Primary Impact

The following is an excerpt from The State of Mobile Marketing:

Mobile Marketing Comes into Its Own

Smartphones, the rise of 3G connections and unlimited data plans are the tipping points for both marketers and consumers in terms of mobile as a medium.  With consumer penetration now higher than that of the Internet and a diverse advertiser base, mobile marketing has become mainstream rather than experimental.

Mobile marketing excels at reaching consumer groups tough to reach through other media:  teens, moms, affluents and urban audiences. Due to its personal nature, mobile can be a highly engaging medium for marketers looking to reach consumers in a focused mindset.

In an era of economic instability, the mobile device has become the one must-have product. Marketers must now work to connect with consumers through a device that offers not only communication but always-with-them entertainment and information.

Smartphones – especially iPhones – are not the whole picture:  Smartphones accounted for 13% of the mobile device market in the US in July ’09 according to comScore. Of that number, 21% are iPhones – a market share matched by Microsoft and dwarfed by the RIM BlackBerry (41%).  For marketers, permission-based SMS (the mobile equivalent of email marketing) can be a more efficient way to reach a broad spectrum of the mobile population.

Mobile advertiser mix has become more like that of any other media:  Advertising on mobile phones is being embraced by traditional brand marketers – not just marketers of cell phone applications like ringtones and games.  Broadcast & Cable is currently the top category in mobile advertising according to comScore.  Among the top 20 advertisers in June ’09 as captured by Nielsen, half are Fortune 500 companies.  The mobile ad market is extremely dynamic, with 30% of comScore’s top advertiser list in June ‘09 not appearing on the list during the same period in ’08.

Mobile is being used for both awareness and direct response:  Advertisers are using the medium not only for direct response, but especially in the case of entertainment, personal care, technology-related products and health, as an awareness driver and a way to appeal to elusive audiences.

Mobile has high performance rates relative to other interactive media:  At this stage in the evolution of mobile marketing, its relative lack of clutter and low cost makes it greatly appealing for marketers troubled by the increasing  CPCs of search and the jumble of ads on web pages. Click-through rates vary by category and by creative type and intent, but are typically at least four times that of online display.  Branding studies from both Dynamic Logic and InsightExpress show that mobile ads achieve higher aided and unaided awareness, brand favorability and purchase intent than online display – even as compared to early online display or video norms.

Devices impact consumer behavior – and advertiser response:  Device functionality – especially the interface and the web browsing experience – changes the way consumers use and interact with marketing on their phones. The iPhone, and its companion non-phone wireless device the iTouch, generate the highest number of ad impressions – which equates to media consumption – even though the iPhone is NOT the top-selling phone in the US.  Apple devices also generate the highest direct response rates (a 35 point lift over average click rates), according to Quattro Wireless.

At this stage in the evolution of mobile marketing, marketers should pay close attention to the demographics of various handsets.  Device  targeting is an efficient way to reach specific audiences: Sidekicks are popular with teens, the BlackBerry Curve is the hot device among women 35 – 44, while the iPhone rules with men 25-34.

Ad types also impact response – but should be measured appropriately: According to Quattro Wireless Q2 ’09 impression data, animated ads (sequential GIFs) offer on average a 61 point click-through rate lift over static banners.  Expanding ads, which are designed to engage the consumer within the unit, have less than average click rates (index of 98) and should be measured by time spent and number of pageviews consumed.

Mobile Apps are hot – but increasingly complex for marketers:  Now that Apple has competition in the app market – and the Apple app store is overwhelmed with titles, a branded app strategy can be a costly and complex process. Apps now have to be developed separately for Apple, RIM, Android and Palm platforms. There are also so many apps that if a marketer chooses to develop their own, they need to market that app to ensure usage. A simpler app strategy can be to advertise within or sponsor existing ad-supported apps based on audience and content synergy to the brand.

“Mobility” offers greatest marketing potential:  Mobile, the only medium where the advertising travels and typically stays with the consumer, offers unique opportunities for geo-targeted and point-of-sale promotions and marketing. Accordingly, some of the most innovative approaches to mobile are coming from packaged goods marketers who are transitioning couponing business to mobile from print and are experimenting with apps (and their geo-location abilities) as a way of increasing consumer engagement.

