• by Mark Naples , July 8, 2005

I'm obviously just a little grunt among the many industry pundits who think that local targeting is probably the coolest thing about the future of our industry. But, as much as I write about it, the many technological barriers that exist may yet conspire to make it the next big thing for years to come.

After all, local is about direct marketing (DM), and we generally try to convince a skeptical world that we're far more than just that, right?

This debate somehow rages still, while the real reason our medium works in ways having nothing to do with DM is sleeping right under our mouse pads.

In early June, at OMMA West, Ad Age's Bob Garfield further leveraged his Chaos Theory for an attentive audience by reminding us that much Web content is not ready for primetime. He showed some of the worst, self-produced streaming video I've ever seen as something of an object lesson, shoving our collective faces in the mess of lower-end content.

Yesterday morning, as I restarted my usual morning ritual with a glass of water and a visit to My Yahoo! home page, I was reminded why so much Web content has nothing to do with that object lesson, and never will.

Of course, yesterday morning witnessed the reporting on the terrorist bombings in London, and the silly kind of content that Bob spoke of wasn't anywhere near the radar.

And that's the point. Where did you get your updates on what happened in London?

Where did you get your updates on the last round of bombings in Madrid just prior to their elections? And what did you check this morning first to see what else was reported in London?

Naturally, many of you will have tuned into your local news and the "Today Show," et al. But, I'll wager that many more of you and the majority of professionals under the age of 35 will have gleaned their views of the events in London and formed their opinions by viewing analysis online.

And for those of you who watched TV for these updates, did you notice the bit at the end of the broadcast when the news anchor drove viewers to the network's Web site or Web partners for regular, ongoing updates?

If we examine the genesis of magazines, and the growth of certain magazines in the past decade, we'll see an industry built very specifically around major, branded advertisers reaching niche audiences through vehicles produced specifically for them.

If you've read titles like Stuff, Details, Lucky, and the like, you know what I mean. These are not media products built around content as much as they are media brands built around advertisers.

For my money, it's the counter-point to why magazine families like Conde Nast and their publisher associations have to buy advertising to remind us why they matter. Too many of them have lost their content compass. With time-sensitivity acting as such a driver in this fast-twitch world, magazines lag behind not just interactive but also daily print, radio, and television for eyeballs - that is, they do unless they provide some meaningful reason to subscribe.

That's about content.

At a time when Web ads are found to be more effective than media against which they're measured, and an increasing ratio of web ads are of the so-called "behavioral" variety, is it any wonder why top media brands online are suffering an inventory crunch while top brands among magazines have to buy billboards to remind us who they are?

Think about that the next time you stop at a newsstand to pick up a copy of a magazine to which you used to enjoying saying you subscribed.