• by July 13, 2004

Chicago-Ad:Tech. Here in the city by the lake, more than 1,500 people gathered at the Sheraton Hotel & Towers to hear from marketing experts, learn about new interactive ad and media tools from some 60 exhibitors, and trend forecasts that impact the interactive sector. The show hasn't been held in Chicago in a few years, so there was a palpable energy and a fabulous representation of folks from small and large media shops, as well as consumer package goods and auto marketers.

Speaking of trends and forecasts, Geoff Ramsey, CEO of eMarketer, offered an entertaining and typically thorough overview of interactive industry trends yesterday. You may have heard some of these before, but it doesn't hurt to keep them close at hand. Ramsey's five mega media and marketing trends:

*The consumer is in control. Period.
*The consumer is skeptical and increasingly resistant to advertising.
*Media fragmentation is pervasive.
*Mass reach is being supplanted by niche audiences that required improved methods of targeting.
*C-level execs are being held to new levels of accountability.

Ramsey's eMarketer aggregates data on the media, marketing and tech universes from a variety of sources--Forrester, Yankee, Nielsen//NetRatings, comScore, Jack Myers, Universal McCann, and many others. If you feel as though you've heard a few of his data points before, it's probably because you have. But his delivery is entertaining and lively and it really forces a wakeup call. The fact that several sources come up with different analyses of the same topic is all the more invigorating. As Ramsey says, "you have to consider the source" and must weigh the differences.

For example, The Myers Report found 85 percent of PVR (personal video recorder) owners skip at least some ads, while Ipsos-Reid's figure was 75 percent. Why? Not sure why.

The Yankee Group finds that 59 percent of consumers feel that most advertising has little relevance to them. Now what can we take from this? The fact that advertising and marketing must be relevant. How do we achieve relevance? Often, by targeting the appropriate messages at the appropriate times. Ramsey cited an example of Clear Channel's recent deployment of instantaneously changeable billboards targeted by daypart, and in-store ads, perhaps in a particular aisle of the grocery store. And then there's Google's Gmail, which targets ad messages based on the content of someone's email. Ick.

Ramsey pointed out an area where there is divergence among researchers and media forecasters--total U.S. media spending growth . For example, for 2005 TNS/CMR projects 9.3 percent growth to eMarketer's 7.7 percent. Universal McCann's Robert Coen forecast 7.3 percent, while Standard & Poor's weighed in at 7.0 percent.

Emarketer puts online ad spending growth in the U.S. in 2004 at 25.2 percent, while Forrester says it's more like 22.5 percent. Piper Jaffray puts it at 21.0 percent, McCann at 20 percent, TNS/CMR at 15.8 percent and Zenith at 15 percent. And that's just a handful of sources.

All in all, the forecasts are all over the place but it's clear that Web spending has nowhere to go but up given that $57.4 billion is spent in the U.S. on TV media versus $7.3 billion on the Web.