Who knew that “old” media models would get so hot again. Instigated by a recent eMarketer paper (http://www.emarketer.com/brandmeasurement/) and supported by a cogent argument of Young Bean Song at Atlas/Microsoft (http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/blogs/analytics/archive/2009/07/06/getting-back-to-basics-why-web-advertising-needs-traditional-media-metrics.aspx), we are back to talking about GRPs and Reach & Frequency as the new metrics savior of online display.  While I agree that online is becoming a reach medium, it still does not have 100% penetration of the US population and it will not solve the revenue generation problems of online content.

As someone who has worked in both TV and online, while I agree that reach & frequency and GRPs are a useful bridge to “traditional planning” some of their strongest proponents for using them online believe that they are some sort of magic fix for the revenue challenges of content sites. If we were to implement a GRP buy system for all of online, content sites would lose out due to their ability to only add incremental reach to a multi-platform buy. Online ad networks and exchanges that aggregate mass inventory — context be damned — are the ones who would win in this equation. Online content sites are most equated to how print is bought: on audience composition and context more so than reach at cheap CPMs. Yes, online is becoming a reach medium due to the vast amount of usage, but to harnass that reach, you need audience aggregators (for both video content and static types of content). As we have seen, ad networks tend to commoditize inventory and reduce CPMs. It should also be noted that low consideration product categories are notorious at pushing for the lowest possible TV CPMs primarily because they don’t really need context and they buy in such mass. One of the things that I think is really interesting is that packaged goods companies like P & G and SC Johnson have begun to buy cable on a DR basis and use very specific TRPs as the proof point. In a scenario with dare I say it too many media options, more advertisers online and off will be pushing for DR — yes, it will hasten the death of a lot of media or at least move to more of a paid content model.

The session was lively with Jon Gibs throwing out the bomb that online display is broken. While we disagree on that point, think we ultimately come to the same conclusions. Yes, a model based on impressions that rewards the publisher for as many ads per page is just bad and does nothing to improve ad performance. Time exposure metrics are a great idea, but only for some types of ads: those designed to NOT drive some kind of action but to engage the user on the page. The reality is, that because online, unlike other media, can lead to so many other destinations, most advertisers using it will have some kind of end goal, even if that goal is not an immediate click. I’d like to see the industry — especially publishers — finally embrace view through (made widely available through comScore), and set the windows appropriately. Time exposure metrics are great, as are interaction metrics that Google discussed — but for certain types of creatives. Kyle Johnson of Compete illustrated this well with two Toyota Venza creatives: one that performed best in terms of delivering consumers through to site, the other that worked better on page. Both had different ROI but showed that as he said, you have to look at more than one measure of success.

The great thing is that we gave attendees some solid examples of how they should increase the sophistication of their analysis.
read the whitepaper at:
www.primaryimpact.com/stateofdisplay.html

Primary Impact’s first whitepaper, The State of Digital Display, is now available. Sign in at www.primaryimpact.com/stateofdisplay.html and you will be emailed a link.

The “madnum” opus of the past three months is being published 5/12 as a part of the DPAC III conference. The session will be lively — here are the key findings of the whitepaper:

Online Display Advertising Shows Signs of Strength/Revitalization in Challenging Economy

DPAC III Conference panel and accompanying industry whitepaper
based on data from comScore, Dynamic Logic, Google,
Microsoft Atlas and Nielsen Online
reveal continued areas of

growth and effectiveness for online graphic ads

New York, NY – The third semi-annual Digital Publishing & Advertising Conference (DPAC III) will reveal signs of growth and strength for display advertising even in a continually challenging economy.  A panel focused on the State of Digital Display will be comprised of executives from companies each with over a decade of data on the usage, changing nature and effectiveness of digital display. The panel begins at 11:45 AM at the event venue, the W New York Hotel, 541 Lexington Avenue.  Included among the panel are:  Lynn Bolger, EVP Advertiser Services, comScore; Ken Mallon, SVP, Custom Solutions & Ad Effectiveness Consulting, Dynamic Logic; Ari Paparo, Group Product Manager, Advertiser Products, Google; John Chandler-Pepelnjak, Director, Atlas Institute, Microsoft Advertising; Jon Gibs, VP Media Analytics, Nielsen Online; Kyle Johnson, Director of Media Products, Compete. Key findings to be discussed include:

