Oh shit. The end is coming.
Not long to go now before advertisers and their agencies get the bad news they’ve been avoiding for so long - viewer ratings on their TV ads. For the first time on a widespread basis Neilsen Media Research will start releasing data on how many viewers (if any) continue watching a channel during the breaks. We Punks predict the data will make depressing reading for the majority of the people who are responsible for the $70billion of TV advertising stuffed on our screens each year. Who will be the most depressed? We’ve ranked them, in order of decreasing depression:
1. TV network executives (because they’ll continue to lose ad dollars to other media)
2. Ad agency executives (they have focused too heavily on TV campaigns and don’t know what else to do)
3. TV production companies (their business is built around TV ads, but the smart ones are honing their skills for other forms of film content)
4. Marketing executives (they will realize how much money they’ve been wasting - not “half” as Mr. John Wanamaker said all those years go, but maybe seventy, eigthy or ninety percent)
And who’s most to blame? Weve ranked them too, in order of decreasing blame:
1. Ad agency executives (they’ve pigeonholed themselves into experts at making TV ads when the writing has been on the wall for years that they should be thinking far more broadly to other formats)
2. Marketing executives (they allowed their weak agencies to make terrible ads containing no Big Ideas that are irritating to watch)
3. TV network executives (they should have said “no!” to bad ads or at least charged a premium for them a long time ago - bad TV ads weaken the content on the network)
4. TV production companies (for agreeing to make crap ads because the money was good - shame on you)
To the few smart marketers and agencies who have seen this coming and are now thinking Punk, we salute you!
