There is one arena of the advertising industry that has undergone enormous change in the past decade and you guessed it—media! The technology of media has undergone amazing change from the growth of the internet and satellite radio, to the emergence of wireless and video games as an advertising channel, and the continuing segmentation of traditional media like television, magazines, and newspapers. We have seen the emergence of branded content, which in some aspects represents a return to the early days of sponsorship on network shows and in other aspects represents the fusion of two disciplines such as custom publishing. This year advertisers will spend more with Yahoo and Google than with CBS and Fox, which was unthinkable 5 to 10 years ago during the dot-com bust.

In order to have a sense about where media planning is going, one must first have a contextual understanding of where it has been and at what place it is currently.

Advanced Television will end the 100+ year master/slave relationship between the mass media and the audience. The media, the marketer, and the audience will all benefit from time shifting, addressability, interactivity, and cross platform access. However, Advanced Television will face significant challenges as innovations will require open attitudes and changes in business models. There are steps to be taken now to facilitate the introduction of the next generation of television and marketing communications.

Although 90 percent of marketing communication investments are accounted for by investments in brand contacts, i.e., the points at which the consumer and the brand come in contact with each other, until now, there has not been a tool that allows managers to identify, a priori and from a consumer perspective, the most effective set of contacts in which to invest. We describe a tool that we have developed that empowers the brand owners/marketers to (1) identify and select the critical contacts that are relevant for a particular brand, (2) integrate across these key contact points, and (3) deliver brand experience through a relevant and pertinent set of consumer brand encounters at a minimum cost, but with maximal impact. We then discuss how the metrics derived from this tool can be used to inform a variety of important decisions in the context of managing brand contacts. We close with a discussion of some of the regularities that we have uncovered from the over 150 brands that we have audited across numerous markets and categories.

The article by Amitava Chattopadhyay and Jean-Louis Laborie is terrific. It represents a rethink and an innovative way to improve what we do as professionals. For that it should be commended and introduced to the industry.

The findings demonstrate that simultaneous media usage is a fact, undermining typical media measurements done in isolated environments that neglect the everyday patterns of media users. More importantly, the simultaneous media experience points to the concept of synesthesia as an experiential integrator of differing sensory fields. The experience of simultaneous media foreground/background relationship needs to be incorporated into the media planning and allocation mix if we are to actually address the consumers' media experience with multitasking.

Procter & Gamble's 1997 Agency of Record pitch spurred agencies to develop new tools for analyzing television audience data and to schedule advertising. However, there is only limited evidence that the new tools took hold in the market.

Time allocation theory holds that individuals allocate their discretionary time purposively, depending upon their time orientation: to the past, present, or future. We use this perspective to understand more about why individuals avoid watching TV advertisements. We test a model of avoidance where time orientation influences attitude to advertising and avoidance with survey data from two different societies. Past-oriented people see advertising as important but promoting consumption. They tend to avoid advertising more than present-oriented people who see advertising as complimenting their concern to “live for today.” Future-oriented people see advertising as important in planning purchases and are less likely to avoid it.The authors wish to acknowledge Experian plc that allowed the use of MOSAIC for this research. We would also like to thank Dr. David Bennison, reader in the Locational Planning and Marketing Group, Department of Retailing and Marketing, The Manchester Metropolitan University, and John Byrom, research assistant in the same group, for their assistance with the MOSAIC software.

The aim of this study was to test if valence and intensity dimensions of responses to general programming affect commercial processing in everyday life. Results from analyses on data from a large telephone survey showed that indicators of program-induced valence and intensity significantly affected several advertising processing measures. Intensity had a positive impact on measures of attention and recall, while valence was positively related to attitude toward the advertisement. Next, we investigated the moderating influences of variations in commercial placement on these relations. We found that effects of intensity and valence on commercial processing were stronger for interrupting blocks than shoulder blocks. However, the position of the commercial within the block did not have an impact on these carryover effects.The study on the effects of program responses on the processing of commercials placed at various positions in the program and the block was part of a Ph.D. project on the relationship between media environments and advertising effects conducted at ASCoR. The authors wish to thank John Faasse, Unilever, and Initiative for making the data available for analyses.

Coordinating and controlling advertising strategy within contractual and administered vertical marketing systems (VMSs) can be a complex task given the number of channel members involved in the process. Quite often thousands of intermediaries are involved at different levels each with their own objectives and areas of responsibility. Conflict within a VMS can arise when dealers/distributors consider the advertising efforts of the sponsoring organization to be ineffective and vice versa. One of the major issues involves how to allocate the advertising budget throughout the VMS so as to generate the greatest return. To this end we report the results of a study comparing the current and lagged effects of national-sponsor advertising to that of local and regional sponsors within one of the more prominent contractual VMS in the United States—the automobile industry. Using a direct aggregation approach to model advertising carryover at both the industry and individual brand level provides useful information for making decisions regarding the allocation of advertising budgets.

