It’s the time of year that’s full of predictions, especially in the media and marketing space. This is another one.

Common themes among the predictions for 2010 are more distributed content and media consumption patterns, more personalized experience with brands and engagement through social media, the rise of mobile, and a continued shift toward digital from traditional media.

So where does this leave media buyers?

We have ad networks and exchanges that attempt to streamline the buying process for targeted online advertising, and enterprise-level, on-premise software programs for planning and buying traditional media. Somewhere in the middle are internal processes and systems from demand-side platforms to spreadsheets and sticky notes. And data. Lots of data.

How media and technology converge this year could be the answer to a fragmented media landscape and the cumbersome buying processes that come with it.

Traditional & Online Advertising

Advertising in traditional media isn’t going anywhere, despite the growth in online spend and the decline in traditional media spend. In fact, a recent MediaPost analysis found that the percentage share of spending for each medium (except newspapers) hasn’t really changed. It’s just that online advertising (not to mention mobile, video, etc.) continues to increase, and  the apparent decline in traditional spend is just a leveling out of ad budgets to make room for digital media.

Nonetheless, it seems the coming year will bring a continued decline in traditional advertising spending, though not to the degree we saw in 2009. eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey also points out in his 7 predictions for 2010 that social media advertising will level off (it’s better earned), and advertising content and relevant creative will become a focus of 2010.

Technology & Innovation

This post isn’t about which media types will rise or fall in the coming year but rather the advances in technology that will enable the process of planning and buying these mediums to reach local consumers and stand out among the noise.

Increases in buying process efficiencies will improve the ROI of advertising in any medium.

The concept of bringing these systems and processes together into a single über media buying platform is not new. Some industry giants have attempted to provide the tools to buy broadcast and print media with the same convenience of running paid search campaigns through their platform, though met with little success.

At the heart of it all is an attempt not only to streamline but somewhat standardize the process of requesting proposals (RFPs), one of ClickZ’s digital media predictions for 2010 . The standardization of digital media buying through online platforms could scale to traditional media as well.

But the platform that succeeds this year won’t push the media buyer into a process both prescribed and limited by the technology they use, or the medium they’re buying. It will simply open the channels of communication to facilitate information collection and analysis, process management, and execution.

And just as marketers are finding new ways to incorporate social media into their strategies or manage their media buys in a single stop with the some level of simplicity we’ve grown used to in today’s applications, these same concepts will drive the advances in and adoption of new technology that challenges current media buying models.

In essence, the technology that will help us adjust to the fragmented media landscape needs to include, at minimum, the following concepts:

• Increased efficiencies in process via internet access to comprehensive platform
• Real-time information driven by platform users and marketplace activity
• A connection of buyers and sellers through communication and “social” tools (content tagging, recommendations, comparisons)
• Customizable tools to plan, buy, and compare any medium

In an iMedia Connection video that takes a look at the marketing platforms that will evolve in 2010, Nancy Marzouk (VP Sales, x+1) explains the industry activities to watch in the coming year will be how agencies increasingly adopt advances in technology, how the base technology built years ago will hold up against innovations in today’s technology, and how multiple media types will be adopted on the ad exchanges and online platforms.  The example used in the interview was video, but this could also apply to the notion of using online tools to buy and sell offline media.

Information Exchange

And another key piece of the puzzle is real-time data, a concept with a variety of different applications. It hasbeen at the forefront of industry news lately with Nielsen’s decision to drop live local TV ratings in favor of live-plus-same-day to account for DVR viewership, and the reversal of the decision soon after under pressure from agencies and industry organizations. Among the concerns with live-plus-same-day ratings was the potential inflation of audience numbers.

Alas, the quest continues across media types to find a way to accurately measure audiences as engagement with a medium or the content delivered changes within a marketplace. Media buyers look for more accurate and real-time data, but it must be transparent and unbiased.

The need for better data has an interesting implication for media buyers—the ability to do real-time comparison of advertising opportunities and proposals, maybe even with the benefit of potential reach and frequency calculations.

Bringing it all together will be the platform that allows buyers and sellers to interact and share information, using social concepts of tagging advertising opportunities that appeal to niche audiences or adding new media outlets as they arise. This will allow marketers to reach their consumers through long tail media buying opportunities as well which, for local advertising, will no doubt become increasingly more viable channels to reach targeted consumers in the time, place, and medium that works for them.

Media buyers in 2010 will demand the information, communications, and flexibility among the tools and systems they use to plan and measure multiple media types that reach a targeted audience.

The challenge for new media buying technologies will be to incorporate all mediums—online and offline—into a single platform without interfering with inventory supply and demand or negotiations, biasing information with a commission structure, or remaining static in a digital world grown accustomed to real-time information.

Want to see how this will work in 2010? Contact us.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 3:25 pm and is filed under Advertising, Media Buying, Multi-Channel, Planning, Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.