With digital media growing in importance, it is becoming increasingly more about the numbers than the creative, One bookish media buyer is king, i.e. Irwin Gotlieb or the "$59 billion man." Last year,
the CEO of WPP's GroupM ultimately oversaw more than 16% of the $364 billion total global ad expenditures. He understands media better than most, and has the power to sway the industry to his vision.
Right now, that means old media taking lessons from the Web. In a digital world, buyers need assume nothing, as they have real data to work with. Instead of buying a type of audience,
they can buy a click, an inquiry, or a sale and they have an information trail about everyone, giving them the ability to personalize online experiences.
In 2006, GroupM placed,
tracked, and measured 200 billion online impressions, a figure that jumped in a big way last year. And Gotlieb thinks it could be useful to apply that information to offline media. For instance, an
advertiser could send a different message to every set-top box. "If you've got three TVs in your home, the teen gets one message, Mom gets a different one, and Dad gets a third."
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