I’ve been following the changing trends in online media marketing and advertising and the challenges that face both audiences over the past couple of years. The IAB and Bain have recently released a report called Building Brands Online: An Interactive Advertising Action Plan.

They cover a number of topics in the report including why you should care and what is needed to address the five key obstacles they outline in the report:

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.

This is driven in part by the response to the survey which highlighted that Sponsorships are the most effective online brand building advertising mechanism, more effective than search or digital video. However, this requires flexible non-standard ad relationships that media sites are currently not able to support on any scale and advertisers that we have spoken with on this topic agree. They like the effectiveness of Sponsorships but they are not thrilled with the amount of effort required to currently do this type of campaign with a media partner. In order for this type of engagement to work for both parties a new solution needs to be present in the marketplace. The report highlights the following as needing to be part of this solution offering: full creative/customization support, multi-platform integration, enhanced targeting options, and marketing support in the form of high-touch category experts to support key accounts and ensure effectiveness of the campaign.

I couldn’t agree more and can’t wait for more people to adopt this approach as the future for some media outlets are at stake. Some media companies, such as the group the co-sponsored this report (AOL, NBC Universal, Yahoo, MTV Networks), get it already but still need to improve the tools they make available to advertisers in order to take full advantage of the changes outlined in the report. I’m sure they will take action and can’t wait to see what those changes will bring to the industry as a whole.