What’s the real comparison in media prices between TV and the Internet? We’re certainly not getting it from comparing CPMs.

I'm sure most of you out there know that there are now only two providers of site traffic measurement of any real consequence left in the market – comScore and NetRatings. Through consolidation and attrition, the market has whittled the site metering business down to just these two contenders. So it seems the question is begged, does site traffic measurements really matter?

No one likes to waste money, do they? The big media buying firms will tell you that they don’t waste a drop, that every dime of their clients’ cash is well spent. They have charts to prove it. So, who exactly is throwing around all the wasted money?

Everywhere I go lately, Interactive business turnaround is discussed. What can we do to make this go around more efficient? The first is pretty basic: Broadscale adoption of V 2.0 of Standard Interactive Insertion Order T’s & C’s as recommended by the AAAA’s and the IAB.

Even on the web, we still have a tough time overlaying multiple targeting criteria to get to the people we want. But eventually, the technology will catch up to the demand and we'll be able to target people who meet the magic combination of all four variables.

For those of you out there who missed the heady days of unlimited venture capital funding, you missed more than just a roller coaster ride of ephemeral paper wealth. You also missed a fad-based culture, where certain business models gained sudden primacy – if only for a few months. And the sudden fading of these models can be deceiving.

Looks like last week’s article instigated a lot of thoughts, and not a few hot opinions. Though I realize this topic does not have to do, directly, with online advertising, I do think that it is germane to our industry in so far as WE are going to be the ones asked to do something about the accessibility of the medium, what it consists of, and how it evolves.

Last week, Part 1 of this series began an analysis of the elements necessary to successfully create cross-platform media programs. This week, “Love is the killer app.”

The growing move towards Reach and Frequency-based buying means a whole new set of considerations for Interactive ad servers on both the agency (advertiser) side and the site side. We don’t have this capability from either a planning, buying or tracking standpoint today, but we hope it is only a matter of time before we do.

A couple of years ago, our business began to change drastically, fueled by the realization that direct response metrics were not the only way by which to measure the effectiveness of online campaigns. Whereas in 1997, we thought we had invented a new medium that would always be evaluated by metrics like Cost Per Click and Cost Per Acquisition, just one year later we realized that we had done everything exactly backward.