A Totally Different Upfront

With plans barely laid for 2007, the 2008 upfront is just around the corner, with some folks already having begun. But "that" upfront relates strictly to media planning and buying and leaves the content that will fill those buys out of the discussion. While this isn't the chicken and egg discussion between media and creative, the explosive growth of online video placements have outpaced agencies' ability to develop content that is relevant and specific to the media in which this video will run.

The following eMarketer charts show just how significant online video is, and is expected to become.

Not surprisingly, ClickZ reports on DoubleClick's data that banners containing video drive much higher click rates. The data here isn't perfect and doesn't account for multiple clicks/user and other issues, but the article does point out that in a medium where users vote with their time, delivering content related to the site environment that is both interesting in the first few seconds yet short enough to deliver the entire message is crucial. Theoretically this makes all the sense in the world. If an ad is going to appear on a golf site, the video should be golf related. From a practical standpoint, this is a video production, banner production, and online ad trafficking nightmare which will eat up agency resources and drive retainer fees through the roof.

This is where media, creative and account need to work more closely together than ever. Think about how it looks when you shuffle a deck of cards. Done right, one card from each hand folds in as the card from the other hand follows, and so on. Imagine four or five hands trying to do this into one deck all at once - an image no harder to conceptualize than creative, media, account, production, and the client all working 100% in sync with each other as plans move forward. Just like the potato sack race, no one is going to get anywhere by trying to run off on their own.

The benefits coming from an agency who can pull this off will be huge. Imagine an upfront video shoot tied to each different category within the media buy. Sports footage for sports sites, newscaster-like footage for news sites, product on a beach for travel sites, and so on. This footage would be used to creative multiple ad formats and creative executions which drive higher response through higher relevancy within the site environment.

The question will be whether most, if any, agencies can accomplish this in reality. It is hard - really hard. It takes a significant amount of organization, planning, and discipline. Most importantly, no one gets paid any more to do it this way than the old way. It's just the price of entry into a more complex, customizable media landscape.