BEAVER CREEK, Colo. -- If you’ve ever had altitude sickness—as many of us up here have this week—you know there’s a mild feeling of giddiness when the headache and nausea finally subside. You’re still not getting all the oxygen you want, but the world feels significantly better.
That’s an apt metaphor for the collective mood of the 200-plus agency and publisher participants at the iMedia Summit at the Park Hyatt Resort here in ski country. The industry still is bit queasy… but hoping it’s on the right track.
As some of you know, I took a year off after I left AOL to play with my son, decide what I wanted to do next, and to write a book. I pretty much ignored the business for a year, so this Summit was my reintroduction. Here’s my bottom line: Some things have changed; others are the same, unfortunately.
What’s the Same?
The biggest thing is that no one really knows with certainty what works. No one really is admitting out loud that IM is a whole new world that’s both grounded and held down by the muck of the traditional advertising world. Online is not traditional media, but it has to work well with old-school advertising and promotion to ensure that clients will write decent-sized checks for online campaigns. Sure, there’s lip service paid to the fact that IM has to be more than just TV on the Web, but agencies admit that’s the easiest transition to sell.
Creative is generally lousy because many agencies seem more fascinated with whiz-bang tech tools than with results, and many seem to have forgotten that this is a business. It’s not a creative showcase, it’s not a chance to amaze and amuse. Hell, it’s not even a place to buff up your portfolio. Don’t show me creative, show me results. I’ve seen text links on Google that outsell more than 99 percent of the ads on the Web today. If you’re not selling, driving traffic or building your bottom line, go find another career.
People don’t use the Internet like they used to, so get used to it. Ask them. Listen to them. When was the last time you surfed randomly? 1999, maybe? The Internet is a tool for users today. Nothing more, nothing less. People use it for specific purposes—to buy stuff, get news and weather, or research specific things
Convergence is not here yet, so TV isn’t being served over the Web. And convergence may never happen. Think about your own habits—what do you do beyond checking email, surfing L.L. Bean and downloading music?
I was hoping for clarity this week—hoping for a whole new world, even. But what I got was more of the same confusion we’ve been dealing with since the 1990s. What works? How much is it worth? How do we convince clients to pay for it? Why are publishers being such a pain in the ass? Why are agencies being such a pain in the ass? Why don’t users do what we want them to do?
What Has Changed?
After years of feeling they were getting beat up by clients, publishers, portals, the media, vendors and each other, agencies indeed have plenty to feel optimistic about:
- Online ad budgets are up, as much as 20 percent in the third quarter of 2003, with even higher projections for 2004. That’s cool. It’s also an opportunity agencies don’t want to blow.
- That money seems to be coming at the expense of TV ad budgets and from shifting promotions budgets. Interesting, but not surprising. But don’t count TV out—anyone here watch HBO?
- Venture capital money seems to finally be flushed out of the system, replaced with real-world ad dollars. Good news, but it’s going to require some serious ROI.
- Internet marketing is winning points with clients because it offers accountability. See above.
- Agencies have to justify Internet spending far less often than before, as more and more clients “get it” and are more proactive about larger online campaigns. Great—but you need hundreds or thousands of successful case studies, not a handful.
- Technology is providing more and more rich media tools that drive user interaction online and users into making purchases. It’s also pissing users off. Consumers are clicking more and more on rich media ads, even though the same consumers say advertising is more intrusive than ever and they don’t like being interrupted by ads.
- And the 750,000 young males who have disappeared from TV’s demographics and budgets are still happily surfing the Internet. I won’t use the same description of their activities that critic Bob Garfield used, but let’s just say it requires a credit card to prove they’re over 18 and generally involves Webcams, binary files or Paris Hilton.
“The business is back,” Alan Schanzer, managing partner of The Digital Edge said in a panel on the future of interactive agencies. Most of the crowd here shared that big-picture view, although they acknowledge that agencies and publishers have plenty of work to do on the details and back-room activities if they’re to keep the momentum going.
