The end of the year is when most people make their predictions. But to me, this week is really the turning point in the advertising calendar. The sleepy days of August followed by the Christmas season
media packages that are assembled right after Labor Day with the kids going back to school... Next week is when things really turn over in our business. Besides, any number of pundits or other idiots
can read the tea leaves (others' opinions) after Christmas and come up with one or two pearls.
So, if for not other reason than to demonstrate that I'm not just any idiot, I've decided to
stick my neck out with a few choice predictions for the year beginning Monday, September 1. I'm sure I'll be wrong with some of these. But, I'll bet I won't be THAT wrong with most.
Rich
Media, already the darling of "why our business is growing," will become much more. By Q304, 55+ percent of all ads served on the major portals and top-50 sites will be Rich Media.
Why? Just look at the deals that the major rich media providers are making with the major portals, and what DoubleClick has done with Dart Motif. If I'm an advertiser spending anywhere near the
average buy on MSN today, they'll Supersize me (sorry McDonalds) to a PointRoll FatBoy at no additional charge. Dart Motif works similarly, taking one former barrier - the cost of the third party
provider - out of the equation. Much in the same way that ad serving became commoditized over the years, Rich Media will soon have one brand for each kind of creative, and sites will be able to set
their prices based on pre-existing deals with each technology provider. It's getting there already, and as the industry moves forward, this will enable many, many more rich media ads to be used
effectively by advertisers - because they were created seamlessly by the agencies who knew what would work on the sites they wanted to buy.
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Newspaper Web sites will continue to enjoy a robust increase in revenue and prestige in the overall media mix.
Why?
For one thing, the increase in the amount of interactive creative and other talent has made newspaper sites less reliant on major ad networks to generate revenue. An increasing number of newspaper and
other traditional publishers' sites have relationships with their own reps and specialists, and these individuals can bring them better deals than the old run of network arrangements they had to
settle for with larger companies. Many more newspaper sites than you'd think are profitable today - and I'm not just talking about the larger ones. "There are two key factors behind the
recovery of newspaper sites," said Shawn Riegsecker, President of Chicago-based Integrent Media, which is probably the hottest rep firm in the country. First, newspapers are the #1 destination site in
every local market. Traffic may be higher elsewhere, like on major portals. But the time users spend on newspaper sites is off the charts. The second item is the prestige of newspaper brands and the
familiarity of those brands with major advertisers, which is paramount." Oh yeah, when I found Shawn, he was in a bar with a client who so badly wanted to do a major buy on one of the newspaper sites,
they completed the deal on the spot and used the bar's facsimile machine to send the Insertion order. I'm not making this up. Integrent's revenue has tripled quarter on quarter this year. Sound like
this might be an illustration of a trend? Even the Wall Street Journal has noticed. The WSJ reported on August 25th that such sites, and other major independent sites, have done so well
that "The online-ad market has bounced back over the last year, thanks to increased interest from traditional advertisers." It's happening just like many of us said it would. Even the
ever-skeptical-of-us-Web-types Wall Street Journal thinks so. People who should know better still will not understand online Privacy.
Hate to pick on the Wall
Street Journal again, but did any of you read their front-page piece on Gator this week? They termed Spyware controversial after more than 90 million downloads? Sheesh, I thought it was
controversial two years ago. Today, I think that most of us regard Gator as one of the industry's largest and most prosperous marketing companies. I know that they advertise here, and I know that many
still argue about their model. So what? The story about this privacy-related controversy is as stale as the Phillies' playoff chances. And if anyone cares about the privacy of consumers who download
music and other shared items for free, then I must be missing why. The real Gator controversy has been about the ad dollars lost by sites that visitors are visiting when the Gator pop up
arrives, end of story. Gator has gone to great lengths to assuage the anxieties of these publishers, and the lawsuit has been settled. So it's just too late to call this a controversy. Consumer
online privacy is a major issue and it has kept perhaps 40% of all Web surfers from buying anything on the Web. Too bad. But, the exclusive ownership of the eyeballs that visit publishers' sites is an
entirely different kind of privacy - one that costs each publisher a great deal of money, and corrupts the relationship that exists in every other medium between the buyer and the seller. The larger
privacy issue is a business issue, not a consumer's rights issue. The more our industry looks like other media, the better off we'll all be. Into 2004, I'm asserting that the advertising will
look even more like TV, the media brands will matter a whole lot more, and the media asset will always be about who owns the eyeballs. That's where we're heading, and that's why things are going to
continue getting much better in 2004.
