If you want to book some time with Randall Rothenberg, you might have to wait a few months. Late last year, Rothenberg left his post at tech consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton and was installed as president and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. I visited his office on a Friday afternoon in March and asked him how busy he’s been in the new job. Turning to his computer, he opened Outlook calendar to show nearly every moment between the hours of 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. of every day is filled almost completely for the next three months. “I really want to get a lot of stuff done and that’s a way of measuring what I have ahead of me,” he said, stepping into the small conference room that adjoins his office.
A former journalist, Rothenberg, concerned about conflict of interest, is moving his long-running Ad Age column to the IAB site. He spoke about making the gradual transition from writer to consultant to CEO and what he’d like to accomplish in the new role. He acknowledges that he’s coming in to an organization designed to promote online advertising just as a report from his own organization shows that the industry has broken a new spending record for the last nine consecutive quarters. Nevertheless, Rothenberg knows that the laws of gravity will eventually be applied to online ad activity and he hopes to head off the fall whenever that may be. We also talked about issues ranging from making user-generated content attractive to advertisers to measurement and accountability.
On the role of the IAB: “We’ve got one simple mission: growth. IAB is out to grow the interactive advertising and marketing marketplace. It is out to grow interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and not incidentally, it is out to grow our members’ share of total marketing spend. If you are not a member, we are happy to have you grow, but we kind of do not love you as much than if you are a member.”
Untapped potential: “I think there is still some skepticism out there, illegitimate skepticism about whether interactive can be a branding medium. Well, obviously it can be a branding medium because obviously it engages people emotionally and intellectually at the same time, but the packaged goods marketers in particular have been asking that question. You’ve got to be able to go back to them and give the answer. Can it be a consideration medium? Yes, it can. Can it be a trial medium? Yes. Does it foster retention and loyalty? Obviously, it does that.”
Impact of AJAX: “What I have heard — and, when you put this up, this may get some people to respond more aggressively — I have heard more people who are worried about the problem of declining pages than I have heard them say, ‘Our budgets are going down because of declining page views and we don’t have a replacement for that yet.’ It is clearly a legitimate worry, but I have not heard it.”
User-generated content: “How do you make user-gen sites safe for advertisers? How do you make MySpace safe for advertisers? You hire editors who actually carve out sites and sub-sites and sections of sub-sites. You then set up rules, standards and that’s you make them safe and appealing to marketers.”
More in the edited transcript here.
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