• Online display is going through yet another transitional stage in ad spend, formats and measurement, much as it did in the last recession.
  • The big spending shifts in 2001-2003 involved big-budget early dot-coms dropping out of the market to be replaced by Fortune 500 advertisers who have had a gradual increase in spend over the past five years according to Nielsen Online data.
  • Online ad formats have gotten larger over time and they continue to evolve in terms of functionality and interactive capabilities
• Decreases over the past few quarters in volume are due more to the economy and reduction of clutter (there was 5 % drop in adviews but an 11% drop in the number of ads per page from Febuary ’08 to February ’09 – comScore) than they are ineffectiveness or abandonment of the format according to data from comScore, Nielsen Online and Dynamic Logic
  • Due to the economy, auto, finance and retail ad volumes are down dramatically in the past two quarters, but five year trends show strong growth curve as online becomes more intensely involved in the purchase process for consumers
  • Health and consumer goods spending are picking up in Q1 ‘09; these heavy spending categories shifting dollars to online display bodes well for its future
• Creative is the greatest variable for online display performance; placement/context is highly category specific according to Dynamic Logic.
• Brand impact of online display in terms of ad awareness and brand favorability have remained stable over the past three years.  Purchase intent was also stable but in the finance category dipped along with the economy before stabilizing.
• New measurement techniques that go beyond click throughs, such as measuring exposure and post impression activity, are a better gauge of online display performance, but are often not used to their full capacity according to both Microsoft/Atlas and comScore.
• Recent studies, discussed as a part of the panel and in the whitepaper, are showing that display can improve the performance of search (Microsoft/Atlas and comScore) and that that display ads on the Google Content Network can be an effective way to gain additional conversions beyond those you get via search (Google).
• comScore is now able to show lift in offline sales that result from online ad impressions.

*  *  *

It’s been my perception that the business media has grossly oversimplified what is going on in online advertising and this paper — which is fueled by so many data sources — provides a broader outlook on trends plus best practices info for publishers and advertisers. Hope you find it useful.

Amidst all the discussion of micro-payments for content and the sturm and drang of “display is dead” arguments, I have a simple proposition for all that excess inventory that could have a positive impact on how consumers see online ads. Use available inventory for the ultimate display advertising PSA: an ad campaign that makes the connection between the content they are getting and the ad that supports it. This campaign could reinforce the media brands that consumers value in the copy: “Love your New York Times Online? It’s brought to you by name the brand. Keeping content free…ADVERTISING.”

This could be developed as a program by the IAB and run through Google/DoubleClick systems. An agency can create templates using one of the Google rich media tools, sites can pick them up and customize them to their media brand and run them in remnant inventory that they are getting pennies on from ad networks. It would also serve as a benefit to the advertiser. Perhaps each site chooses an advertiser of the day that they want to celebrate. What advertiser would not want to be associated with a big media brand?

The IAB could run an adjunct site that the ads click through to that make the case for advertising online and the connection to all that great free content. The site can also serve as an info resource demystifying cookies and other online ad factors that seem to get consumers all hot and bothered.

Interestingly Gawker has just said no to ad networks and runs banners created by artists in its remnant space – this is just a twist on that and one that has a greater benefit to the industry.

There is another target that would benefit from this kind of campaign: Washington and the FTC committee that continues to discuss behavioral targeting. I wish they would just focus on the direct marketing industry and credit card companies with how they use data, but they’re a little too focused on the data soup used for ad targeting. We cannot limit this medium’s revenue potential, especially if there is no actual PII.

Make sense?

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Recent media research studies and press announcements have seemed almost sad in their defensiveness. Last week a study commissioned by CBS in conjunction with Conde Nast concluded that online ads are worth a miniscule percentage of a :30 TV spot or a magazine ad http://www.mcpheters.com/news/TVMagazineAdsMoreEffectiveThanInternetAds.htm. The MPA attacked online and the argument that time spent with media should equate to ad spend in some way (http://www.magazine.org/research/magazines-deliver-most-ad-value-per-minute.aspx). A consortium of top publishers has asked Google to change their search ranking system and automatically give higher status to their sort of “professionally generated” content (http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=135433). Why is it that TV networks and magazine publishers attack the very medium that may be the future of their content? At the same time, how can publishers honestly think that “quality” determiners can be developed and enforced for content online?

