ambient

One of the more amusing shifts over the last ten years is the recognition that many of us who thought we were getting into the technology business actually ended up in the media business (and vice versa). So, as technologists-cum-media moguls, it behooves us to pay attention to how confident media buyers are about the various mediums for which we develop.

MediaPost quotes a study by Advertiser Perceptions to claim that ad exec confidence slightly declined in the third quarter, specifically about their ability to buy more media on behalf of their clients.

By media type, the latest survey of ad exec confidence:

It’s clear that digital formats (not sure why mobile is not considered “online”) fare the best going forward. We know this is because they are the cheapest to deploy, management tools abound, and ROI is - more or less - directly measurable. So, long term, two trends are clear:

1. Online ads are the best place for marketers looking for direct reach and highly optimized campaigns

2. Eventually, almost all of the “offline” formats are going to be online (which would make the above graph a little boring)

So, as a techie in the media business, I’m not worried about things in the long term (barring a total collapse of industrial civilization). In the short term, I’m very grateful for my experience at SEMDirector, a business built on the concept of ROI measurement and actionability. There’s no question: online media is hot and it’s going to be hot for the next 10 years, at a minimum. There will be short term ebbs and flows, but that’s true anywhere.

Also, in the above chart, notice that in online, mobile, and cable tv - the three most measurable mediums - confidence is waaay up still. So, yes, there is a contingent of pessimistic ad execs, and that could grow over 2008, but as Seth says, times will always be crazy.

Some practical advice:

1. Commodity ad systems, such as AdSense, aren’t a great long term strategy for monetization. Sure, there are lots of people making good money at it, but I wouldn’t count on it long term. There just isn’t enough relevant context in the medium or the message.

2. Focus on providing real value in whatever ad system you use to your end users / participants. One of the reasons I am building my business and staking my future on social media is that we have the opportunity like never before to give individual consumers a lot of power in every single transaction. Let’s make that worth something and not try to wash them out / aggregate individuals back into abstraction again. Consumer influence matters. This is the best chance marketers have to tap into that. Work with systems that let marketers listen better, not just talk better.

3. If you take #2 to heart, you’ll realize that there is still a ton of opportunity for building ad platforms that meet those demands. The existing ad networks out there are still highly irrelevant, anti-social beasts. There is a lot of room for small, agile startups to come in and redefine media, yet again.

So, gloomy (or not so, in this case) reports be damned; get out there and start changing some games.