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New Study: Advertisers Biggest Losers of TV Strike; Madison Ave. Reacts with Major Changes

By blog_editor on Jan. 21 2008

When the Financial Times asked NBC's Jeff Zucker about the upfronts, the yearly ritual of networks throwing lavish parties to showcase their upcoming shows to media planners, he showed his disdain for the state of the television industry by stating that, "Things like that are all vestiges of an era that’s gone by and won’t return." It is easy to understand why he is frustrated. Thirty-five perecent of American's have changed their TV viewing habits as a result of the strike according to a new study conducted by new media consultancy group, Interpret LLC. That has a significant impact on advertisers, who Interpret refers to in their study as "the biggest losers in the TV strike."

The viewers aren't the only ones making changes as a result of the strike. I recently learned that Madison Ave is making some some huge changes that underscore Zucker's point that the TV industry will never be the same. OMD, the largest arm of Omnicom, in the next few months will train ALL of their TV buyers how to buy digital media. Think about that for a second - the world's largest media buying/planning agency has a mandate to train all their TV buyers to learn to buy digital because they can no longer reach the audience they need from TV buys alone.

Those of us that work in digital media can only hope that with the retraining, TV buyers will not only ween themselves free of their dependency on TV's reach, but also see that digital media has far superior engagement, tracking, and performance than TV.

Post by Eric Klotz
Director of Creative Development