Think Multicultural

Ad Age has an article today about how MediaVest is working with a market research company to try to figure out how effective TV ads are.

This is they key part:

The partnership comes as the precise measurability of online advertising is putting TV under increasing pressure to show marketers a return on their investment, and as marketers are demanding more metrics to justify spending on TV.

It won’t make TV as accountable as online media but it’s a start. I guess.

Yesterday, one of our creative directors sent me a Times Online UK article about the new superfast Internet called the grid.

If you haven’t heard about the grid, it is being touted as a replacement to what we currently know today as the Internet. With speeds 10,000x faster than the current Internet, academics at Cern (where the original Internet was developed) anticipate amazing connectivity in the very near future. Researchers say the grid will allow for super-connectivity capabilities including holographic video conferencing, online gaming between thousands at one time, and hyper social networking.

If the the recent pace of Internet technology expansion is any guide (we’re less than 15 years into the history of the Internet), this grid technology has the potential to rapidly and profoundly change the way we live our lives, let alone engage in marketing and advertising.

Isn’t this incredibly exciting?

To continue my previous post on how the future of advertising is digital, I would argue that digital is changing traditional advertising.

Let’s start on the creative side. Have you noticed how TV spots are starting to look a lot more like banner and rich media ads? Similar styles, animation and aesthetics. When was the last time you thought to yourself - “wow, that banner ad looks a lot like a .30 second spot?” Not to mention all the user generated content finding its way onto TV (think Dorito’s Super Bowl ads). It’s pretty clear where things are going.

From a media perspective, the migration to digital-centric planning and ad management platforms is already happening. From Google’s entrance into radio (and recent move into TV) to Clear Channel’s Digital Outdoor Network all media is moving to trafficking and management platforms similar to those used for online ad serving (DoubleClick, AtlasDMT, 24/7 Real Media). Digital media is about digital delivery, the ability to generate real-time metrics (lots of them) and most importantly the ability to optimize mid-stream… this capability is quickly migrating to traditional media.

When you factor in the disruptive effect of new media technology on traditional media (think DVRs for TV, iPods/iTunes for radio, the Web for newspapers) with the massive growth of digital media, a new media eco-system is quickly taking shape.

And digital is at the center of it all….

More to come on this topic next week.