For the last year or so, we have been big proponents of Addressability. Basically, addressability in a extremely media landscape with tons of media conduits ranging from YouTube to Joost to IPTV services, is now the key factor in determining if people will even see your content or view your ad. The big question every agency and content producer is asking, “Where is my audience?” The real answer is that no one knows today.Audiences move quicker and quicker with each day. One minute they are watching something on one platform and in a blink of an eye they are watching something on another platform. This situation creates an economic problem for advertisers who need to reach large audiences to make their advertising dollars cost-effective. In addition, since the number of viewers determines the advertising rates, audience fragmentation will affect the networks’ revenues as the audience size diminishes. As audiences become more fragmented, the major networks will need to create new revenue sources.

The future for advertising and PR agencies remains in developing and driving the big idea, and the ones that will be most successful in this quest are ones that use the full suite of services the portals offer for: developing powerful insights, baking big ideas, testing them, setting benchmarks, executing programs and measuring it all.Think of them as all-in-one suites of tools, akin to Microsoft Office or a Swiss Army Knife. They are where anyone can find the magical elixir for driving marketing accountability.

Sounds like our Scope platform. You can read more about it in AdAage. Steve Rubel wrote a great article called, “The Quest for Accountability Begins and Ends With Search”. You can read it here while it lasts online, here or grab the October 2007 issue of AdAge.