• Adotas, Tuesday, April 18, 2006 10:36 AM

The TV shift to online is upon us, and the networks' collective apprehension is evident in the way they've cautiously dipped their toes into what is--undoubtedly, according to blogger Kenneth Musante--a vast ocean of opportunity. But it's not just that TV advertising has become less effective in the face of the new medium's measurability. TV itself is dying, Musante says, because today's consumers are no longer content to sit around and wait for their favorite shows to come on. Soon, time-shifting will be the norm, people will consume media completely on their terms, and all content will be distributed over Internet Protocol. With today's technology, advertisers should be able to serve appropriate video ad segments in accordance with users' viewing habits (demonstrated behaviors), the manner in which they found the video and what the nature of the content is (contextual relevance), and basic geographic and demographic information. As Musante says, a targeted video advertisement delivered via IP is worth more per second than a thirty-second ad spot delivered to a broad, untargeted audience. But surely, these ads won't be sold for the severely inflated prices TV spots are sold for now. If anything, the age of mass marketing is dying, which means brand marketers have to work harder to reach smaller sets of people in a variety of different ways. Audiences are fragmenting and consuming media on different devices, which dilutes reach through any one medium. What negative effect this could have on Madison Avenue remains to be seen, but it will certainly have an even greater negative effect on the cumbersome, bureaucratic TV industry.

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