Seeing how this is our anniversary issue, I suppose I should follow tradition and look back on the last year. But that is a dangerous task. This last year has been such an emotional roller coaster for
everyone in this industry that a recap might depress some of our readers. Well, maybe not.
At this time last year, I was proudly holding up the very first issue of this magazine, posing for a
picture with RuPaul at a WebAttack party (the pattern of his dress matched our cover), surrounded by the stereotypical black turtleneck-clad Internet enthusiasts sipping champagne. Those were the
days! Online ad exchanges were hot. CMGI stock was in the double digits. Email was hot, click-throughs were not. Excitement and high hopes everywhere.
And it was in that euphoria that we managed
to create more problems in the Internet advertising sector than we ever knew possible. Things crashed and burned faster than anyone could say “positive cash flow,” and ever since then the ad industry
has been very slow in coming out of a mental depression, grasping at every opportunity to mourn the good old times just a little longer.
And many took advantage of that mourning period. Just when
I thought that depression about the state of web ad affairs was beginning to subside, Content Intelligence Group of Lyra Research came out with another downer. Their so-called study, titled “Web Ad
Autopsy,” which surveyed “top executives” in the business, concluded that the cause of the “collapse” in web advertising spending is a “simple case of imbalance in old-fashioned supply and demand—too
many sites chasing too few ad dollars.”
There are two major problems with that study. First, I categorically disagree with anything titled “Web Ad Autopsy,” which implies that web advertising is
dead, when it most certainly is not.
Second, that study gave a lot of mourners a good excuse: “it was an ‘imbalance,’ it wasn’t our fault.” No one stopped to remember that, in reality, there was
an overabundance of VC ad dollars carelessly spent on many sites. A supply and demand imbalance wasn’t the problem, but for months, trade-show panelists debated this and other imaginary causes of “the
crash” as thinning groups of attendees nodded their heads in sad agreement. Good thing Lyra said that web publishers and agencies alike bear responsibility for their plight; the publishers failed to
prove the value of web ads, and the agencies gained easy profits without learning to use the medium.
My question is, “NOW WHAT?”
The Lyra article concludes that, “while chastened, web
publishers and advertising agencies are likely have a bright future but will have to work harder to convince advertisers to fully embrace the web.”
Thanks! We know that! So enough reminiscing.
Some things have changed for the worse, but some aspects of the business have remained constant to this day and some have even gotten better.
Most importantly, the Internet is a year closer to
proving itself as a viable advertising vehicle, and things are looking up. Now we have real work to do.
Masha Geller is Editor-in-Chief of MediaPost. She may be reached at masha@mediapost.com.