Has Online Advertising Lost Its Schwerpunkt?

I just ran into an intersting post by Vidsense CEO Jaffer Ali entitled “Has Online Advertising Lost Its “Schwerpunkt”?” Its premise: “Creativity and strategic thinking and planning have become subservient to technology under the guise of analytics.” Part of his evidence includes the how marketers evaluate advertising agencies:

In 2005, those marketers surveyed listed the order of qualities they looked for in their agencies:

1. Quality of Creative …

I just ran into an intersting post by Vidsense CEO Jaffer Ali entitled “Has Online Advertising Lost Its “Schwerpunkt”?” Its premise: “Creativity and strategic thinking and planning have become subservient to technology under the guise of analytics.” Part of his evidence includes the how marketers evaluate advertising agencies:

In 2005, those marketers surveyed listed the order of qualities they looked for in their agencies:

1. Quality of Creative Content
2. Price/Cost
3. Innovation and Strategic value
4. Traditional print, offline services
5. Sophisticated analytics/measurement
6. Proficiency in emerging/interactive

In 2008 the results of the same survey were quite different:

1. Sophisticated analytics/measurement
2. Proficiency in emerging/interactive
3. Price/Cost
4. Quality of creative (virtual tie with price/cost)
5. Traditional print, etc.
6. Innovation and Strategic value

It’s a bit of a curmudgeonly piece, but it rings true. In the heat of web analyitics, we sometimes forget that attention isn’t just a commodity but represent real human beings exercising free will. Nice to see this coming from someone who sells ads on a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) basis.

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