by Paul Ashby

Created on: November 18, 2008   Last Updated: January 12, 2009

The Broadcast Ad Model Is Broken. Now What? But what they don't yet realise is the fact that by the very nature of advertising it has always been thus! If today's TV buying is the model for the future advertisers are in trouble. Virtually all parties involved - marketers, media buyers and the media themselves - agree that in a video-on-demand world in which consumers control what they watch and when, the current broadcast advertising model is broken, or at the very least inadequate.

What they don't yet agree on is the solution, leading to mass confusion as networks scramble to create their own measurements in a race to develop a standard for counting those precious eyeballs. The trouble is, they should be working together, not apart. "We're in the primordial soup," said Alan Wurtzel, president-research and media development at NBC Universal. Despite all the evidence pointing to advertising failure there are still many people within the industry that want to maintain the status quo . Broadcast networks want to maintain their position as mass-audience delivery vehicles, especially since "scatter" ad pricing is weak and their traditional TV ratings continue to show signs of erosion. As of Oct. 15, the four biggest broadcast networks showed declines in live and same-day audiences between the ages of 18 and 49.

The real problem is a total lack of understanding as to what communication really is plus the fact that the entire marketing community is still confounded by ROI and accountability. We are all searching for answers and coming up with solutions. The answer has been available to them for years...the sad fact is that they have chosen to ignore it whilst they pursued creativity. You cannot then expect the consciousness that created the problem to then solve it! The failing agency relationships.

Leapfrogging agencies to work directly with media companies is, it seems, an appealing prospect for some of America's mightiest marketers. Nor is that the only option that appeals to the nation's chief marketing officers, in session last weekend at the Association of National Advertisers annual conference. Some participants revealed that they seek to fix an agency model they see as broken. "What's lacking in agency relationships now is speed to market". "I don't think any of these [agency] relationships are satisfactory enough that we would continue them without having some degree of experimentation". "We've been experimenting with different agency relationships where we're

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