• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, May 7, 2004

When cornered by the FTC's nervous-making probe into alcohol advertising targeted to under aged drinkers, an ANA attorney pronounced to an ad trade: "Advertising can't be so targeted...there is spillover into an audience that may not be appropriate..."

Not only is this fundamentally at odds with the entire premise on which agencies wrench ad dollars out of marketers, it is, in the Internet age, simply no longer true.

Methinks the attorney was addressing beer ads on TV, but the ANA is also under pressure about alcohol ads in magazines read by both guzzling-aged adults and impressionable teens. But is the best defense "Advertising can't be so targeted?"

You would have to labor in an entirely different industry (or under a blinding delusion) to not know that the targeting promises of broadcasters are guessimates at best, and as the absent 18-24 year old men proves, can't stand up to any kind of accountability. The same is true of magazine and newspaper advertising. And direct mail and outdoor. All these media can do is verify that your ad was placed in the space you bought and pray to the God of MakeGoods that the post-delivery analysis bares some semblance to the targeting promised in the pitch.

Even in euphoric moments of over-delivery there is always nagging doubt about audience composition. There is simply no entirely accurate way to measure who saw your ad and how they reacted to it - except online. With sophisticated new tools that track users and target them through a combination of known demographic information and behavior (or navigation), web publishers have the ability to not only reach audiences with the most efficiency in media history, they can prove that ads were seen and show how consumers reacted to the offers. In some instances, audience management companies have case studies that prove behavioral targeting, absent any other form of promotion, increased inquiries, increased sales and lately, increased brand awareness and had a favorable impact on purchase intent.

And the true beauty of online advertising is that if it isn't working, you can change the creative approach in minutes and not have to write off $1 million of filming, editing, and media costs for a :30 spot that, well, sucked. The low cost of entry makes the Internet enormously attractive to all kinds of businesses that might have once thought that traditional media were their only promotional choices. Search, while far from being perfected, has shown marketers that there can be a more direct line from their messages to consumer response than wondering if anybody stayed in the room while the spot was on TV. Or happened to see that page in that section of the paper. Or read that week's issue of the magazine.

The Internet's proven accountability is putting crushing pressure on traditional media to step up and match it. But they can't so they chase each other around the palm tree like the tigers in "Little Black Sambo" trying to offload the blame onto measurement company methodologies or rationalizing away audience erosion.

While spending on Internet advertising is rising rapidly, nobody (so far) is shifting most of their media spend away from tradition, offline media. I expect the nets will have another massive upfront, cable's share will rise and who knows, maybe even magazines might perk up. Meanwhile, the Internet will get more and more sophisticated delivering just the right ad message at just the right time in the buying cycle and the tigers will go faster and faster until they turn into butter.

Then the Internet will have pancakes and butter for dinner.