Barbara, you hit the nail on the head, as usual.

How about this:
Most of the stuff on most of the channels most of the time isn't worth watching.

One minor correction - In the last sentence, the author mentions the "Olympians" who competed in the Paralympics.
Olympians don't actually compete in the Paralympics; Paralympians do. And if you ask the athletes who participate they will tell you they are "Proud Paralympians." While there are certainly a lot of similarities, the Paralympic movement is completely separate from the Olympics, run by the International Paralympic Committee.

Not trying to be picky here - and I'm thrilled to know that people were watching the Paralympics! The adaptive sports community has been working hard for decades to be recognized on the world stage.

The entire issue of why our brains block ads (and other communications) and by the way, why we misinterpret a lot of the stuff that manages to come into our brains is simple: Cognitive Dissonance. I wrote about it a few weeks ago as being one of the major reasons why Donald Trump's fans were not swayed by facts that contradicted 90% of what he said. Here's the link: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cognitive-dissonance-trojan-horses-donald-how-democrats-marcelo-salup?trk=mp-author-card

here's the link: http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/b2fc974d1d/between-two-ferns-with-zach-galifianakis-hillary-clinton?_cc=__d___&_ccid=b63074e9bda30f47

Fantastic news. Congratulations for the announcement. As the article states, I think you'll find a line in the sand drawn with this issue that will end up grouping private agencies on one side and public ones on the other. This is all looking like a poorly handled recall - with the 4As claiming "nothing wrong here!" and the market in strong disagreement. 

One of the big questions about programmatic TV today is if the advanced targeting achieved by the new data sets more than compensates for the incremental cost. In other words, to what degree are the older tools failing? The new data sets look really great, especially when connected TV data is combined with data from the larger data vendors, but if the incremental efficiency in reach is 8-10% (which are numbers I've seaen quoted by programmatic TV vendors) and the incremental cost is actually much higher than that, what do we have? As poor as the current tools are, the lack of addressable inventory means we are getting a better index. That's great, but the cost of a better index can't be very much for it to make economic sense. As you say, it's early days, which means it's also the most exciting time to be involved. For those who thrive on change, it feels a little like the early days of digital. I do believe you will see acceleration in change in how TV is planned and bought. The driver short term will not be automation for all the issues you point out. The driver will be the evolution of using new data sets and first party CRM data for better index targeting assuming the economics get in line. The other driver will be the rapid evolution of advanced analytics that will show TV's power relative to digital and what's driving revenue and market share within the TV buy. This last piece is happening outside of the TV and digital ad tech ecosystems as it is more top down, but it is absolutely getting better and better and could possibly trump the ciurrent advanced targeteing or components of it. We'll see. 

She will be critized no matter what she says or does. HRC needs to back tRump into a corner with his own words (no doubt she is practicing) to emphasize his goal as dictator. It will ultimately be up to Lester Holt to do his job unlike that squeek, Lauer. PS: You've been busy, Barbara.

Standard Bill Clinton playbook

1) Assume the public are idiots, especially outside of NYC.(Hillary stepped it up a notch with the Deplorables)

2) Deny everything.

3) Attribute facts to a right wing conspiracy, or Putin

4) Use bribes and threats to control the media .. and I quote you Barbara.. "Clinton camp had the ease and sense of humor to approve."

5)  When lies and cover up don't work anymore, make light of the damaging truth ... as in Bill Clinton on the cover of Cigar Afcianado. .

The marketing of a candidate is no different from a pet rock or Shamwow, except that the Government ha's no jurisdiction over outright fraud in political campaigns .. 

I wish they could talk Trump into appearing on "Between Two Ferns". Galifianakis could give Trump a Fox-like softball interview where he doubles down on Trump's most racist, sexist, xenophobic comments. Trump would either have to vigorously agree or back down. Either way it would be a win for sanity. 

Excellent as always: funny, detailed and ultimately reflecting on the broadest issues. Thanks.

