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[Editor's Note: I'm thinking about shopping an article around about unbundled media, here's a kind of pitch for it. I'd love to get some feedback.]
The move to unbundled media will be scary for many in the advertising world, as those used to the status quo are forced to find new innovative ways to reach consumers. But Influx Insights does a good job of reminding that it offers huge opportunities to agencies accepting of change. "Many agencies may be wondering how to cope and adjust," they explain. "But you could easily take the opposite point-of-view, that there's never have been a more exciting time to be in the ad business. It's a great opportunity for the brave and imaginative, that can think beyond the 30-second spot and collaborate to create new forms of content and distribution."
It's true. There are huge opportunities to break new and exciting ground as media becomes consumed in this new way. While the 30-second spot is by no means dead, it too has become unbundled, being featured or continued on microsites and across the web in places like IFILM. While on one hand RSS takes the content out of the perfect little site you've created, it offers new and exciting ways to connect with consumers on their own terms.
I really think this is where the biggest opportunities are for unbundled media. Marketers can actually add value as the media becomes unbundled by doing things like helping to aggregate content, subsidizing cost or even by becoming media creators in their own right. While it's probably a bit scary for the big guys who have spent their entire careers working in 30-second chunks, it offers huge opportunities to those who can move quickly and embraced the unbundledness.
Update (11/18/05): David Card found this quote: "Advertising revenue at NBC, CBS and ABC declined 21.5% to $2.2 billion in the third quarter, with much of the drop stemming from the absence of Summer Olympics ads that bolstered the year-ago period."
Update (11/19/05): Mark Lewis comments on the programming @radical is creating for ESPN, MTV and Nike: "But what is to stop them hiring a few planners and just becoming a new kind of creative/strategic hotshop - one producing cool content which is truly relevant. Another production company, Dogmatic has already hired someone super smart to help do just that."