look daddy, straight a's!

What the son isn't pointing out is that the classes are workshop, home ec, and Enligh as a Second Language. And herein lies the problem currently facing the advertising and marketing world. With the country now officially in a recession, advertising budgets are the first to get cut, specifically experimental and unquantifiable media. This means companies are looking to areas such as direct response ads (which have grown 27% YTD while most other ad products have decelerated), which have easily derived ROI's. This is basically an attempt for the marketing department of a company to prove itself to the board so the VP's don't get chopped as just another gangreined limb.

Unfortunately, we are in a time when companies need to reach their customers in the most cost-effective and relevant way possible, and more often then not that does not include media with easily derived ROI's. We are beginning to see this take effect in the digital ads space, specifically in display ad sales and the declining rate of CPM's. Firms are simply realizing these impression metrics simply aren't as valuable as everyone has been thinking. What needs to happen is the emergence of an entirely new online advertising model (or a paradigm shift to something like mobile), but unfortunately for the next however many months, companies simply won't have the cash to experiment and execute. Ad networks and advertisers alike should really begin (or should have already begun) rethinking their traditional models and find a way to monetize on alternative forms of digital media or, God forbid, without the reliance on advertising altogether. Either way, the model's broken and no one has the tools or manpower to fix it. We'll see a significant drop in the online advertising market over the following year as a result, but hopefully the old sayance "necessity breeds invention" will hold true and we'll see a beaute emerge.

Until til, keep your heads low and keep posting those A's.

Neilson online advertising spending breakdown (via AlleyInsider)