• by Jim Meskauskas , May 8, 2002

“What brand research do I need to show a client to get them to commit more money to online advertising?”

“What ad units should I be running on my site so that advertisers and agencies will place with me?”

“When are we going to have Reach and Frequency curves?”

“How does online fit in the media mix?”

“Just what is the geopolitical significance of Macedonia?!”

These are all questions that plague the online advertising industry. They are questions that come up time and again -- in articles, at conferences, written into PR puff pieces sent out by industry organizations. Answers to these questions are also being constantly proffered, often times by the same folks asking them.

This is good. Asking questions is the only way to get answers, and answers – right or wrong -- are the only way to start finding real solutions.

The problem is, these queries all pursue symptoms. These questions, though important and large, only chase incidentals. They do not seek a root or a source. They only partially cut at the “Holzweg” and lead us to the “Lichtung.” Basically means that these questions hack their way down the logger’s path, but they never make it to the glade in the forest (“Lighted Place,” literally).

What no one is talking or asking about is what lies at the heart of the matter. We need to get at first cause here, folks, and in advertising, that first cause is the client.

This is not in contradiction to my statements about ad vehicles needing to start and end with their intended audience in order to be considered viable ad vehicles (OnlineSpin, April 11th, 2002).

But as an address to the media industry, we need to look to the guys who are coughing up the money when wondering what it’s going to take to get them to see the online ad medium as important. They are the ones making the investment, shouldn’t they be told just what that investment can yield?

This is something that all of media, really, needs to be considering if media wants to be something other than a price/item commodity.

So, just what are the questions that the media industry at large should be asking? What is THE question?

Just what do marketers really expect from their media investments as we move deeper into the 21st century?

After a golden age of branding in advertising, where budgets for media and production soared while proliferation of media forms and formats caused even greater dispersion of audience, just what do advertisers expect from the advertising they commit? Does the average person really care about "brand," or is "brand" just something advertising and marketing people invented to ascribe ephemeral meaning to weak correlative discernments made in the wake of advertising committed for products that are really commodities, and to which no real action can be ascribed?

Should media play the role of a cheap, yet constant reminder to the consumer for the purposes of getting that short term sale; or does media have a deeper, more sublime role to play in creating union between our lives and the lives of the products we engage?

Online folks scramble every couple of weeks to find a different reason why advertisers aren't spending greater sums of money online and then come up with what they think might be a solution.

But have we asked them WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR MEDIA TO DO? WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE "THIS" MEDIA TO DO?