January 24, 2005
another nail in the coffin…
Venture capitalist Fred Wilson has an interesting post about the future of advertising, from a technology-driven perspective:
There will come a time, and not so long from now, when advertisers will just post their ads, plus some data about them, and how they want them to perform, and how much they are willing to pay for leads generated by them, and the net will do the rest.
The standards need to develop but there are thousands of talented developers and entreprenuers out there who will drive this from concept to reality. And I’d like to invest with some of them who have the talent and vision to make this happen.
I like that idea.
Any nail in the coffin of the traditional ad agency biz model, I tend to like.
I work with a number of different companies (some on the agency side of advertising, some media providers, and some technology companies). I am convinced of two things:
1. That Madison Avenue agencies will begin in 2006 to understand that television advertising is changing because of new consumer devices, and
2. That 5 years out, agencies will be buying new forms of video advertising and buying it more like how the Internet functions — that is, one-on-one advertising, a million impressions at a time.
Since these topics are vast and my whole career is focused on that upcoming revolution, I am keeping my posting brief. But the answer to your question is: YES, the agencies will change in the upcoming years and NO, they do not “get it” in masse, yet.
The Dichotomies of Blogs
In a recent conversation on Johnnie Moore’s blog, the rhetorical question “What is a blog?” was raised by David Burn.
The big winners will be ad-bitrageurs. To understand why, read Moneyball, by Micheal Lewis.
To the disintermediator go the spoils.
As answers go, it is a very good one. For example, the classic adage: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I don’t know which half…” turns into: “half the people who were retained to generate successful sales leads for me didn’t get paid.”
The one drawback is that if you hand off the exposure and revenue generation to an external aggregator and handler, then you might find your brand in odd places.
“Come join with us in prayer in the Roman Catholic church…” on a condom, or an advert for food on a toilet roll. “Feeling emptier now, come to Sainsburys and stock up!”
So then you go to a portal that you trust and they do it for you… Oh, wait a minute, that would be Google again, wouldn’t it. Damn.
Get my drift?