• by Masha Geller , September 9, 2003

The big announcement of the first day of the first annual IAB Advertisers Forum is that the Ford Motor Company has just become the newest Cross Media Optimization Study participant. According to the announcement, the XMOS methodology will be applied to Ford's advertising campaign for the launch of its 2004 F-150 (the car that took over the homepages of MSN, Yahoo and AOL last week, impressing some and annoying others with the full-page format.)

The conference itself, which seems very well attended and even includes a small exhibit hall, is largely focused on the same old subject of just how much of a given media budget should be spent online.

Panelists have spent the morning talking about the various merits of various installments of the XMOS study, which, as we've been reporting periodically over the last year, show that 15%, give or take a few points, is the optimal portion of media budgets that should go to the web. Everyone has agreed that there is no one answer that applies to every brand and every marketer and that each advertiser should consider about a million different things when deciding on their particular plan of action (no surprises there, folks.)

What warmed my heart, however, was a question from Visa's Jon Raj, who said that as valuable as the XMOS research is, we, as an industry, have to do "something else" to really increase online ad spending. Rex Briggs, the moderator of the panel, agreed, saying "to research is one thing, to act is another."

Unfortunately, neither Raj nor anyone else at the conference have the answer to exactly what that "something else" is.

Erwin Ephron, however, put it best: "The abundance of questions is encouraging, because it means media and media planning are becoming less of a mystery and more of a puzzle."

The conference continues this afternoon and tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.