If you want the story to be whole, visit and interview the people who are in the sales field and review the process they have to endure to sell and bring in the money. When 50% of field time is spent on spinning paper work as in not just rearranging the deck chairs but adding more on the Titanic, sinking is predictable.

The more ads, the more inviting ad blocking is.

Charles, while it is true that some cable channels go in very heavily for promotional spots, taking TV in general and the broadcast networks and stations in particular you will find that program content still represents about 65-70% of their content and this average includes daytime and fringe evening which are very heavily commercialized. The figure for primetime is considerably lower than the average. Also, if you weight the ad and promo "load" by the amount of viewing in the daypart or to the program genre, the proportion that is content rises.

Like everyone else, I am often frustrated by the amount of non- program content I encounter on certain channels and in non-prime time periods---the cable news channels are prime examples of this. My solution is to watch something else more often. But it's not fair to tar all of TV with the same brush.

Given the state of the nation, most Americans are ignorant a majority of the perils associated with the almighty Internet....

Not surprising, since Google is the gate that most people use to access sites - more navigational than "referral", especially for brand search of course. What is more valuable is to understand the indirect stimulus that lead to the google search, on or offline, paid or organic (which we do our luxury clients).

Thanks Ed! We should compare notes.

Again, to me there is narrative about our industry that every data point is bent to support, however awkward that reshaping turns out to be.

Using the logic embedded in the headline for this store, an equivalent story about politics would be to say that your indvidual vote is worth less today than it was worth in 1996, because population growth has made your vote a smaller percentage of the overall population than you represented in 1996.

This is not a story about how viewers are abandoning television content - in fact, the data supports a reading that the amount of content being provided in the traditional television space is increasing. There are a variety of technologies that are collectively making it much easier to establish a television network, source content for it, distibute that content to viewers, and sell and service advertising on that network -- thus the number of available networks is growing.

There is also a connection back to a body of research about consumer choice that shows, in general, that consumers usually only consume a fraction of the options provided to them, even with the number of options in a given category increase.

Most importantly, in rush to celebrate another VICTORY FOR DIGITAL!, we miss who is truly imperiled by this data - the cable and dish companies.  It's not that consumers are abandoning video/television content -- it's that they are increasingly not seeing the value in paying for 200 channels when they only have time or interest in viewing 10% of those channels.  Put another way, as soon as consumers can purchase those 20 networks that they do view separately, they will do that.  If cable and dish companies fail to change their models to provide that, then consumers will go and view those 20 channels through some other means. 

The narrative that is in the marketplace about the falling subscriber numbers is that consumers are rejecting television content -- but what they are rejecting is value proposition of the cable and dish providers.  Consumers prefer watching television content on television screens - but they don't like paying for literally hundreds of channels that they do not and will not view.   Thus, they are willing to accept a sub-par viewing experience in exchange for lower acquition cost.

The data in the article, to me, is clear that if a cable/dish company offered consumers the opportunity to handpick 20 of their favorite channels and priced it accordingly -- say at $35/month -- hundreds of thousands of subcribers would return overnight.  The window, however, for this to happen is closing rapidly.

An excellent report, Karlene. I've been saying many of the same things for several years so it's good to see that a more realistic and less blatently promotional evaluation of "programmatic" buying for TV is taking root.

Did he forget to dye his white sheets ?

Like Trump Univeristy.

Cronisar. Measurement McDonald's uses (used) for their buys. No one knew what that was including others in the agency or franchisees. Disenfranchisement. 

Thanks for the insights but I think its great to be a publisher today.  You are right there are a lot of challenges for publishers in today's world and its hard to drive revenue.  Especially when Google and Facebook take 85% of every digital dollar spent.  However, if you think like a marketer, control your costs and figure out how to get a piece of the 85% spent with Google and Facebook, yoiu can have a very profitable content business.  It's just not going to be a billion unicorn like they use to be back in the day.