosenblatt, CEO of Doubleclick and Peter Naylor, SVP Media Sales for NBC Universal, all moderated by Drew Ianni. And perhaps it is also due to the fact that these speakers raised more questions about dealing with our legacy systems than they proffered predictions.
The mere existence of digital legacy problems suggests that enough time has passed that we feel qualified to speak about the interactive sector with historical context within the larger advertising industry. A quick look at pre-history suggests that the decision by large conglomerates to separate the media buying function from the agencies lacked foresight. The move, meant to consolidate and commoditize media, put these players at a disadvantage when the digital revolution gave birth to a myriad of new platforms available today. As a result, many more players jumped in to fill the gaps.
Today the burden of coordination lies with the advertiser, such as P&G. For firms like DoubleClick, this also means that there are many disparate silos that need to be bridged. For publishers such as NBC Universal, it raises new questions, such as “Is a 30 second pre-roll appropriate for a 2 minute clip? And “should media be bought around a program, such as “The Office,” regardless of the platform from which consumers choose to experience it?
The advertiser, McConnell reminds us so sagely, must not get caught up in how the various media firms should duke it out. Rather, we should all be focused on wrapping our efforts around consumers, and perhaps even letting them determine marketing spend though an Attention Economy model. For the futurists out there, imagine a massive micro-payment structure allowing consumers to monetize their attention as an alternative to traditional marketing budgeting. Whither the CMO?
