The Post Advertising Age
If you haven’t already read it, check out Bob Garfield’s Chaos Scenario 2.0 in this week’s AdAge. It’s a long piece, but worth the read. It’s pretty eye opening and judging by the number of comments, it’s hitting a nerve. I’ll second a comment on the story from Rick in Chicago: This is the clearest, most compelling piece I’ve read on this topic in two years. Will your readers’ buy it? Who knows? Should they? Depends on what they want to be doing in two years.
Here’s just a few snippets of the story:
“The online space isn’t remotely developed enough — nor will it be anytime soon — to absorb the advertising budgets of the top 100 marketers, to match the reach of traditional media or to fulfill the content desires of the audience. (Maybe viewers no longer demand their MTV, but what remains of the mass audience is in no hurry to surrender its Los Angeles Times and “Lost.”) A collapsing old model. An unconstructed new model. Paralyzed marketers. Disenchanted consumers. It’s all so … chaotic.
How long it will be before order is restored is anybody’s guess. What is certain is that the Brave New World, when it emerges, will be far better for marketers than the old one. What is nearly as certain is that many existing ad agencies and some media agencies will be left behind. And the reason they will be left behind is their stubborn notion that they can somehow smoothly transition to a digital landscape.
“It’s a very different kind of world,” says Adam Thierer, senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation and author of “Media Myths: Making Sense of the Debate Over Media Ownership.” “The problem is, the expectations are there to capture that mass audience that long ago disappeared. We are witnessing the gradual death of the business models that thrived in that age of scarcity.”
This post was written by: Kim Mickelsen