Target Practice

It remains the great irony of modern media that the company that represents the 'long tail', ie Google, is cleaning up against traditional media.

There's a simple dynamic here. Media buyers still want to buy in multiples of 500,000 or more.

Now, there are very few brands who sell to more than 500,000 individuals in a year, so the wastage from this model is considerable.

The result is that 'niche' markets and local markets are largely ignored in the march for volume. Meanwhile Google, which has an effective medium for this market, gets the budget due to the effectiveness of its long tail, targeted, model.

But part of me asks: why have the agencies not realised what's going on ? Why don't they Googlise ? Why does a totally inefficient model dominate ?

The fact is that the status quo suits everyone. What should happen is that ad and media agencies are treated like online agencies - paid by results, not by volume. But they're not. They are incentivised by volume and driven by volume.

Internet TV will only become commercially viable when the concept of targeted advertising has value.

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