• by Marc Bodner , August 11, 2006

We're all familiar with the scene from "The Wizard of Oz" where the wizard commands Dorothy and company to "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." Well, in today's media world, that curtain is the television upfront, and television buying in general, and the wizard has become the major sellers and some key buyers of this medium. And unfortunately for the wizard, Toto, in the form of Wal-Mart, Toyota, and the other key customers operating on one or more electronic platforms, will pull back the curtain, forcing the wizard to come out, award his trophies, then get on his balloon and head back to Kansas.

The rhetoric surrounding the advent of the e-Bay platform is deafening, but shows very clearly that the focus of some marketers, many of the larger agency groups, and the vendors supporting these groups, is clearly in maintaining the status quo and not investigating how this technology can deliver profits for all parties. (We need to make sure all the boys and girls understand that profits are why everyone is in business; nothing gets done unless there is a profit.)

Merrill Lynch's Jessica Reif Cohen made a keen observation in her analysis of online trading systems when she stated that the media business is based on peer approval, and once big- name clients make a move, the others will follow. Well, it's already happening, and it's happening on the spot level. Spot, that second sister to the glamour of network, is starting to develop some interesting business models and processes that embrace these new technologies--and the advertisers are not all local food stores and pet stores.

The broadcasters have found a laboratory in their O&O divisions to work out the kinks before rolling it out on their networks. Independent operators not funded by the networks are putting up sites and getting significant response. And let's not forget those underfunded folks like Google, Yahoo, and MSN. History is very repetitive, and if we have seen anything in the history of business, it's that leaders only remain leaders if they innovate.

From the client perspective, I will guarantee there are discussions going on right now that involve companies going forward on their own, sans agency, to experiment with these sites, since agencies seemed to have already delivered a negative POV.

And yes, there will continue to be interaction with people. Some multi-platform deals still need to be crafted by people, but since these deals are a small percentage of total business (don't shriek, the 80/20 rule will continue to be in effect), there will be tremendous upside profit potential in developing and implementing these new business models. One that I have looked at increases margins tremendously for agencies and vendors, and does the same for client-side ROI needs.