Spot television has its challenges these days. Abby Auerbach, executive and chief marketing officer of the Television Bureau of Advertising says some fundamental changes need to be made for the business to move forward. First, TV has been primarily bought and sold under a cost per rating point basis. But that’s not the way the media world works with almost every platform â€" that being the cost per thousand viewer impressions, CPM. The business needs to move to this model. Next, there should be a thirty-day cancellation of local TV buys, not the typical two week cancellation policy …

Carol Bartz, chief executive officer at Yahoo! says the company's core focus continues to come in three areas: Science, art and scale. “I actually wanted to say art, science, scale â€" but some people didn’t like the acronym,” says Bartz. ‘Art’ comes in getting the best ads to engaged consumers, ‘science’, comes in improving on Yahoo!’s metrics -- targeting and optimization -- which Bartz says is the best in the business. ‘Scale’ comes from what Bartz says it is continued growth, now around 600 million users. “It isn’t just that we have a lot of them, it’s …

Another medium is breaking a new campaign during the Four As’ Leadership/Media Conference in San Francisco to tout its vitality to the media-buying crowd: The magazine industry. But the new campaign, “Magazines: The Power of Print,” isn’t coming from the Magazine Publishers of America, but as a standalone effort from a group of some of its biggest members, including Conde Nast, Hearst Magazines, Meredith and Time Inc. The campaign, created by Four As member, Y&R, will roll out in the May issues of the members’ monthly titles, and in the April 5th issue of their weeklies, and will cover nearly …

It may be the opening of the American Association of Advertising Agencies annual conference -- the first ever combining their media conference with their general management meeting -- but another advertising trade association, the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB), is using it as an occasion to make some news of its own. Actually, the TVB's news is an ad campaign -- the first over-the-air TV ad campaign launched by the TVB in more than 12 years. The campaign, which is comprised of four 30-second spots, promotes the value of advertising on local broadcast stations, and coincides with former Madison …

When the first technical people got together to amass better analysis of set top box data for the new measurement group, Coalition for Innovation of Media Measurement, Jane Clarke, its managing director, said “everyone was speaking a different language”. So Clarke says the group needed to established a new lexicon -- which isn’t quite finish. “It will be a living document. We are at 500 terms right now.” She says new companies will add to this. For instance, there is “dwell time”, which is the amount of time someone spends on a channel, with a program, via a …

Magazines have been hit with much bad news over the last several years. But several myths are just plain wrong, says Ann Moore, chairman and chief executive officer of Time Inc. One of the biggest is that young readers are leaving magazines for all new digital platforms. This is not true. Mocking Congressman Joe Wilson’s outburst at a President’s Obama speech last year, Moore says: “You lie!” She says magazine readership overall is actually up over 4% between 2004 and 2009, and the 44.4 median age of magazines is younger than primetime viewing and of the U.S. population …

“We need to redefine what is relevant,” says Mark Goldstein, chief executive officer, North America, GroupM and chair of Media Policy Committee, and outgoing president/CEO of the 4A’s. He says this is important considering new metrics and media tools, including commercial ratings, future addressable advertising. For example, he looks at a client whose target is adults 25-54, who wants to buy a primetime show with a $150,000 unit cost price tag. This comes out to a $27 CPM for adults 25-54 viewers. But he adds, under the current system, if that client also wants upscale viewers the …

“This event can’t be a ‘mash-up’,” says Nancy Hill, president and CEO of The 4A’s, in planning this year’s American Association of Advertising Agencies annual media conference. The theme of this year’s event, here in San Francisco, “Transformation 2010”, will still deal in core media issues. But there will be lot more â€" where media, marketing and other professionals discuss pressing concerns. “It’s a working conference,” says Hill, in her opening remarks. “This isn’t a shy group. Your participation is expected and required.” Hill says there will be “conversation breaks” to allow people to do this.

Transforming the advertising business? Someone better come up with some answers. So why not get everyone together in the same room? The American Association of Advertising Agencies believes assembling management, creative, media, media planning, and account services into one big event will get people thinking â€" thus the logic for its theme “Transformation 2010” here in San Francisco. Greasing the wheels for this event will be a host of social networking/citizen journalistic activities â€" such as having panelists twittering, adding video presentations on YouTube, or responding to digital journalist affixed with Eastman Kodak video camera technology. That’s …

You know you’re in trouble with the definition of content’s “quality” comes in question, but that’s exactly what Patrick Keane, CEO of Associated Content, just did. Increasingly, the “quality” of content has less to do with, say, grammar, or -- I don’t know -- originality, and more to do with “usefulness,” Keane argued. He did so, by the way, on the day’s last panel, “Grilling the Content Farmers: When Data Drives Publishing”. Is a story on potty-training written by a PhD, say, more or less valuable than one produced by a mom of three from Spokane, Washington? (Used used a …