• by March 1, 2001

If your world revolves around online advertising, this year's AAAA Media Conference in New Orleans makes it very clear you should open your eyes and face the fact that online media is just a tiny part of the advertising pie.

Most of the show's content is focused on problems facing broadcast, print and out-of-home advertisers -people with real media budgets - and it's a humbling experience to those of us who no longer refer to the Internet as a "new medium." Yes, to most of the people here, our 10-year-old Internet is indeed a "new medium."

Sure, there's talk of the Internet, of convergence and of integration, but walking around the trade show floor it's clear all three of the above concepts are a long way away from becoming truly hot issues with this audience.

The attendees are more concerned with things like TV and radio ad clutter, the dangers of consolidation of media ownership, the threat of TiVo, the unethical behavior of local TV stations who run promotional events during sweeps periods, employee retention in the face of dot-com salaries, and what in the world will the upcoming TV upfront season bring?

Not that those questions are getting answered here. That part is very similar to a typical Internet conference.

Speaking of which, the Jupiter show in New York today kicked off with a keynote presentation by AOL-Time Warner's Bob Pittman, who said that the main reason a lot of advertisers either fail, or don't do as well as they'd like when it comes to online advertising is that a lot of them aren't taking advantage of the web as the only vehicle that can do all three phases of advertising commerce - branding, information, and sales.

Companies spend a good amount of their money on branding, and while branding is important, Pittman feels that the money would be better spent on information and sales, because the Internet is actually better at those phases than branding.

The information phase, the step where the consumer gets to investigate and examine the product or company being advertised, is something no other medium can offer with the same amount of magnitude that the net can.

Pittman said that one can't click on a television ad and go straight to information about the product, but with the Internet that's exactly what the consumer does.