This article reports the findings of a managerial investigation of key players in the product placement industry, including placement agents, clients, studios and production companies, and research organizations. The evolution of the product placement industry in North America is reviewed, perspectives on the role and objectives product placements serve in the marketing mix are discussed, and current means of assessing product placement efforts examined. The data provide insights on the relationship-driven industry where power, trust, and commitment play an important role. They also suggest recommendations for how participants should plan, use, and evaluate their placement efforts.This research was supported by a grant from the Marketing Science Institute.

With the penetration rate of the web approaching 70 percent, profiles of general web usage are less important. Web marketers must begin to focus on the profile of heavy web users and users by type of web usage. This article develops a demographic and lifestyle profile of heavy web users (those using the web for 20 hours a week or more) based on a survey of over 5,000 respondents. It also identifies six key web usage categories—Web Generalists, Downloaders, Self-Improvers, Entertainment Seekers, Stock Traders, and Socializers—and develops a profile of each.

This may be the first study providing a detailed demographic and lifestyle description of both heavy users and web usage types. The profiles should be useful to web marketers for selecting media and setting the tone of their marketing effort in targeting these groups.The author would like to thank Dr. Joseph Plummer, executive vice president for research and insight development at McCann-Erickson for contributing the data for this article, as well as Susan Nathan and Karen Ring at McCann for their help in making the data accessible. He would also like to thank Caresse Sakagawa, his research assistant at the Stern School, for conducting the analyses in the article.

A handbill (i.e., a leaflet distributed by hand) is a form of advertising especially common in high-traffic pedestrian districts. However, there are no previous reports in the literature relating to consumer perceptions of handbills as a promotional medium. This article reports on a telephone survey of a random sample of 240 interviewees in Hong Kong and represents a starting point for research on this topic. One hundred and seventy-four (72.5 percent) of the interviewees were classified as handbill acceptors, and 66 (27.5 percent) were classified as handbill nonacceptors. Among the handbill acceptors, 71.8 percent actually read the handbills. In addition, handbill acceptors were more likely to be female, younger, and to have had secondary or tertiary education. The main reason acceptors gave for taking handbills was to help the distributor finish his or her work promptly. The main reason nonacceptors gave for refusing handbills was that the handbills are distributed during peak hours, when they are too busy to stop. Handbill acceptors predictably had more favorable perceptions of handbill attributes than handbill nonacceptors. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for advertisers and future research.

Consumer purchase decisions often require reliance on various information sources. Although prior research on information seeking has focused on the number of information sources used, the types of sources used and their impact on satisfaction have not been examined as thoroughly. The authors address this issue in the context of product-focused print media—magazines in particular—by exploring information source usage for the automobile purchase process. The impact of source usage on satisfaction with the purchase decision and with the product is examined as well. Implications for advertisers and brand managers are discussed in terms of media planning issues.

With the size of ethnic minority groups expanding and their disposable income increasing, the consumption landscape and media environment are constantly evolving. It is important for advertisers to understand how ethnic minority group members feel about being targeted by current multicultural marketing communication practices and if English language media for the general market are still a good way to reach these consumers. Past research has often employed a content analysis technique to gauge instances of ethnic minority representation in advertising. However, a void exists in the literature with respect to examining how ethnic minorities actually feel about tactics and messages directed at them. Therefore a cross-cultural survey of adults in three ethnic groups in the United States was carried out to examine these attitudes and also to assess current media use patterns. The results suggest that English broadcast media are still a good way to reach people across the various groups. The study further reveals that attitudes toward the frequency and accuracy of these groups as portrayed in advertisements are somewhat different from the negative viewpoints historically found in the literature. In fact, the results suggest that today's advertisements are not considered inadequate or inaccurate by many and that efforts toward targeting ethnic minorities are potentially welcomed. However, a bi-modal distribution across several representation issues indicates that advertisers must still be cautious in the minds of some ethnic minority consumers. Implications for advertisers and media planners are discussed as well as suggestions for future research.

9 Managing Brand Experience: The Market Contact Audit™

19 Simultaneous Media Experience and Synesthesia

27 Television Optimizers: Did They Change the Way We Do Business?

34 Avoiding Television Advertising: Some Explanations from Time Allocation Theory

49 The Effects of Program Responses on the Processing of Commercials Placed at Various Positions in the Program and the Block

60 Comparing the Current Effects and Carryover of National-, Regional-, and Local-Sponsor Advertising

73 A Managerial Investigation into the Product Placement Industry

93 A Demographic and Psychographic Profile of Heavy Internet Users and Users by Type of Internet Usage

124 Perceptions of Handbills as a Promotional Medium: An Exploratory Study

132 Information Source Usage and Purchase Satisfaction: Implications for Product-Focused Print Media

140 Can English Language Media Connect with Ethnic Audiences? Ethnic Minorities' Media Use and Representation Perceptions