• by Bill McCloskey , December 18, 2001

In the last month or so there have been a number of reports and studies released that do not bode well for advertising agencies that are still stuck in head-in-the-sand mode when it comes to online.

A recent study from UCLA indicated that when people go online for the first time, their consumption of other media such as Television, Radio, and Print goes down. And it keeps going down the longer they are online. Add to this fact some recent Internet Audience numbers: October had the biggest increase in people coming online for 2001. 2001 by itself, has seen the aggregate Internet population rise 15% or to over 115 million people – the largest number ever. And although there are reports of churn in the Broadband sector, the aggregate number keeps going up, reaching an all time high of 21 million people last month. And most of that increase comes from home users. In fact, over 60% of US homes are currently online.

The fact is that more people are coming on line every day and when they do, their consumption of other media goes down and keeps going down. On a micro level, I can see it here at my home. While my 8-year-old daughter is still camped out in front of the Disney Channel and Fox Family, my 11-year-old son goes straight to the computer, and on to the Internet, when he comes home from school. And so are his friends judging by the sounds his computer makes when his “IM” buddies enter and exit his virtual chat room.

Traditional agencies have got to start writing themselves a New Year’s Resolution - “Get it right in 2002” - if they want to start satisfying their clients, and it’s not going to be easy.

First there is the language barrier. An unfortunate residual of the Internet boom is that “Interactive” agencies grew up, populated by employees with little or no experience in traditional advertising. Everything about buying and selling media online does not jive with the traditional world. Nobody buys GRPs online. Everyone buys GRPs offline. Traditional media buyers can’t make sense and justify the media they buy online. It just doesn’t compute. It has gotten so bad that I know one agency that has pitched a potential client whose whole business is online without including an online component in the pitch!

And the media properties haven’t helped. As I’ve written before, it’s the Wild West still for online media properties. They are still debating what constitutes an “impression”. Talk about fiddling when Rome is burning. To paraphrase a recent remark from one advertiser: “I can spend $100 million on television in about one minute, and yet I can’t spend $50,000 online in a month.” Media properties have to write themselves a New Year’s resolution: “Get it right in 2002.” You can’t wall your self off from the traditional world: you need to speak the language of the traditional agency.

And technology vendors and media properties have got to stop going around the agencies, trying to pitch directly to the advertisers. They need to write themselves a New Year’s Resolution to “ Get it right in 2002”. To a degree you can’t blame vendors and media properties when the agency is often seen as a roadblock to getting business done. But this is self-defeating in the long run. The agency is in charge of creating the overall strategy for the brand. If a vendor or media property goes directly to the client, they might get a campaign but they stand the chance of alienating that agency for future work and they guarantee that the online component will not be integrated into the strategy of the general campaign. Isolation equals death.

Agencies need to understand online for their own survival. Media Properties need to speak the language of Agencies for their own survival. Vendors need to work with Agencies for their own survival. This is a symbiotic relationship. We are all in this together, and - believe me - we better “Get it Right in 2002” if we all want to be here in 2003.

-- Bill McCloskey is Founder and CEO of Emerging Interest, an organization dedicated to educating the Internet advertising and marketing industry about rich media and other emerging technologies.