• by Mike Donahue , Op-Ed Contributor, July 20, 2016

The 1950s were the Golden Age of Marketing because they were the Golden Age of Television. The biggest population cohort of all time, baby boomers, and their parents, spent lots of time watching television, the greatest communication innovation since the telephone.

Marketers and ad agencies worked together to make television the best marketing medium ever. People were able to buy new products , and old standbys, affordably, because television ads stimulated accelerated demand.

Results?

Viewers accessed great news and entertainment stories. Marketers experienced geometric growth and record profits..and tolerated mediocre ads  because they sold like hell. And the USA registered the largest decade of growth in its history.

Everybody was happy.

Flash forward to the 2010s -- The Tin Age of Marketing.

And it’s our fault.

Another big population cohort, the millennials, 90 million strong. To complement the Boomers, still 80 million strong.

Technological innovation now makes television look like tin can to tin communication on a string. Yet people aren’t happy, like the '50s.

And marketers aren’t either.

Why?

Because tech innovation is primarily benefiting ad tech companies, media companies and agencies, not the marketers that pay for everything in the digital media supply chain.

Because people, who buy the marketers brands, and access digital media are pissed.

What needs to be done? And who needs to do it, to make the second half of the 2010 look like the second half of the 1950 -- when everybody was happy?

A modest proposal: The marketers need to take charge.

How?

By leaning in harder with their agencies use of programmatic, so redundancies in the digital media supply chain can be eliminated -- to the marketers advantage.

By doing that, the 40 cents of of their digital spend going to working media can get closer to the $1 marketers get in non digital media.

And eliminating redundancies will not only yield more digital working spend, it will also  mean skinnier ads which will lead to less ad blocking.

Marketers get less redundancy. Marketers get more working media. People get better digital experiences.

That should make everybody happy and, maybe, pave the way to a new Golden Age of Digital Marketing

What do you think?