If you look under the hood at the two studies noted above, you can see the flaws in the argument: in the first, people were put in isolation and told to watch a half hour show without the ability to change the channel or get up and eat or go to the bathroom; similar lack of other stimuli existed for the print portion of the experiment. Stranger still, the online ads in the study got 1% click through rates. How realistic is that? In the MPA study, MRI media consumption recall data was matched with more recall data from a Deloitte survey where consumers were asked to rank media that impact on their purchase decisions. A nice, not exactly transparent exercise, that is hardly useful for buying media. Sure we get it, there’s a whole lot of print that connects with consumers so well that the ads become as powerful to the consumer as the content is. Online has a similar connection in areas like travel and automotive. TV still gives advertisers a great standard wedge of time to tell a powerful story with sight, sound and motion. Online can do the same – with a much lower clutter factor – but the usage is so dispersed – at least for now — that it cannot gain effective reach for an advertiser.

“Big media” is all suffering from a superiority complex entirely naïve in the current media environment. Media is all about change – albeit some of it painful – and to stand in the face of it is to face extinction. In case no one at the associations and publishers was noticing, there is an enormous recession on that is impacting millions of Americans – just because a lot of print journalists are out of work doesn’t mean their situation is any more profound than that of an auto worker – or even an aerospace engineer in the mid ‘70s to use a more far ranging analogy. In times like these, I challenge trade associations and media companies to get out of the “we deserve to win” mentality. It’s just not useful for marketers and for the health of the advertising industry content producers depend upon.

Advertisers want to reach consumers, and in the US, for the most part, media is ad supported. Consumers are voting with their phones, their wi-fi routers and their DVRs. As marketers, our challenge is to be-dazzle them with great pitches that fit whatever way a consumer decides to get information and communicate. Have we found the definitive way to engage consumers through online advertising? No, but chances are that the more we understand how consumers use various aspects of the Internet and all of media, the better able we will be to create messages that resonate and find placements that reinforce the value exchange in ad supported media.

I’ve yet to see a “media neutral” research study that was of any use to a marketer trying to make sense of all their disparate media options. The questions we should be answering are about how distinct media (and by this I mean everything from short form video to newspapers to social media) fit into the larger media mix by product type, and by product lifecycle. Why not resurrect studies like the IAB’s XMOS, which helped to put online display on the map in the minds of brand marketers. This time, let’s go into it without the obvious results. Perhaps I am living in a fantasy world, but shouldn’t the MPA, the IAB, the CAB, the NAB and any other media trade association interested get their members to collectively fund media mix modeling studies that incorporate inputs from all dimensions of this radically changing media world?

We are in a media ecosystem as Randall Rothenberg of the IAB so rightly noted, now why can’t we act like it?

I was dismayed to hear that a panel of online experts at last week’s AAAA’s conference basically threw up their hands at the state of online display ad metrics. (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=101487)

IAB Director of Research Joe Laszlo called them “Confusing.”  To Nielsen President Jim O’Hara they are an ”Enigma.”  Mediasmith CEO Dave Smith called them “Inadequate,” while Marketing Evolution CEO Rex Briggs said they were “Disconnected.” Talk about scaring off your audience.

At the 2001 AAAAs, online was fighting for a seat at the table and was still called “emerging media.”  We merited one lousy panel that generated less excitement than the exhibition hall. Now we’ve got center stage (at both this conference and in consumer usage) and we air our dirty laundry.

My question remains: why are we still discussing this issue? Has everyone in online stopped to consider that metrics is basically a NON-issue in other media.  Sure Nielsen finally acknowledged delayed viewing umpteen years after the introduction of the VCR but marketers clearly don’t care. They continue to buy reach and use GRP models that still relatively accurately predict offline sales. (The promise of set top box data is so exciting, but at what point will agencies be equipped — or even want to — deal with the ramifications of all that data? Plus, can they handle the challenge of producing enough creative to appeal to the segments?) We must see all data — be it on traditional panel based or cookie based data — as merely directional and just get on with it.

We’ve got a data mess on our hands of our own making and the only way out of it is through the creation of a neutral third party — set up as an industry consortium — whose end goal is a planning product through which any data set, be it Google, Microsoft, Comscore or Nielsen can flow.  Demographic data needs to be appended to the ad serving data so we stop talking cookies and bowsers and start talking reach of people.  Just because we can capture all this data to do such finite targeting, does it really serve the purpose of advertising which is to pursuade an ever larger group of consumers to take some action?  Behavioral targeting in my mind is a DR technique for souping up random inventory (like all those email page placements) the networks are awash in.  It’s not the basis for a media plan.

