• by June 10, 2004

In raising the subject of online creativity yesterday, a few more thoughts occured to me.

Apart from recruiting really great, kick-ass talent, creative and media departments need to join forces, as Jim Meskauskas says in today's Online Spin. This is now more imperative than ever as in-stream advertising gains traction. Media planning, as many of you well know, is an intrinsically creative process. The growing number of video and rich media options, as well as the power of broadband to deliver all kinds of interactive and TV-like experiences, requires creative and media teams to work hand-in-glove. Are they? From what I can gather, it's a mixed bag.

If these teams don't work in concert, imagine the challenge for online media strategists who are working to infiltrate their agencies' national TV broadcast groups. Some online media agencies are conducting such educational reconnaissance missions. For example, prior to this season's broadcast network upfront, online media executives initiated discussions with the heads of their broadcast TV groups to get in on the planning process vis-à-vis broadband video and the re-purposing of video assets.

At the moment, there are many ways to get re-purposed or original video content out on the Web, and new media strategists are wading out into those waters with their broadcast TV counterparts. In most cases, they are doing the hand-holding. As the network upfronts wind down, at least one digital media executive tells me that despite high hopes, there was less Web video sold through the upfront than he had expected. "It's still partially a timing issue, in terms of are online advertisers as ready as they need to be, and part of it is on the publishing side [are publishers willing to hold up a piece of a deal in order to accommodate a video element]," says Alan Schanzer, managing partner, The Digital Edge, New York, a unit of WPP Group's Mediaedge:cia.

Schanzer and other online media executives say that Web video deals in this year's upfronts were far more "additive" than integrated, though they expect next year's landscape to be different. While marketers are shifting dollars from broadcast TV into other media, including the Internet, most of the dollars shifted are migrating between broadcast and cable. "I would say that overall, the temperature was that it was mildly successful and not incredibly successful," Schanzer says, referring to broadband video ad deals brokered during the upfronts. But, he adds, "A lot of groundwork was laid for next year."