Live from Future of Media Summit 2008 Part 3

The second panel at the Future of Media Summit 2008 was on privacy and personalised advertising, probing the notion of creating value through targeted advertising (as alluded to in my previous post).

Jenny Williams spoke of the mess that many company's databases are in, and Chris Saad said a lack of standards also created barriers.There was also discussion that targeting does not make sense in a lot of situations, and hence Ross Dawson pointed out there will be a role for mass media.

There is another issue here - I really don't think that a lot of people want to receive advertising. There is the old example that it would be great if you could nominate the sort of ads that you want to receive. But who wants to receive ads for toothpaste and tissues?

A huge amount of advertising today is generated by fast-moving consumer goods companies, such as Nestle and Unilever. These companies typically know nothing about individual consumers, and nor do they. They are interested in aggregated audiences. And face it - who out there is going to nominate to receive advertising about toothpaste? These advertisers are not going to stop spending, so where will their funds be channeled?

Finally, this model of targeted advertising requires a huge shift in mindset for the entire marketing and advertising industry, and these changes tend to take longer than we might hope - especially in what is essentially a very conservative industry. Brand custodians are going to be very reticent to embrace new models - apart from stand-outs like Mini, there is not going to be a flood of brands.

I suspect that targeted advertising will most likely remain a niche activity in terms of total spending, and will not be the revenue-generating nirvana that a lot of businesses hope for.