Why the Online Ad market is a Bain in the *rse

OK, its a terrible pun, but the rest of this is funnier. Bain has written a report with a 5 point plan to recapture value in the Online Ad market, which has been falling. Mediapost notes that:

The heart of the findings are that online sales organizations have lacked the "sophistication" necessary to turn the perceptions advertisers and agencies have about the value of online advertising from an either/or proposition of "branding" vs. direct response-like "transactions" to one that is far more holistic and deals with higher order elements of branding such as "engagement."

"It's a pretty big rethink about the way [online] sales organizations work," IAB President Randall Rothenberg explained to OMD, adding that the end goal is what he described as a "triple play offering" that combines brand reach, transactions and "brand engagement."

Major obstacles that need to be overcome to achieve that, the report concludes, include:

1 - Ad formats and creative are not innovating with the medium.
2 - We are awash in undifferentiated, low-cost inventory.
3 - Metrics, metrics everywhere... but not the ones that brand marketers really need.
4 - Media companies lack ideas, strategic expertise and engage too late in the planning process.
5 - Marketers want cross-platform campaigns; instead they get a model rooted in platform-specific silos.

To which we would add a sixth - an infinitely burgeoning amount of inventory set against a fixed amount of Ad spend budget. Anyway, there is a Five Point Plan to get out the deep doo-doo:

1 - Measurement: Work with other associations to establish clear standards for measurement of brand impact and reach/frequency.

2 - Targeting: Address current scale and data limitations for targeting. Identify ways to adjust for overlapping audience in reach buys.

3 - Automated process: Help develop low-cost and/or automated buying processes for brand reach and response buys. Establish common technical standards for the industry.

4 - Online creative: Identify and communicate success factors for marketers, agencies, and publishers in executing cross-platform creative.

5 - Engaging marketers: Create ongoing forums with marketers for discussion of branding approach, limitations, and key developments.

The report, "Building Brands Online: An Interactive Advertising Action Plan," a preview of which was given Online Media Daily on Wednesday, is based on an in depth survey or 700 brand marketers, as well as anecdotal research with ad agencies and publishers. God knows how much the IAB paid for it, but this stuff is not exactly new news - all they would have needed to do is come to a few Measurementcamps and they would have found most of this out.

In fact, what fascinates me more about this is the totally different - probably 4 orders of magnitude different - price you can pay for getting the same information.