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Long day. The closing session of day one was a panel billed as a "General Session: Advertising's Horizon" presumably to have the thought-leaders at the front telling us in the audience what might be. Moderated by John Battelle, former publisher of The Industry Standard and now Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley, it was a bust in my view.
The panel blathered on for their hour shifting from esoteric dreaming and lectern-pounding repetition of either the obvious or prevailing wisdom of the day. Re: the Internet's evolution, the underlying theme was "it's getting bigger and more important; it will be omnipresent; and it will change how we intereact" or something to that effect.
IMHO . . . so? "Well, it means new revenue streams and business models." Really? No kidding?
Moving to the impact on advertising, the conversation seemed a little bit more valuable. Advertising will change. There will be more interaction (probably as a function of capabilities emerging). Where there was some energetic debate, if you will, among the panelists was in addressing the question of what this would do to other media -- particularly TV. No consensus except that there will be an effect. Maybe TV will consume (or be consumed) by the Internet medium.
Talk about TiVo (huge portion of the audiences here, when asked, have a TiVo) and its effect on advertising: gonna have to get better at the creative to keep people coming back to the ads. On the business side Battelle wondered to the panel what that will do to the consumer's costs and the business model, given that prevailing wisdom says that the advertisers pay for the programing.
My recollection may be a little hazy because I'm posting the day after and I was a little pre-occupied during the session. WiFi got finicky in the session room and I spent the better part of the first half pissing with my computer trying to get through the hotel's gateway. It was all resolved later -- after the session, of course.
Looking forward to today's program.
Posted by Grayson at May 25, 2004 10:46 AM