NFL Lockout Should Make Marketers Call Online Audible

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Earlier this week, three advertising trade groups unveiled an initiative intended to get advertisers migrating more dollars from television to online. In the spirit of seizing every opportunity to make this shift happen, allow me to point out another scenario to get those revenues flowing: the NFL lockout.

Making Measurement Make Sense” is the name of the initiative backed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau), Association of National Advertisers and American Association of Advertising Agencies. Its intent is to establish a comparison in how measurement of online and TV audiences are made in order to see a more even distribution of advertising budgets between the two sectors.

It’s a laudable way of redressing the disparity between the two given the sizable gulf, according to Zenith Optimedia data from 2010 cited in Ad Age. Broadcast and cable command more than double the $23 billion digital media managed to collect in revenues last year.

It’s no new notion that setting appropriate standards in audience measurement is absolutely key. But there’s another important factor that needs to be in place should this initiative actually make headway: available money. It doesn’t matter how effectively eyeballs are counted if there aren’t dollars to spend on those eyeballs.

And that’s where the NFL lockout comes in. Should it come to that, “The ad dollars captured by the NFL are not going to disappear from the ecosystem,” analyst Michael Nathanson told The Wall Street Journal.

Let’s redefine what that ecosystem is. If the lockout occurs, advertisers will have an estimated $3 billion to spread among the NFL’s replacement programming and elsewhere on the schedule. Rather than mindlessly shove more money in the direction of the usual sitcoms and such, why not earmark some of those monies to online?

AS WSJ points out, there likely wouldn’t be enough TV ad inventory to absorb that money, which advertisers may just keep in their pockets. But there’s an opportunity here to take more than the usual discretionary funds and invest them in a way that really advances the medium.

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