Disruption of Media Business with Digiday Editor Brian Morrissey

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This is an exclusive conversation I had with Brian Morrissey when he was reporter at Adweek about how digital advertising, ad tech trends, and what the future of advertising will look like which is very prescient.

Much of what he speculated came true.  Today, Brian Morrissey is Editor in Chief at Digiday, which confronts technology’s disruption of the media and marketing industries.

Brian has reported on the Internet advertising businesses for DM News, ClickZ and Silicon Alley Reporter. Prior to working in journalism, he was a speechwriter in Washington, D.C. Morrissey is a graduate of Providence College and has Masters degrees from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium and Columbia University.

SHOW NOTES:

04:53 – Brian Morrissey gives a description about what sort of things an Adweek reporter covering interactive media deals with as opposed to reporters who focus on traditional media.

06:13 – Morrissey explains the meaning behind the title of Bob Garfield‘s article, “YouTube vs. Boob Tube,” in Wired magazine, and why there is so much tension about it in the advertising industry, “Right now advertisers are left in kind of a quandary in how they actually reach their consumer and YouTube is very symbolic in just that it is people consuming media when they want, sharing it, really taking control.”

07:55 – Morrissey talks about what he believes the future has in store for the advertising industry and what his feelings about the industry are.

09:39 – Morrissey gives his opinion on the future of the 30 second spot in today's rapidly changing world, “It is symbolic of, like, old school advertising. Now will it be 15 seconds? Will it be, in some cases, 5 seconds? Will it be a 2 second ad that leads to a longer form video experience? Maybe. Now the challenge for advertisers is to adjust to that…”

10:52 – Morrissey discusses whether or not he believes technology will put agencies that specialize in media platforms out of business, similar to how the internet put travel agents out of business, and what he thinks technology and digital advertising will do to aid small businesses.

13:18 – Morrissey describes the difference in strengths and weaknesses of traditional media versus new digital media and how new media will change how advertisers measure response to campaigns, “Any time media becomes digital, it becomes a lot easier to measure, and you just hope that measurement then ends up meaning it becomes more accountable.”

15:51 – Morrissey talks about what surprises him the most about the change of trends in technology and platforms, particularly regarding the speed of the changes.

17:20 – Morrissey gives an example of how he would run an ad campaign for a fictional corporation and where he would focus his advertising with regards to digital media and traditional media. Also, he talks about how devoted certain types of companies are in evolving their advertising forms technologically.

19:03 – Morrissey discusses Second Life, how digital advertising there benefits companies, and what he thinks the future will be like for online media, such as Second Life, “…I mean the next MySpace, I think, is going to look a lot more like Second Life than it will look like MySpace today.”

20:18 – Morrissey describes what advertisers need to do to cut through the clutter of advertising that is prevalent in modern society and what sort of ways advertiser messages are potentially going to change to accomplish this, “One way I think it they are going to change is they are going to become more Google-like.”

22:04 – Morrissey talks about how people who work in public relations should contact him if they believe they have a good story and what sort of stories interests him the most.

22:55 – End.

Photo by Fabien Bazanegue on Unsplash