Ted Sann remembers the first time he went on the Internet, back in 1996. He was helping his 12-year-old daughter do research for a school paper. Yes, the AOL interface was clumsy and slow, but it occurred to Sann that this online thing could be a powerful way to deliver advertising. And he knew a thing or two about pitching products. Sann was (and still is) co-CEO and chief creative officer of BBDO, one of the stalwarts of Madison Avenue. His agency creates more Super Bowl spots than anyone else; clients include FedEx (FDX), Pepsi and Visa. But for Sann, steeped as he was in television, here was something fresh and intriguing.
VIEW POP UP CHART - SORRY THIS CHART IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE"I said to myself, 'OK, this is a new medium we'll have to learn how to advertise on,'" Sann says. "The thing is, I still feel that way."
In the five years since Sann first logged on to the Internet, customers have flocked to the medium. Thousands of companies have been founded, and billions of dollars have been spent marketing them - much of that on the Web itself. Indeed, it's been the tide of advertising dollars - that powerful swell that over the years launched and supported newspapers, magazines, radio and most of all television - that's presumed to be one of the primary forces behind the growth and development of the Internet.
This was supposed to be the greatest advertising medium ever: uniquely interactive and capable of targeting consumers with devastating precision. And more than any other medium, this was the one that would realize the ultimate marketer's dream: It would serve up young people just as they were making buying decisions they'd stick with for life.
So why is Ted Sann, one of the big dogs on Madison Avenue, down on online advertising? The people in his business who can make it work just aren't paying attention. Call them the unbelievers. Some of them don't want to be named, as if admitting their lack of faith in new-economy tenets would seem blasphemous - or, worse yet, unsophisticated. But deep down, they acknowledge a crisis of confidence.
Boosters of Internet advertising give a host of reasons why the medium is experiencing fits and starts: There's a general ad recession. Thousands of dot-coms failed, taking with them their oversize ad budgets. The first Internet advertising vehicle, banner ads, floundered as click-through rates sank close to zero. These things take a long time, goes the mantra. Just wait for broadband. We're only in the first inning.
Maybe so, but much of corporate America hasn't even bought a ticket to the game. With the dot-coms in smithereens, deep-pocketed traditional advertisers were expected to step in and pick up the slack. Their 50-year-old love affair with television, the greatest advertising medium of all time, had to be fading. People are zapping ads with TiVo (TIVO), interactive TV is invading more and more homes, viewership has been dwindling on television networks for 20 years. And kids are flocking to the Web.
