Media developments never come in gangs. New media phenomena always come in phases.

Media Madness is the latest. Its here now. Its taking hold & growing

The 1950's saw Media Buying ascend the throne of dominance

The 1960's was the revolution in Media Research

The 1970's was the decade of Media Planning development

The 1980's was the decade of the Media Independents' creating specialist companies and splitting away from full service agencies

Media Owners domination littered the 1990's

Media Consolidation was acroos the 2000's

But even before we get to 2010 things are accelerating. Media Madness is here growing and flourishing

Media Madness occurs when forces come together, with the avowed objective to provide advertisers with a better service, but which have the opposite effect and operate against advertisers' best interests

No single media sector is responsible. All are culpable. Marketing management, procurement, finance, auditors, consultants, research, media agencies, media owners and more are all contributing their shares of Media Madness.

Try these five examples of Media Madness in operation.

1. The growth of the advertisers' procurement function and the partial abdication of client marketing management from media evaluation, has forced down agency fees to such a low point that some media agencies are forced to resort to third party funding allowing transparency to be replaced by opacity
2. Many traditional media owners are so strapped for cash that to make the books balance they have lost control of their inventory to the buyers. We all know what has happened to the travel industry now the consolidators and not the airlines & hotels sell the locations
3. Independence & objectivity no longer dominate the media planning agenda. In some quarters media plans are proposed that are more in the interests of the agency than they are of the advertisers
4. Media auditors dominate much of the incentive payment agenda. Their data is used as solid gold yet some data bases are misleading and inadequate for the purpose. Some are more like solid tinsel!
5. There are now 5 key media owners in the UK> Nobody writes about the amazing fact that not i one of them existed as a media owner 10 years ago.

The law of unintended consequences is well established. It's arrived big time in the advertising media business and it's here as Media Madness

The objective of delivering a higher, longer, faster media & marketing effectiveness service has got fouled up in inadequate processes, misguided operations, confused logistics, faulty metrics and inappropriate structures

Over the course of the next months I shall share tangible examples of Media Madness in operation. All are real and all make disturbing reading. I shall not reveal companies, individuals, businesses or campaigns. Their identity is unimportant. The truth is we are all at fault for allowing Media Madness to come about & spread

My hope is that by revealing the nonsense of Media Madness we can all focus on what is required to rid it from our business. Then we can return to a proper true cost effectiness based media & marketing effectiveness proposition for advertisers

I hope you will find Media Madness worthwhile reading and helpful to your activities