Anyone remember ink-jetting in the early ’90s which was going to be the salvation of magazines? In an example that I worked on involving data matching to a subscriber list of scotch drinkers, guess what, it was damn expensive, consumers thought it was creepy, and why only talk to your proven audience?

As a DoubleClick alumnus — and someone who worked in print and TV — I feel qualified to say that online has the smartest minds in the business.  But as someone from the TV realm once said, “TV is a C+ business” and yet it thrives and is no one is crying out that the :30 is dead.  A recent profile in the NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/business/01marissa.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Google%20female%20executive&st=cse) of a top Google exec revealed that they actually do sit around a table when considering hires, assess SATs and GPAs and and ding unfortunate individuals who got less than stellar grades in macro economics. All that intelligence may be better suited to NASA — or the Obama administration — what we need are media professionals who stop overthinking the problem and start realizing that if we do not create post buy reporting based on demographics and reach and a universal platform to buy and plan online display from, we’re nowhere.

A simple plan: each company with a dog in this fight sends its best and brightest, takes away their iPhones and BlackBerries and locks them in the Newark Airport Marriott with no access to media or transportation. They get 5 days to come up with a simplification plan or are sentenced to another 5 days at the Newark Airport Marriott. They must issue a set of guidelines for buying, planning and measuring online display or they must agree to permanently move into the Newark Airport Marriott.

So Keep it Simple, Stupid or Bang, Bang, display is dead…and along with it a host of content that is extraordinarily valuable to consumers and our business economy.

What a blast from the past. Richy Glassberg – one of the founders of the IAB and the person who lead various initiatives to standardize ad sizes – was back commenting about online advertising at the IAB conference that is going on today. Those who know Richy appreciate his candor, intelligence and shall we say…”loud” viewpoints on the media industry. He went back to cable TV during the bust, but he was back in fine form like a fist shaking Jeremiah.

“It’s like nothing’s changed because no one has faced the fundamental issues to make this a viable marketing medium,” said Richy Glassberg, senior VP at TV Guide Network. “The last five years there’s been a growth curve and all of a sudden they’re realizing this is an across-the-board downturn in every sector.” (The complete Ad Age article: http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=134833).

I worked with Richy 10 years ago when he started the first brand focused ad network, Phase2Media. One of the highlights of that Bubblicious era was a speech he gave to Ad-Tech (then with an “@” sign) which actually said something other than hype.   He addressed fundamental problems which would prevent online advertising from developing. Since clearly so many of those issues have scarcely been addressed – metrics, complexity of the buying process — we’re back where we started 10 years ago. I can’t go to another conference and have industry wonks say: fix the creative, come up with metrics that create bridges to other media… Read the text of the speech for his complete 10 ways to fix the problem.

Why should we care?   Online advertising – and by this I mean display and not search — supports content that consumers like and need.   A whole crowd of journalists with no knowledge of the history of media are espousing either micro-payments or non-profit status strategies in order to support the newspaper.    Consumers are voting with their eyeballs in favor of getting news online and that process is not going to stop.   The powerful media brands that exist need to derail the click-train and focus on selling audience and delivering smart, relevant packages for advertisers.    They have fed the beast by dumping inventory on a multitude of ad networks who all compete and as Michele Madansky in her Pubmatic survey (http://www.pubmatic.com/adpriceindex/) has proven, all those ad networks are flooding the market and lowering price.

The giant mistake of online ad reporters is taking the info from that data and assuming it applies to all of online advertising.  From researchers – including the companies that have vast amounts of data on ads online – there is a softening of display, but volumes have not dropped significantly and the declines that are seen are likely due to smaller ads vanishing from pages and more large, dynamic units. This is a good thing for consumers and for publishers. We can take one of the most cluttered media out there and improve the experience. (Please see Jon Gibs of Nielsen Online’s excellent research which introduced a clutter metric to the industry: http://www.nielsen-online.com/resources.jsp?section=preso_lib&nav=4).

I am ashamed to admit that last night was the first time I hooked up my laptop to my TV to watch a Hulu download of 30 Rock – I had missed the episode with the first Salma Hayak appearance and the first McFlurry product mentions.  I am a desirable (in the adverting world at least) above average income mom, with two small kids living in an A county. Yes, I remember that Bertolli Oven Baked Meals sponsored the episode and these very funny Alpo :15s that matched the tone of the show appeared after the episode.   Please tell me that NBC sold that inventory at more than a $1 CPM.

