"Internet publishers have forced marketers into a straightjacket of standard ad units too small for brands to breathe. If the sector is to capture a larger share of brand advertising from magazines and television, the creative needs to have more impact."

Please. There are banner ads 100x100, there are entire page takeovers, there are full microsites, and everything in between. If click-through rates are low, it's not because of creative limitations - and with Denton's network, it's certainly not traffic issues. It's because people have COMPLETELY tuned out banner ads. Or rather, all but .1% of them.

Brands need to wake up and realize traditional online advertising dollars are far better spent in more creative and engaging ways, while staying honest to their consumers.

@Eric: I agree 100 percent. The only problem is that ultimately brands still need eyeballs and they still want it quickly. Paying for the eyeballs others already have is still the easiest and most effective way to do that. While you can do amazing stuff and build an audience in any number of other ways, it often takes more time, effort and commitment than your average brand is up for. At some point, though, I expect we'll see more brands start to recognize that the web is a better long-term marketing platform than any other out there.

Perhaps it's more measurable, but most big companies don't quite know how to understand the metrics web sadvertising creates. Most web metrics don't fit very well into their traditional marketing funnel, and that's why it's difficult for the front-line (on the hook) marketing managers to stay invested in advertising on the Internet. It's simply too hard for most managers investing $$ to Internet advertising to compare it to channels that are more easily understood by executives (I've seen this first-hand).

So, what is the cause for the failure? The inablity of Internet marketers to explain the marketing funnel and tie back results? The inability for marketers to commit $$ to a medium they can't yet compare to other channels?

I agree: banner advertising is due for a shakeout. There are better ways to spend marketing $$. If half of all mareting expenses are going to be wasted, why not at least spend $$ on opportunities that have potential?

@Taylor: Thinking about it some more, I really think the failure lies in people thinking of the goals of TV and the web as being the same. In my mind, the web works best as a long-term relationship building mechanism. I look at this blog as an example: It's been going for years and has a relatively small readership yet it helped me launch and see success with brand tags. I've said this before here, but the most important lesson I've learned on the web is that for the vast majority the value of an audience isn't calculated by how you directly monetize them (advertising) but how you indirectly monetize them (brand buiding, offshoots, etc.).

The thing TV has that the web doesn't (reliably) is scale. It's really hard to buy the number of eyeballs you do on television. The flip side of that, of course, is its really easy to spend far less and surpass those numbers as well (Subservient Chicken being one of the more famous examples). The thing about that transaction, though, is that it isn't guaranteed and for every Subservient Chicken there are thousands of viral videos sitting on YouTube with 30 views.

Basically, the thing the web is best at is not awareness, but rather engagement.

@Noah: well put. TV works as a one-way method of communication, but has no real way to capture feedback: and that's how people feel
engaged.

Advertising on TV is a sort of signal for companies: "I'm advertising on TV and spending significant money to do so, so obviously I'm big enough for you to pay attention to me".

Isn't TV also about indirect monetization? Isn't TV about brand-building? As you point out, what TV still does best is deliver shared experiences to aggregated large audiences: the web is simply too diverse, fractured, time-shifted and disaggregated to deliver that for marketers.

The odd thing is that even though you may not be able to track conversion cleanly, you'll know if web advertising fails (you can measure pageviews), but you don't know if TV fails (assuming Nielson reports and imputed views aren't terribly meaningful). When you advertise online you'll know if nobody cares; yet at the same time you're not sure that people caring converts into sales.

All in all: this isn't an either/or question: the answer is both, but for different reasons, expectations and goals.

Good points Taylor and I agree, the answer is both.

But Denton is right on the bottom line: People have not found a way to link short-term sales bumps to the web and they have for TV. Now there are three possibilities on this one: First, we just haven't found the correlation yet and we will. Second, the sales bumps you see on TV are certainly in part because of TV but also because of the other activities you do around your TV (in other words, people see a commercial, search online, see something else ... the web creates the frequency needed for your message to resonate). Third, the web is much better as a long-term sales vehicle than a short-term one. Like you said, though, it's probably all three.

Thanks again Taylor.

I've been trying to reconcile all the gloomy ad market predictions with the current (just dandy) state of our own business, and I realized that basically everyone's talking about media - whether it's a $1 mil campaign or a $10 mil campaign, they still need the site, strategy and production done, so we tend to see it less.

I also think it's interesting - Denton is totally behind on custom ad placement/co-sponsorships, etc., compared to people like salon. The "straightjacket" he talks about is more in evidence at his properties, compared to, say, MTV, which has some really innovative brand offerings.