Forbes.com watching Billions move to Online

Interesting article on Forbes.com yesterday that discussing that $65 Billion will be pulled away from traditional advertising in 2009. The measuring stick used in the story, that $66 Billion is an annual TV aggregate spend, shows just how staggering the affect of interactive advertising has become.

Now where is the auto industry in all of this? Unfortunately, the former leaders of advertising strategy have been largely stuck behind a firewall of agency inability. For example, many auto dealerships are still hiding behind creative agencies that feel traditional buys (print, broadcast, out of house) are the only media to buy. Why? Because those same agencies don’t have a clue what interactive can do. The agencies are so paranoid about what will happen if the dealers get a whiff of modern reality, that they spend more of their time as gatekeepers and less doing what the dealers are paying them to do. These errors in judgement are what keep dealers out of social networking, what keeps pricing off inventory etc.  (because it worked in the newspapers folks, doesn’t mean it will work in 2009—newspapers don’t even work in 2009)

Hopefully the auto industry will wake up to smell the coffee and begin to realize that social media, inventory level search engine optimization and effective, trackable media are the way to go. It’s not too late, but that window is closing fast.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/21/advertising-marketing-business-media-stratigos.html?