For the many out of work in the media industry there seem to be dangerous parallels to the burst of the bubble in 2001 – 2002. Media – and Web 2.0 — have once again been pricked by the pin of their own hubris – and the economic crisis that has cut ad spending.   But is it really 2002 all over again?  Maybe more like 1932.

While I cannot claim to have been around then, a glance at the recently published New York Times: The Complete Front Pages 1850 – 2008, reveals eerie parallels.   The headline for March 5, 1933 is “Roosevelt Inaugurated, Acts to End the National Banking Crisis Quickly.” In an accompanying article, it was noted that “Mr. Hoover went to the Capitol to see Mr. Roosevelt inaugurated as President, and left hurriedly, as if glad to throw from his shoulders the mantle of responsibility for the affairs of the country desperately distressed.”   Just substitute in Obama and Bush – and possibly Bin Laden in the article about the growing influence of Hitler — and you get the point.

But there are more than just historical parallels we can learn from: these two presidents and their use of emerging media also have useful portents for our current scenario.  Obama is widely credited with using social media to create a powerful network of supporters who mobilized and energized citizens previously uninvolved in the political process.

Prior to Roosevelt’s election, this was a newspaper dominated country.   Most major cities had three dailies, and New York had more than a dozen newspapers (including such Zeitgeist publications as “The Daily Worker” and “Negro World.” But Roosevelt chose a different medium to communicate his weekly message to a fearful public: he was the first to recognize the power of radio. Something tells me that the truly Internet-savvy Obama will be looking beyond publications of record as he engages a shell-shocked nation and recruits for his promised public service programs.

In these days of journalist body counts and endless articles about the death of the American newspapers, we have to remember that many of them were deep-sixed long ago?   What felled them? Economic circumstance not-unlike our own and a new technology/medium that had the power to be both an audience aggregator and a local reach vehicle.

Sound familiar?   That was supposed to be the promise of the Internet as an ad medium.   We now have scale plus the extraordinary ability to micro-target.   Yet we don’t have enough revenue to support a publication of record – or a simple video stream — purely through advertising.

What’s held us back?   Complexity and the insistence that the Internet was just different. And what a fine mess it is:There are three competing audience sources and unverifiable circulation numbers, yet no reliable way to measure the place where consumption is likely highest (work).   We’re drowning in a sea of our own numbers. Radio, in contrast, has one set of pretty arbitrary numbers but it has one set of numbers and reaches consumers in places where they simply can’t consume other media. Just like with television, media buyers make a leap of faith, place their ads and know they will drive local retail.   (A fascinating thing to me is that for all the hand-wringing over ad skipping and declining TV audiences, an ad executive focused on econometric modeling noted to me that 50 year old models developed for TV were still reliable at predicting retail sales.)   Online, in contrast, is incredibly inefficient to buy and requires all kinds of specialized skill to deliver and measure it – and most marketers are still not exactly sure what they should be measuring.   The connection to offline sales?   We’re still working on it.

So what’s the solution?

Do everything possible to make online more efficient as an ad medium.   Google is the biggest game in town and the only company that can truly change the process.   Has everyone taken a spin around AdPlanner (www.google.com/adplanner)?   It’s media buying 3.0: open access, my 7 year old could make a media plan on it and push a button, execute and get one bill at the end of the month. Is it set up in the way an agency thinks?  No.   Does it give professional content the deference many of us would like to believe it is owed? Of course not. Google may be the “frenemy” of media, but you’re better knowing what they are doing and working with them than continuing to fight an inefficient and unnecessary battle. Our trade associations – or an industry consortium — on both the advertising and publisher side should be working with Google to develop planning tools that value the strengths of each media – but enable cross media planning.

It pains me to hear the despairing discussions that online advertising will never be able to fully support content online.  Unlike the rest of the western world, we live in a country where content is free and media has always been ad-supported.  Ben Franklin was the one who invented the classified ad – and he’d probably be a big fan of Craigslist – while Alexander Hamilton, who founded the New York Post noted that: “It is the advertiser who provides the paper for the subscriber.”   Make it a little simpler and easier to buy and plan?   Yes, we can.