• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, September 21, 2014

Oh, but wait, says know-it-all Sir Martin Sorrell. “It’s a temporary phenomenon. Our view is after a year or two it will change. I question whether clients will be able to apply technology successfully.” What's Sir Martin talking about? The recent shift of programmatic ad buying from agency trading desks to client-side, in-house media-buying operations. Well, of course he would say that. After all, clients are dumb and agencies are smart. How could a client even dream of effectively managing its own programmatic buying when there are so many smart ad agencies out there so much better equipped to do so? Wow, I'd love to be as smart as Martin Sorrell -- and be able to predict with certainty the future of all things advertising. Alas, that isn't the case. And the man does have a track record. He was down on the Publicis Omnicom thing and look where that ended up. 

ZenithOptimedia, ever the predictors of advertising futures, is out with its latest updates on where the ad world is headed. And it's not as rosy a picture as previously shared. Taking a look at the next three years, the Publicis Groupe entity lowered its ad-spend growth predictions for 2014 from 5.5% to 5.3%. For 2015, it looks like growth will be 5.3% instead of the previously forecast 5.7%. And for 2016, it appears growth will be 5.9% instead of 6.1%. Oh, well. They are declines, but the declines are not too steep. Maybe we'll be okay in the end.

Damn, sometimes you just want to go back to the simpler days of Don Draper. Back when an ad was and ad and native advertising would probably have been 60's slang for streaking down Madison Avenue. Never in a million years would the Don Drapers of the 1960's have to deal with shenanigans like Google's DoubleClick accidentally serving millions of "infected" ads to millions of people on major sites like Last.fm that dumped Zemot malware all over the place. I mean, really. Just that last sentence would have caused Don Draper to wonder whether or not he was in a different country speaking a different language. My, how times have changed. Just a few keystrokes and disaster strikes. Do we really have a handle on this Internet advertising thing?

Ad agency Gigantic thinks it has all the ideas you need. The agency has launched a program whereby it will provide a brand with 100 ideas over the course of 5 presentations that will occur in a ten-month period. The cost? $100,000. But they want you to know that's only $1,000 per idea. In their own words, a bargain. They explain the offering further, saying: "We’re not proposing that we execute anything, unless you want us to. And we’d love to talk about that. But, certainly, you might execute these ideas yourself. Or pass them over to another trusted advisor. Or you can hire those guys in Brooklyn that only write code. Whatever. What we are proposing is we get you what you need most -- new ideas. Not just any ideas, but ideas rooted in a specific, defined strategy that will challenge your team, grow your business, and build your brand." Any takers?

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