• by Chris Copeland , Op-Ed Contributor, April 3, 2017

Ad Age ran a headline recently promoting a video on its website featuring an interview with ad agency front man and creative guru David Droga of Droga5 that caught my eye: “David Droga Advises 'Don't Get Stuck in Your Ways,” it read.

The headline made me recall a conversation I had recently with an analyst in which we discussed the future of digital video. We were exploring the skill set differences (and the likely future consolidation) of those who buy traditional video (aka TV) and those who buy digital video.

In assessing digital buyers, the analyst commented that they are “stuck in the Pavlovian mindset of ringing the bell and consumers salivating.” His view was digital buyers have themselves been conditioned to believe in the ability of digital advertising to target and retarget an audience to achieve online actions.

If that’s accurate, and consolidation is coming, then what has to change to ensure a future where digital buyers become complete media buyers?  Basically, I think what needs to change is a narrow mindset that has set in among digital buyers about their clients’ media options. In other words, as Mr. Droga so wisely advised, “Don’t Get Stuck In Your Ways.”

To assess where the market must go it’s helpful to know where it has been. In the early days of digital the pitch was “you can measure EVERYTHING!” The old quote about wasting half of your budget on TV --but unsure what half -- was the digital industry’s go-to quote on why it represented the future. And to fulfill the destiny it was trying to write, the industry began measuring everything. Specifically, everything that was happening in digital environments. 

From impressions to clicks to sales online, nothing was too big or too small to be measured. And everything meant something depending on the meeting, the people in the room and the outcome being sold at that time. Hell, for a few years, you couldn’t turn around without someone hyping Math Men as the new Mad Men. Everyone was complicit in the approach that if it was measurable it should be measured and if you measured it then it meant something to someone and should be acted upon further.

Even today, the Holy Grail is still cross media attribution and "omni-channel" ranks as the easiest square on the event circuit BS bingo board.

Which brings us back to how bell-ringing buyers can break the pattern and prevent their lunch from being eaten. In my view, there are two very hard but very attainable steps in the process for digital responsibility to grow.

The first is an embrace of everything that once was presented as the enemy. No media channel is without waste. If viewability and fraud issues have taught the digital industry anything it’s that rock throwing in a glass house media world is a bad idea. With media fragmentation has come an increased scrutiny to where money is spent and what it delivers. And that’s good. The medium still outpaces many others, but the gap of measurability is shrinking so don’t try to reinvent a wheel to be used only in one environment. Find ways to marry data, align interest and drive meaningful interactions that generate the same kind of awareness and consideration that TV has done for decades.

The second is to decide the stage you want to operate on and move everything towards that. Unless you are Amazon or a handful of others, the big stage is offline. It’s the retail outlets, local groceries, car dealerships or financial institutions where nearly 90 percent of daily interactions and transactions happen. That will not be the case forever, but it is today and even with the most aggressive predictions it’s not changing any time soon.

So, measure where people go and what they do when they get there. Online to online measurement is easy when compared to online to offline, but unless media buyers embrace it, the future is already written.

One final companion point to that is who and how buyers choose as their partners. There is no shame in working with partners that can measure and deliver outcomes that matter online. However, the burden now squarely sits with buyers to find the partners with business models that encourage and deliver offline impact. A digital program that can generate real world consumption and commerce is the program that will win. And the buyers who deliver those will be the ones ringing the bell for years to come.