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The New Rock Stars
Media buyers are the new rock stars, according to David Verklin, CEO of Carat Americas and Chairman of Carat Asia-Pacific.
Being the head of the world's largest independent media buying operation, he would think so, but a perusal of his new book, "Watch This, Listen Up, Click Here: Inside the $300 Billion Business Behind the Media You Constantly Consume" (Wiley), co-written with the late New York magazine columnist Bernice Kanner, finds that he may well be onto something.
"There's been more change in the media world in the past 24 months as there was over the past 24 years," Verklin told me. "It's everywhere. Within the last two years, we've come to the point where seven media service companies buy 80% of all the TV time in the U.S., you've seen the explosion of satellite radio, podcasting, uploading and downloading of audio and video. If I'd told you three years ago that people would want to watch full-motion video on a 2 x 2 screen, you probably would have laughed."
No one's laughing at the concept now, of course, and Verklin thinks the next 24 months are going to see ever more evolutionary -- if not revolutionary -- means of consuming content.
Advertising -- or what Verklin terms "commercial persuasion" -- will continue to find ways of creeping into new technologies, including podcasts and mobile phones.
"The phone is going to be a huge advertising medium," Verklin predicts. "Not to the point where you have to listen to an ad before you can answer a call, but there are all kinds of opportunities there."
And the not-too-distant future will also find the phone's evolution as a payment device. "You're going to be checking out at a Target, and the cashier will ask, 'Cash, credit, or phone?'" Verklin avers.
Along with continuously improved quality of video content online, Verklin further predicts that companies will continue to narrowcast their advertisements to targeted consumers. "One of our clients is Iams, which is the largest maker of dog food in the world," he says. "About 40% of Americans own dogs, so 60% of the American public has no interest in an Iams ad.
"By being able to target dog-food commercials to dog owners only, you're hopefully getting as close to reaching your goal of 100% of the interested consumers as possible," he continues. "If you can focus in on that dog owner with a 3-minute commercial -- and they avidly watch it for the whole three minutes -- then you have effectively reached that dog owner with just one exposure to the ad."
The implications are, Verklin maintains, both exciting and a little scary.
"The entire advertising business is being re-shaped," he says. "And it's going to continue to be re-shaped for some time."
In other words: Rock on ...
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