• by Karl Greenberg , March 5, 2009

Max Kalehoff, vice president of marketing at online ad firm Clickable, speaking at the Brite conference on digital media at Columbia University this week, says the trend in online marketing has moved away from what might be called brand enhancement.

And, he says, media is becoming a commodity as CPM has trended down with the rise in inventory. "With a massive inventory explosion, cost is rapidly declining," he says.

"For the past hundred years we have had a media model where supply led demand. But now it's a complete role reversal--where demand leads supply, so media buyers have the power to dial up or down not based on scarcity, but more on business objectives."

Meanwhile, marketer mindsets are shifting from a "launch and wait" strategy to tracking and responding. "What's out is brand advertising and slow-impact experimental spend. What's in are goal-based ads, transparency, analytics, offers and incentives."

He says brands are not unimportant, since trust is associated with brands, but pure reliance on brand advertising will be put under a lot of scrutiny by marketers, especially this year. "One of the best practices is test and optimize. But the idea of fuzzy outcomes, latent ROI? There will be lots of scrutiny about that over the next couple of years," Kalehoff says.

If amorphous exercises in brand-building are less important, goal-based advertising is more important. "Define the goal and the economic impact, and let your advertising follow. Given current circumstances, goal-based ads will become much more commonplace. In the very short term, there will more of a pure, honest up-front value proposition in all the advertising we do."