Debbie Downer

Blog post from the head of IAB http://bit.ly/v0Pz

There’s clearly an agenda but its insightful. Mostly its a lot of detail around how new products like the iPad make advertising in them a pain in the ass.

But The last line is “To the degree that the walled gardens create impediments to scale, publishers need to find other sources of revenue. Media companies must redouble their efforts to add marketing services to their sets of offerings.”

In the past we’ve heard Google and other media co’s are a threat to ad agencies. Here’s one reason that might be true.

• Creating digital ads for lots of different places is complex and inefficient
• Competition between publishers prevents them from standardizing their protocols as they outdo each other and thus limits digital media’s value to companies
• If it costs publishers more to create their digital content than they can get selling ads against it (because of the limited value/scale) you need to find more ways to make money
• Charging for content is one way (and likely unpopular with consumers), developing advertising directly with our clients (and incorporating our fee’s into their business model) is another
  

I think agencies need to think about how they walk the tricky line between innovation and standardization.


Have a great weekend