Tom Hosking | Regional Sales Manager, Massive EMEA
Having been leading the in-game advertising charge across EMEA for the last 3 years I have been introducing this great product to all manner of people – strategic planners, press buyers, TV buyers, radio buyers, out of home buyers, digital media buyers, clients, creative directors. Overwhelmingly all parties love the idea of serving time sensitive, regionally relevant ads into video games. But there is one party that struggles with the concept more than any of the others.
All media is going digital. Although I don’t agree with my Step Father’s thoughts that your computer will be your TV (er, I don’t want my e-mails displayed on my 42” plasma), TV pictures will only be coming across the air from your router or the local WiMax tower before not too long. Radio too. Just like at Heathrow T5, all out of home panels will soon be digital; magazines will all migrate online - check out the continued decline in the once all conquering Loaded magazine’s circulation and the huge increase in its website traffic.
But most of this digitisation will be happening outside of a browser window. And this is the challenge. The wonders, and they are wonders, of digital media have largely focussed on the ability to track and capture data on direct user action – clicks. A whole new economy has been built on this. It used to be said that half an advertising budget was wasted, but if the only way we accredit any value to an ad is whether it’s been clicked then over 95+% is ‘wasted’. This is not a bad thing if what is not wasted is of high value. It works incredibly well for some kinds of advertising and marketing.
The future is digital, and we all need to embrace it. But we need to think about how to better judge media that is made up of 1s and 0s but isn’t within the browser environment. Fundamental to this is a wider acceptance of brand advertising being delivered digitally. Through their Engagement Mapping technology Atlas continue to do fantastic work in proving the effect of online advertising above and beyond a straight click. The challenge is our willingness to buy into this kind of data, and our willingness to sell against it.
So, here’s the thought I’ll leave you with. Have we as an industry relied too much on the quick, direct ROI fix that HTML/Java/Flash etc can provide? In the rush to expand our digital functions are we as well prepared for the digitisation of all media as we should be? Almost all ‘new’ media set TV budgets in their sites, but TV has built itself into the beast that it is without clicks.
Great post, Tom…
But there’s a loooong way to go before we reach a fully digital world (I especially believe that paper magazines will remain strong)
Look at the video embedded in this post from Sean Howard: http://www.craphammer.ca/2008/08/future-of-accou.html
Hi Philippe,
Thanks for the comment and for the link. A great talk from JWT - and great to hear a creative agency saying that those adverts for ‘global’ brands that are so obvioulsy ‘global adverts’ are as bad as we all know they are
One thought that was threaded throughout the talk from Guy Murphy was the strength of brands. And this applies to media brands. To go back ot my point, let’s take a look at one of the strongest media brands of recent years: Loaded Magazine, once selling over half a million copies in it’s mid 90’s heyday is now, according to the latest ABC figures selling just 95,371 copies - down more than 20% on the same period a year ago.
At the same time loaded.co.uk has received a 51% increase in its monthly unique users according to the lastest eABC figures released earlier this month. The same pattern is true for NME. So the media brands are strong, but people are drifting away from consuming those brands on paper and on to the screen.
And this is where the challenge lies. How does an advertsier adapt to the different delivery method of Loaded’s content? A razor balde manuafacturer may be happy to place a branding campaign in the magazine, but when the reader consumes Loaded digitally it becomes more of a challenge to assess the branding opportunities within the igital pages of the magazine? It should, but the common practice of only measuring clicks would suggest so.
Guy Murphy is right, on a global level we shouldn’t be rushing to do everything digital - it’s what’s right for individual markets and consumer groups. But where broadband penetration is high, and media consumption is drifting from analogue to digital, from broadcast to on-demand we do need to ensure that our assesment of the new delivery method is felxible enough to be able to base advertising and media decisons on more than a click through rate.