Commentary

A New Year With New Media Opportunities

2007 is the start of the second decade of Internet advertising. In the last 10 years, the medium has reached more than $16 billion in annual revenue and produced more millionaires more quickly than virtually any other product, service, invention or discovery.

The Web is fast becoming the major medium, already passing outdoor and well on the on way to surpassing radio and magazines in advertising spend. And I predict that within the next 10 years, the Internet will lead all media.

Newspapers are losing more and more of their hard-copy circulation every day. Magazines are seeing slower ad growth and declining newsstand sales.

Traditional radio is getting knocked on its proverbial butt, not just from the Internet, but from satellite as well. And television? Well, I don't have to tell you that with the advent of broadband, it's a whole new ballgame.

Now, the giants of traditional media aren't exactly sitting around watching their profits sink. Nope. As they look ahead, they're doing the logical, competitive, future-sighted, profit-generating thing to do--developing their own online presence by redeploying some of their assets to build their Internet capabilities.

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Newspapers have begun to see the online business from their Web sites grow to the point where, in the near future, it will exceed their offline business.

Magazines, which came to the table a little late in the game, are scrambling to develop Internet products that offer their content in a way that provides incremental value, attracts visitors and boosts revenue without cannibalizing their traditional readership. And the broadcasters and cable networks, challenged by a medium called "the television of the future," are already preparing for interactivity and content distribution across several platforms.

All media see their traditional businesses slowing, and are feeling a squeeze on profits. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The digital tunnel, that is.

But for these digital platforms to flourish at a rate that outpaces their traditional audiences and accompanying revenue from advertisers, the media marketplace must approach the business holistically. Our universe of major mainstream media has expanded; it's become significantly more complex. But it's still one universe. And the Internet belongs solidly within that universe.

That's easy to say, and it sounds easy to navigate. But it isn't really. Incorporating, integrating and evaluating new and old media has been on of our industry's greatest challenges.

Why? Because traditional media groups understand the media they are planning and buying--but for the most part, they do not yet know how to do that as effectively or comprehensively with the Internet. And the online folks don't have enough experience or interest in the offline space. It's easy to say, let's put 5% or 10% into online. But is that the right number? How do we know unless we look at all the evaluation criteria in an integrated format?

Media budgets are not infinite. They are finite. And money allocated to one medium is usually taken from another. Unless we do this right, it leaves no room for Web marketing to be properly integrated into the overall media mix.

Advertisers and agencies must also look at unilateral multimedia measurements in additional to new measurements. And we must develop ways to know the relative value of an exposure in one medium versus another, as well as the cumulative effect of the campaign.

This is the time for marketers to receive true benefit by having traditional and new media work together as a single, cohesive entity. Creative teams must be working in concert with media teams by bringing everyone to the table during the early stages of marketing and budget development.

Agencies cannot afford to let integration be taken out of their hands. The world is integrating and advertisers, agencies and the media must do the same. If this is not done, then we will all miss some real marketing opportunities.

Mike Drexler, the former head of media at Publicis' Optimedia, Interpublic's True North, Bozell and Doyle Dane Bernbach, is founder of Drexler Geller Associates, an executive-search firm specializing in advertising and media based in New York and San Francisco. He can be reached at mike@dgasearch.com.

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