The changing advertising landscape, continued

The Times has a good story today looking at how the internet is changing traditional advertising practices:

IF the 20th century was known in marketing circles as the advertising century, the 21st may be the advertising measurement century.

Marketers are increasingly focused on the effectiveness of their pitches, trying to figure out the return on investment for ad spending. That is spurring most of the major media — along with many large research companies like Arbitron, Nielsen and Taylor Nelson Sofres — to improve the methods by which they measure audiences.

The ability of newer digital media to provide more precise data has also led traditional media like television, radio, magazines and newspapers to try upgrading the ways they count consumers.

“There’s a little something called the Internet, something that all other media are trying to get as accountable as,” said Jon Mandel, chief executive at the NielsenConnect unit of the Nielsen Company in New York, which brings together data from various Nielsen divisions.

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