24/7′s Moore Hopes To Manage Potential Conflicts By Balancing Integration And Separation

Bringing an interactive ad agency in-house is the best way for a traditional creative to gain insights into online marketing – at least, that’s the rationale from David Moore, chairman and CEO of 24/7 Real Media via a Q&A with the WSJ. The company, which was recently bought by ad holding company WPP Group for $649 million, is both representative of and different from the spate of M&A activity going on within the ad industry and online ad agencies lately. Some of the issues the shop faces pending the closing of the sale:

– Conflicts: Since 24/7 buys and sells advertising through its network it could come into conflict in its dealings with WPP’s agencies. To avoid that, WPP insists it will run 24/7 as a separate company. “As a result, I will look at [WPP's other agencies] as very important clients. If I can’t get in there and offer them a product that is as strong or better than some of the other products that they are buying, then I don’t deserve to get bought.”

– Global footprint: Face-to-face relationships in marketing are not going away. Moore: “Most advertisers tend to be organized on a geographic basis. They have an individual in each market who is ultimately in charge for the profit-and-loss statement of that particular product. People are needed to customize or tailor the campaign to that product in that particular market… “

– Streamlining: Despite the advances in automating much of the buying and selling process, a great amount is still manual. Moore hopes that will change: “It is much easier to buy a page in a magazine or a commercial on TV than it is to buy on the Web today. You can put a banner, you can put a video, you can put a hyperlink. You can sponsor something. There are just so many more ways to advertise using the Web as opposed to TV, which is a 30-second or 60-second commercial, or print, which is one ad. So we need to do an even better job today than we have in the past of making it easier to buy.”