I'm an Internet advertising evangelist, so you might think I would be only too happy to root for the decline of TV advertising, given that popular thinking is that much of that ad spending would gravitate online. Sure. Bring it on.

But, as a researcher, and specifically a media researcher, I feel my first loyalty is to sound analysis. With that in mind, I have to take exception to much a recent post, "TV after Advertising (and Advertising after TV)," by Douglas Rushkoff. For such a respected a media pundit, I found his post surprisingly facile.

I agree that the world of advertising is clearly going through a profound period of change, and the confluence of new digital technologies and changing consumer behaviors represent long-term challenges that will reshape the whole media/advertising landscape in the long term. But I felt his article grossly over-simplified what is going on.

There are three points he makes, in particular, that I would challenge. Two of them are embedded in these paragraphs:

The implicit contract was that in return for this free gift [of traditional broadcast TV], we would sit through the sponsors' ads. But the emergence of cableTV, payTV, VCR's and, now, DVR's, has introduced viewers to television without advertising. Whether we fast forward, delete, or simply pay for the ad-free Sopranos, we're watching TV on our own terms. And we don't want to go back. Television has finally become a medium in its own right. We'd rather pay for good programming - be it HBO for us or Noggin for our tots - than get commercially sponsored junk for free.

Broadcast networks can't be expected admit that the dollars spent advertising over their airwaves are increasingly less effective - not before next month's "upfronts," anyway, where advertisers will be asked to pony up huge sums in advance for the privilege of being TiVo'd past during next season's prime time schedule.

I reject as falacy, inherent in both points, that the sea-change has already happened and that we know how the future of consumer behavior will manifest itself. Speficially, he says that consumers would rather pay for good programming that get "junk" for free. Secondly he suggests that ad money from this upfront season will be wasted because consumers (implicitly, the majority of them) will TiVo past the ads.

Taking the second of those first, it is still a small portion of American households that have DVRs. One research firm, Leichtman Research Group, claims it is presently around 13%, although fast growing. Nonetheless, 13% or even 20% (by the end of this year, for argument's sake) of consumers passing up your ads this year is not a total waste of money. It is a discount factor. Also, research (I can't be bothered to cite specifics) suggests that most DVR users do stop and watch a portion of the ads. I know from my own behavior I do this regularly, when the ad looks funny, or the girl is especially cute or, yes, when the product looks interesting.

Okay, so some mitigation in the fast-forwarding behavior and the fact that DVRs are in "only" 13-20% of homes today should not be a total relief for advertisers. As I stated, I agree the landscape is changing. But I think it's irresponsible to suggest that the game is already over and we know what the outcome looks like. We're still a few years away from the total impact of these forces. It's certainly not too late for advertisers to start changing behaviors and learning how they will play in this new world.

To the other point, that consumers would rather pay for content than consume it for free, again, I think he's irresponsibly generalizing here. Yes, consumers will pay for HBO. But not most households. Founded 34 years ago, HBO, together with its sister station Cinemax, now reach 39 million homes in the U.S., or roughly a third.

My response to people who say "There's nothing on TV but junk" is "You obviously don't watch enough TV." Yes, the "Sopranos" is great. And "Curb Your Enthusiasm" still has its moment. And I know that "Deadwood" and "Entorage" have their followings. (But "Six Feet Under" is gone (sob!) and "Big Love" is a disappointment.) Are we supposed to believe, however, that HBO has the only good programming on TV?

I got a DVR specifically because I'm a "Lost" junkie. I went through a brief "Desperate Housewives" phase as well. At the risk of getting into a subjective flamewar about what programs are actually good or suck, let's just say there is a lot of popular programming still on broadcast and basic cable. "Thief," "Black. White.," "Alias," "My Name Is Earl," "Everybody Hates Chris," "American Idol," "American Inventor," "Deal or No Deal," "Law & Order" (and spin-offs), "CSI" (and spin offs), "Gray's Anatomy," "House," "South Park," "The Daily Show," reruns of "The Chappel Show," and on and on (not to mention all the documentary and how-to stuff on Discovery, History, Food, etc.). Whether you personally like any of the above shows, they're all popular and innovative to varying extents.

But would we seriously expect fans to pay $12 a month for access to each of those commercial networks to see that programming ad-free? I don't need research to confidently say no way. The future will clearly remain a hybrid of ad-supported and ad-free TV. Did Mr. Rushkoff fail to notice that half a year after ABC started selling downloadable versions of "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" for $1.99 ad-free, they have now started offering them for free with advertising stuck back in? I'm very interested to see which of those models wins that race. I'd guess the answer in the long run for the industry as a whole will be a mixed model, but my money's on the free ad-supported model for driving the majority of downloads.

Finally, however, Mr. Rushkoff's basic premise seems to be that advertising simply does not work. To make the point, he falls back on that cardinal rule of media pundrity: when in doubt, quote Marshall McLuhan:

[A]s Marshall McLuhan taught us, the medium really is the message. TV sells TV, Paris Hilton sells Paris Hilton, and sneakers sell sneakers. TV's liberation from advertisers shouldn't have sent brands running to find a new unrelated medium on which to promote themselves; their panicked migration to the Internet, cell phones, or movie product placements only bespeaks a lack of faith in the selling power of the products, themselves.

These days, consumer goods are their own best media. Just as the Starbucks coffee cup and cafe experience sells more coffee than any TV or billboard advertising campaign, the shape of a automobile chassis or placement of its cupholders sells more cars than all that indistinguishable footage of cars taking turns on desert lakebeds. Great products are their own billboards, and satisfied customers (not to mention passionate employees) are their best spokespeople.

Sure, that sounds great in theory. And Starbuck is one of the great go-to examples (along with Google and The Body Shop) of a large company built with virtually no use of traditional advertising. And certainly word-of-mouth has always been a vital and little-understood component in business success. But those companies that build large consumer market share without advertising are the exception to the rule.

Paris Hilton sells Paris Hilton? Gimme a break. Subtract the insane amount of media exposure she receives for free every day for just waking up in the morning, and Paris Hilton is nothing but a rich, anorexic skank incapable of selling a hamburger at McDonald's, as, I suspect, was documented on her stupid TV show. And sneakers sell sneakers? So Nike is the dominant player in the sneaker category thanks only to its admitedly great products (labor practices not withstanding), but owing nothing to the millions it spends on sponsorship and advertising (reportedly $25 million a year to Tiger Woods alone)? That's absurd.

We're to believe that Marlboro is the number-one selling cigarette in the world just because it tastes so much better than Camel, and not due largely to the (pre-Brokeback) sex appeal of the Marlboro Man? Tide outsells its nearest rival because moms across America rave to one another in coffee klatches about how much better it removes stains than other soap concoctions? Coke has a third more market share than Pepsi not because of its century-plus record of great advertising and out-spending of its archirval but because its secret formula for sugar water is actually so much better than Pepsi's?

The biggest problem with the world of advertising is that most of it sucks, both for entertainment value and in terms of effectiveness. But to say that advertsing simply does work, as Mr. Rushkoff seems to insinuate, is just wrong. Good advertising does work, and many business fortunes are testimony to that fact. And what television would look like without it is something I seriously doubt our grandchildren will ever see.

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