Geek Soap Box

Today’s unofficial opening of the 2009 4A’s Media Conference & Tradeshow featured an interesting array of afternoon panel discussions dedicated to notions of media best practices, digital metrics, government advocacy, and monetization of agency intellectual property.  Throughout it all, the consumer played an integral role, but even more so, I was struck by the constant repetition of the notion of “transparency.”

The marketing communications business touches consumers in so many unique – and often subtle – ways that it is positively integral that proponents maintain a pure, transparent process at all points.  During the first session, on the industry’s Project Reinvention initiative, leaders from the 4A’s, IAB, TVB, and agency world focused on the important need to rethink media-business best practices and ensure that a new system emerges that is both efficient and lucrative for all parties.  Equally important, though, was the concept that self-regulation and true leadership must be provided to protect consumer privacy.  We’ve seen the recent articles in the press; balance the needs of behavioral targeting with user rights will always be a tough battle, but it’s one that the industry should relish leading of its own volition.

This battle, though, need not be a burden; in fact, it could even be the revolutionary next step in learning from user-driven and user-created content. During the session “Measuring the REAL Value of Internet Media,” eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey and his panel wondered aloud if transparently engaging the consumer – allowing him or her to guide his or her own user experience by selecting interests upfront – might not be the most efficient and productive metric yet established, surpassing any buzzword such as “clicks” or the nebulous “search.”

Even David Sanger, Chief Washington Correspondent for The New York Times, briefly touched on the issue by raising the point that the NYT still needs multi-million-dollar news bureaus all over the globe to report real-time facts. Meanwhile, though, the question has to be asked: are editorial and perceived issues of bias simultaneously being outsourced to blogs?  Does the new-era digital paper (as 4A’s EVP Mike Donahue astutely referred to the Times) even need editorial content, and should it be more transparent in its editorial policies and offerings?

Engaging the user across all media touchpoints – from creation to use to tracking to reporting – needs to involve a transparent process, for the betterment of both the consumer and the advertiser or marketer.  In this day of instantaneous Twitter commentary and alternative delivery mechanisms, could it be any different?