Advertising Week Post Mortem: Can Anyone Capitalize on Content Investment? - Michael Kassan - MediaBizBloggers

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As someone who spends a lot of time at conferences—moderating, programming and listening carefully to the many great minds in the advertising and entertainment worlds—I have long ago stopped looking for major revelations at these gatherings. Rather, my takeaways seem to come in small packages and I am happy when we can tie a few together into a trend or prediction that adds value to our cocktail chatter. Or better yet, to tomorrow's assignment.

It was heartening, a year into the recession that created a pall over last year's event, to see such robust programming and participation from the community at this year's Advertising Week. The big players used the week, again, to showcase stunning technology (Microsoft), marketing platforms (Yahoo) and to make declarations such as AOL's Tim Armstrong's that "the next ten years are all about content."

This got my attention -- especially since the content companies were conspicuously quiet this year relative to the platforms and technology companies. Media Link Senior Partner Dee Salomon, an 11 year veteran of Conde Nast Publications, was also intrigued by Tim's prognostication. Here is what she told me:

"Tim made the argument that content always follows distribution. The '90s was all about access—AOL's original foundation - and the last ten years have revolved around the platform, all of which has laid the plumbing to now allow content to be well distributed."

Did we hear digital content publishers heave a sigh of relief at Tim's assertion? Not so much. One of the on-going topics of Advertising Weeks current and past is the erosion of advertising, plaguing creators of content in all media. The contention by Wired magazine publisher and author Chris Anderson, in discussion with Charlie Rose at the MIXX Conference, is that digital content wants to be free. So what does AOL know that the New York Timesdoesn't?

I was grateful to Judy McGrath, founder of MTV Networks (a participant along with Martha Stewart, Mark Cuban, Bob Garfield, Rob Norman, Milton Glaser and other notables in a panel on Wednesday), who stated 'fake news has been very good to me.' Indeed, Chris Anderson represents a breed of content—journalism—that requires substantially more protection from commercialism than does the majority of what we call content but is better described as entertainment.

And content publishers who are not held to the standards of the fourth estate or ASME regulations have much more leeway to put advertisers' product and messages into their content and their content into advertisers' product and messages.

So it was not surprising to hear that AOL will be capitalizing on its content investment to give it the credibility to extend content creation to its advertising partners, as Erin Clift demonstrated when she presented AOL's ongoing partnership with GMC, "GMC Trade Secrets." For this program, AOL capitalized on its well installed plumbing by employing behavioral targeting and retargeting across its network (in addition to distributing content within social media) to reach 54 million users. Very smart pipes indeed!

Which leads to the other big issue for content creators in this disintermediated world: if the most contemporary incarnation of media placement is really the distribution of content and, as Tim said on Tuesday, "CMS is the new ad system," then what is the value of editorial content when its audiences can be targeted more cheaply outside of their contextual habitat? It seems that AOL's recipe creates a closed loop: Create content that can be leveraged on behalf of advertisers and distribute it in smart ways across the broader AOL network and through social media.

Looking forward, will a technologically advanced plumbing system combined with sophisticated content management give credence to the rhetorical question posed by Hearst Entertainment's George Kliavkoff at Monday's PwC panel on business transformation : 'Why do we need Web sites anyway?'

Michael E. Kassan is Chairman and CEO of Media Link, LLC, a leading Los Angeles and New York City-based advisory and business development firm that provides critical counsel and direction on issues of marketing, advertising, media, entertainment and digital technology. Michael can be reached at michael@medialinkllc.com

Read all Michael's MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Michael Kassan - MediaBizBloggers.

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