I am fortunate to meet with many of these new media start-ups as they grapple with the problems of getting their businesses set up, structured and funded. Buoyed by prospects of strong projected growth in adspend across the region, I have seen more of these new media players in the last six to nine months than in the crazy days of the dotcom era.
This trend is healthy on the basis that competition for traditional media ultimately means that all have to step up their game to the ultimate benefit of advertisers and consumers. However, whether the new media player is in the online space or promoting some other type of out-of-home opportunity, they all cry foul at the role of advertising agencies as they grapple to get what they consider to be a fair share of advertising spend. They cite the unwillingness of the agencies to understand and work with new media as a way of giving the advertisers effective access to niche audiences, etc. This would obviously be countered by the agencies who point to the absence of sufficient data etc to prove or justify the use of any specific new media in a specific campaign.
I fear that the net result of all this finger-pointing, given existing business models, will be the failure of some of these new players and/or some consolidation. The latter would of course enable one sales force to package different forms of media together to provide both attractive offerings for the client as well as obtaining the required efficiencies of scale for the media entrepreneurs.
Given this potential scenario of, at best, consolidation, then one perhaps wonders why there are not greater attempts by the new media companies to combine forces on either a formal permanent basis or, at the very least, on a project basis to present a single offering. I believe that this may be appropriate within the outdoor space, and even between outdoor and wireless media. At present, it is the role of the agencies to aggregate the various media offerings, but I believe that they would potentially embrace a more coherent offering, hence overcoming some of the existing confusion and clutter in the marketplace.
While referring to confusion and fragmentation that we are seeing locally, we are also having to deal with the global phenomenon of blogs on the media and marketing landscape. There are currently an estimated five million blogs (short for weblog) on the internet. These web journals are beginning to have a profound effect on the relationships between corporations, particularly those in the consumer goods or services space, and their customers. Potentially very damaging to any company that doesn't deliver up to expectations, blogs can, however, be used as a cheap and effective marketing tool. In the US in particular, we are already seeing agencies advising companies on how to use this latest medium to their advantage.
The most popular blogs themselves are also becoming revenue generating, facilitated by blog ad companies, which place ads and pay per response.
While I am not sure that, culturally, blogs will catch on in the same way in Asia all this is further evidence of the confusing array of offerings available to the advertiser.
