Different Universes

Let39s start with the doyenne of online data trends Mary Meeker It used to be fashionable to share her humungous annual presentation This was the alpha and omega of decks containing everything you ever wanted to know about life the universe and everything in between at least as far as online media forms were concernedI always had a problem with one of her charts which for me colored my view of the rest of her work This is the chart contrasting the amount of time given up to a medium with the ad expenditure on that mediumamp160Meeker39s point was that the gap between these two sets of data represented the financial opportunity for that medium Soamp160TV took up a comparatively small amount of the average individual39s time but a large percentage of total adspend TV was thus overinvestedRadio and in particular mobile Meeker39s favorite took up a large percentage of time spent but received a comparatively modest amount of ad revenue They were thus underinvested and therein lay the greatest opportunityEverybody who knows a scintilla about advertising can spot the problem here The great and the good from Sir Martin Sorrell to Tess Alps pointed out that impact and creative considerations may have a part to playamp160Even the mighty Cog Blog had a go suggesting back in 2016 that if time spent with a vehicle was the only consideration then we would long ago have had advertising on cutlery or if we literally looked only at opportunities to see data OOH would easily be the largest advertising medium on the planetMeeker still peddles this nonsense though She might conceivably ignore Sir Martin and she can be forgiven for not paying attention to some random blogger But if she doesn39t listen to the formidable Ms Alps she39s asking for troubleNext we have the merrygoround at The Daily Mail For those unaware Geordie Greig the editor of the daily paper has this week been using a journalistic term ousted following the promotion of Richard Caccappolo to be CEO of the company39s media businessesWhy does this matter Caccappolo is closely associated with the success of The MailOnline and what a success that has beenThe MailOnline has it is fair to say prospered on the back of its obsession with celebrity news per se is not at the top of its agenda and whatever you think of The Daily Mail39s politics noone can accuse it of not being a newspaperThe ad world though is moving ever so slowly in the direction of quality of content of audience attention and ofamp160focussing on business outcomes over the blunt numbers delivered by the social media platforms and many online outletsamp160We have moved on from gross impressions and from clicks as we pay attention to other data more closely aligned with advertiser successamp160And yet what these two tales illustrate is that what we see as a trend is not recognized by those driving the media agendaYou might argue that we are ahead of our time and that others will catch up That would be optimisticMore likely whilst we may well be right few outside of our marketing bubble are listeningAnd that39s rather more depressingClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet

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Different Universes

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Brian Jacobs

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Different Universes

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