WaPo:"Traditional 30-second TV Spot May Be Fading Out"

The Post has a fascinating look at one of our favorite subjects - the very rapid way media and advertising are changing.  This story today looks is provocatively titled: "Gone in 30 Seconds," and tracks the migration of commercial adspend from broadcast tv to the internet.  Two key graphs:

"I believe that search[-based] and other online advertising is taking away from the off-line [or traditional] budgets of marketers, and one reason is it's more accountable," said Karl Siebrecht, president of Atlas Enterprise Solutions, which aQuantive also owns. "You can send your message out there and understand if people click on it downstream, and if they click, do they purchase? If you're selling Toyotas, you can see if they asked for a specific dealer location."

Or:

In April, Nike pulled its running-shoe campaign from longtime ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, which had developed the iconic "Just Do It" tagline and many memorable television commercials. Wieden+Kennedy lost the account because Nike did not believe the agency had the necessary digital expertise to promote Nike shoes online.

Nike caught a whiff of the future from its Nike+ interactive online campaign, dreamed up last year by the leading-edge agency R/GA Associates of New York. The Web site, meant to sell Nike running shoes that interface with an iPod to record a runner's mileage, claims a community of thousands of runners who share workout music available for purchase on Apple's iTunes. The site is more than traditional advertising -- it attempts to be a utility for Nike runners.

"Technologists are pretty foreign to the traditional agency model, but they're an important part of the future," said Bob Greenberg, chairman and chief executive of R/GA, which began life 30 years ago as a Hollywood animation house. "Traditional creative is becoming less and less important."

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