I was speaking this morning on a panel at the Dow Jones Consumer Technology Conference on the topic of “Just How Far Will Madison Avenue Go To Reach the Consumer?”. The other panelists included Larry Gerbrandt, General Manager of Nielsen Analytics, Nick Pahade, President Publicis Denuo and PJ Pereira, Executive Creative Director AKQA and was facilitated by Kevin Delaney from the Wall Street Journal. 

Here is how the panel was presented: "With traditional TV, radio and newspaper advertising not working as well as they used to, advertisers are increasingly utilizing newer mediums to push products and services. But how far are they willing to go? What do they think of trying to reach consumers through their cell phones? How about video sharing sites? How do they look at evolving technology for both downloading video and playing it on an array of devices?"

I thought I would share some of the key points I made this morning. Let me know what you think.

#1. New technologies have allowed consumers to disaggregate the content from the promotion. They are “tuning out” from traditional advertising by migrating to new platforms (think MySpace, YouTube and others) or by using technologies that allow them to skip advertising (DVRs, RSS feeds, pop-up blockers, etc). New technologies have also enabled a level of engagement that was not possible before – consumers are talking back and a unique opportunity is emerging for brands to engage in the dialogue.

#2. We will follow consumers on platforms and media they value. We have already massively shifted our advertising spend towards the web. We are now also experimenting with various new media from video pre-rolls, to mobile banners that lead to mobile micro-sites, podcasting pre-rolls, Napster pre-rolls or RSS sponsorships.

#3. We will engage in very different waya with consumers allowing more interaction (for example through blogs) or even enabling consumers to play with our advertising campaigns. The partnership with Personiva for our Personal Again Campaign is a great example of this trend. This will require us to have a higher appetite for risk than brands and marketing teams have traditionally had in the past.

#4. We believe that the web is moving from a text basis to video. Consumers will expect video components in their traditional search and will expect better results in video search (which should be greatly enhanced by the YouTube acquisition by Google). I mentioned the example of Vibrant Media and their user initiated in-text video campaign.

#5. These new technologies are changing the perspective on media planning – for many of these new media, an 18 month planning horizon does not work. We are shifting to a model of “tried and true” (search) / invest (video) / experiment (community).

#6. We are still early in the game but we need to develop quickly the right measurement systems to tie these activities to sales results and measure their effectiveness. Search’s success is in great part linked to the ability to measure its impact – the same needs to happen for these new experiments.