That’s all really swell, but it’s not a sustainable business model. There’s a window open right now and there will be significant money flowing into online over the next year or so, but if agencies don’t get their act together and quit fighting with publishers, portals and themselves, clients will move onto the next big thing. Most here this week know that, which bodes well if they can execute.
As Dr. Phil might say, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be effective and profitable?”
A Few Words of Caution
Among the biggest cautions that participants heard this week was a recurring admonition not to return to “1999,” a reference to the legendary arrogance and take-it-or-leave attitude many agencies held at the height of the bubble. Several panelists said they’re seeing it creep back into relationships. Bluster comes with easy money, folks, so please be careful.
Another caution was that agencies, publishers and clients are not doing a good job of building mutual trust and streamlining paperwork flow and contracts, especially Terms and Conditions and the issue of sequential liability (who’s responsible if the client doesn’t pay?). This issue came up a half dozen times in two days. Is this really the most important issue facing our industry today, or is it simply an operational glitch? The wrong answer to that question could kill the bright promise of Internet advertising.
And although everyone agrees that search engine optimization and search engine marketing are bigger and more important parts of the marketing mix than ever, there are still plenty of competing opinions and evidence about what actually works, what it should cost and who should control it. Remember the Beta vs. VHS debate during the 1980s? Remember the HDTV format debate we’ve endured for the last 10 years? Remember non-transferable cell phone numbers?
And Some Questions
The last big open question—or maybe “open sore” is more appropriate in light of the debate—is how intrusive is too intrusive? Is using the Internet a private activity during which users must not be interrupted without their permission, as Garfield says? Or is it like television and radio, where advertisers can do as they please?
Should the Hulk burst onto your child’s monitor without your permission? Do you really want to be blasted with Whitesnake from an ad while you’re checking your bank balance? Do you care that some agency type had a creative brainstorm in the shower that generated an ad that looks cool but leaves you with product Alzheimers?
And that leads to other questions. For example, does the word “pop-up” in users’ minds include any ad that doesn’t appear within the page itself, but appears over, under, before or after? Does that even matter if they all make consumers angry?
Is describing and creating for the Web as “TV on the Internet” a good idea because it’s easy to sell, or is it a bad idea because it could lead the industry right out the back door and into the alley behind the opportunity that awaits it during the next few years?
As several seminar participants said, the industry is at a break point. Agencies can either tip into extreme effectiveness, or can screw up the chance and go down in flames, much like network TV is doing as we speak.
On Monday, I’ll take a deeper look at some of the answers posed for those questions, and I’ll share other bits of knowledge, wisdom and controversy from the Summit. I’ll even give you Bob Garfield’s 10 Commandments of Advertising—plus a couple he added just for the Internet. Until then, you’ll have to settle for a sampling menu of my favorite Summit quotes:
“Where have all the young men gone? Gone to ESPN.com every one … When will the networks learn, when will the networks learn?”
-- Editor-at-Large Joe Jaffe, with apologies to Joan Baez, during his Summit-opening lounge act.
“Advertising is about the client and the audience, not about you … or about technology.”
-- Critic Bob Garfield
“No one ever talks about creative (in search). The actual text is really what’s going to drive ROI.”
-- Participant during a question-and-answer session
“It’s been a buyers’ market for a long time, but that’s turning. And now the rules we define today are going to stay with us for a very long time. Do we want them to be, ‘any way you want me to be?’ I think not.”
-- Doug Weaver, President, Upstream Group
“No one is served by a little buy. It’s better for the industry if you play to win—not just play not to lose.”
-- A seller on the seller’s panel, quoted in Weaver’s “Love Letter to the Agencies”
“We were having these same conversations five years ago. It is a digital age. We should stop apologizing. The less we go in like scared little babies, the better.”
-- Rashid Tobaccowala, President, StarcomIP during the agency future panel
“Pop-ups are crack. Get off the pipe! People are angry … just look at the telemarketing industry. It was an $80-billion industry. It was turned off overnight.”
-- Critic Bob Garfield
