• by Ari Rosenberg , Op-Ed Contributor, April 8, 2005

If you work within the media sales industry, the answer to this relatively simple question continues to splinter.

That is because the media industry has evolved like a teenage boy who wakes up a few inches taller than when he went to bed. The change appears to be overnight.

The dramatic paradigm shift the business of selling advertising has experienced can be traced back to the addition of its newest medium, online advertising. Online advertising has changed the way all media buyers and sellers converse.

Subsequently, these conversations have "tipped" in favor of the buyer so strongly that the traditional business of publishing is being crushed (the tipping point for those "Gladwellians" was the advent of pop-up advertising - more on that later).

To understand where the trouble lies for traditional publishers, you first need to look at the advertising business as a whole, with publishing as a subset. The advertising business functions on the relationship that exists between three components. The consumer of content, the publisher who serves it, and the advertiser who joins in like a third wheel who picks up the dinner tab.

The traditional publishing formula established within this structure is this: Extend resources to acquire loyally engaged consumer attention and exceed expenses by selling access to it. Publishing companies that existed prior to the Internet have built their organizations to operate within this traditional formula for making money. This access sold to their collected consumer attention has morphed to provide more creative points of entry for advertisers, such as "branded entertainment" for example, but the sales message for this model remains the same. Publishers "deliver access" to a demographically appealing, loyally engaged, audience.

This sales message changed dramatically however, when Internet publishers launched themselves into the media mix by initially hyping the action of their audience over the access to reach them. Despite attempts to change this perception, the nuts and bolts of online advertising are terms and metrics from the business of direct marketing, not traditional publishing.

At pure Internet publishers like Yahoo! and search publishers like Google or Ask Jeeves, employee answers to the question "what business are you in?" will be direct-marketing centric. They have to be, because online buyers have tipped the conversation that way and in turn, these non-traditional Internet publishing companies have constructed their companies and have invested their resources to earn revenue (especially search publishers) by effectively performing direct marketing functions for their clients.

The problem for traditional publishers, who existed prior to the birth of the Internet and have extended their content brand online, is that they now have employees operating in a business their company is not in.

The traditional publishing sales force and infrastructure are not equipped to sell direct marketing initiatives successfully. They do not have the resources or trained experience to compete with buyers employing direct marketing tactics and the negotiated deals reflect this dominance.

I received an e-mail recently from a veteran media sales rep who currently sells online. She bemoaned the fact that a traditional ad agency sent her "an rfp [request for proposal] for a well known electronics brand on a cost per acquisition [aka CPA] basis." She then went on to ask rhetorically "When is this BS going to be over?"

Unfortunately, it is just the beginning.

The evaluation of media partners, online and offline has a return on investment (ROI) mentality thanks to the terminology and metrics introduced by online advertising, which we now know is in the direct marketing business.

The direct marketing business is a pretty good business. I have never worked in it, but my sister-in-law has for many years. She loves it. She rents lists. Her company invests in tools to make sure their lists are vibrant and active. They do not however, invest resources in editorial branch offices all over the world.

In the traditional publishing business, the mission is to deliver compelling content that holds and cradles the attention of their reader. However, this publishing goal is now counterproductive because advertisers will continue to reward publishers not on their ability to hold their readers attention, but rather on the rate in which they can transfer this attention so it can be further evaluated on how well it converts to customers.

Finally, any reader of any content online will tell you, pop-up like advertising of any kind is the most displeasing experience they can have. Pop-up ads that cover up content (as opposed to fitting along side or in-between) demonstrates a lack of respect for the reader, while promoting the obvious agenda of an advertiser dressed in direct marketing wool.

For a traditional publisher with traditional publishing values that place the needs of readers above all else, to serve any pop-up like advertising on their Web site is an indication of how confused they are as to what business they are in.