It was like getting into a time machine. The New York Times Magazine takes a futuristic look into Nielsen and Arbatron. The dig deep into the future of media mesaurement, out of home viewing, etc.

The only problem is - they miss the elephant in the room. The internet. You know - that platform that is targeted, on-demand, and driven by direct click through revenues.

You can almost hear the debate in the newsroom - "That's a different story - the whole content on the net thing."

But had they asked advertisers - they would have heard a different story. It's not that they want better measurement, it's that they think the future is a whole different kind of relationship with readers/viewers. Ok, this is not agreed apon universally, but when the head of P&G says at the recent American Assocation of Advertising Agency's conf:

At a time when web advertising has overtaken radio LINK

"The Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade association with more than 200 members, and PricewaterhouseCoopers said that Internet advertising totaled about $2.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2004, the highest revenue quarter the bureau has tracked. The estimate for entire year of 2004 is just over $12 billion -- nearly double the $7.2 billion spent in 2003. The fourth-quarter figure is a 24 percent increase, the bureau said."

Certainly advertising in mainstream media won't vanish - but why the Times article drew such a distinct line around media measurement, and didn't even allow that a shift from advertising that interupts media to advertising that effectively engages consumers might herald a more fundimental shift that simply diaries vs. passive people meters. Soooo 1998.