A Brush With the World of Online Media Buying

A client invited me to sit in on an online marketing presentation this morning. Lately I've been the presenter at these kinds of things, but this morning that honor went to the client's media agency. It was interesting to see the topic from another angle.

This is a rough approximation of how they allocated time among discussions of various online media:

It's a very different viewpoint from the one I've been preaching. There was a heavy emphasis on paid media, and little serious discussion of blogging, podcasting, and social networks. Imagine a traditional ad buying approach overlaid on interactive media - lots of talk about reach, impressions, and share of voice, and very little about the fundamental changes in buyer/seller relationships that are making the Internet such a compelling marketing channel.

This is how I might break down the same sort of online marketing discussion.


More about understanding what customers want, and not just where they are. More about making businesses visible, open and engaged. More about tapping into people and networks, and less about spending massive amounts of money on paid media.

More: Online advertising isn't necessarily a bad thing any more than a blog is necessarily good. But, the ad-centric view of online media seems to have some shortcomings, particularly an inordinate degree of focus on traditional ad metrics and reliance on big budgets to get a message across. Media buying seems ripe for disruption and it surprised me to see a traditional approach, albeit applied with some new tools to changing media.

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