MediaTel

Opening the MRG Conference in Vienna yesterday afternoon, Walker Media CEO Phil Georgiadis lambasted the industry for its approach to internet advertising and called on them to "re-define the new media landscape".

"We have convinced ourselves that the fundamental characteristics of new media remain the same as the old," he said. "We are happy to define the internet as a medium, and allow traditional measurements such as time spent and total ad revenue to be applied unchecked.

"The internet is much more than a medium, it is an environment where all communication techniques can be applied, but the assumption that time spent on the Internet is something to be compared to time spent reading a newspaper or watching TV has to be challenged."

Only now are agencies beginning to ask about reach and frequency said Georgiadis, who felt that the ultimate accountability of the medium had deterred this line of questioning. But even that measurement has been changed unchallenged "from click-through to banners and then cost per click-through search once display clicks started to look a bit pricey. This would have been a bit like championing TV spots one day, then finding they weren´t really working quite the way you had hoped and switching all the money on to Teletext the next day."

Georgiadis noted that Google was now recognising publicly the affect that TV has on driving search activity. "TV is the Power Brand´s biggest ally, yet you might argue that Google is the Power Brand`s biggest enemy," he said. "At the moment reductions in display advertising are paying for search" which he asserted is given an artificially positive ROI rating because the work done by other media prior to search is not being taken into the calculation.

Georgiadis pointed the finger in a number of directions, calling for the IAB to stop making "fatuous comparisons" treating the internet as a medium. "I predict that in the near future the IAB will start talking about the internet as a means of delivering TV, press, Outdoor and radio messages and they will of course be right."

He asked the IAB to instead inform about the exciting future capabilities of the internet and how it is used. He added that advertisers should "stop and think more about the definitions and capabilities of the media they use and be less willing to cluster all media spends together." He said that internet advertising should be re-classified to show clearly the split of revenues for display and search. Georgiadis told delegates that display advertising on the internet is stagnant now despite the huge growth in usage via broadband advances.

Georgiadis first raised some of these points at MediaTel Group´s Media Question Time last year, and with the margins on the internet continuing to "suit many agencies" it remains to be seen whether these further assertions will find enough allies around the industry, and well beyond the MRG conference hall.

Media Research Group: 01980 862 248 www.mrg.org.uk