The end of the year is a time for reflection. For the media it means lists – The Top Ten this or that, Best of the Year this or that… Man of the Year, Woman of the Year, Pet of the Year… as well as predictions for the year ahead.

There is a lot of reflection going on in the advertising industry this year. 2006 will come to be seen as a watershed year, a year of disruption and change. The old media model is disintegrating before our eyes. Advertisers are learning that a lot of their advertising just doesn’t work any more.

Here’s a quote on the subject of The Year in Advertising from the NY Times advertising writer Stuart Eliot.

Time flies, it seems, when you are frantically remaking an industry to stave off irrelevance and obsolescence.

The big story of the year has been the willingness of mainstream marketers to forgo a decades-long reliance on the traditional media and to embrace new technologies like podcasts, video-on-demand, blogs, social networking and video sharing.

Sometimes, those efforts were compelling and successful. In other instances, attempts to change old habits went over about as well as Grandma demonstrating how hip she is by leading the wedding party in the macarena.

My favorite recent article on this subject comes from Wired Magazine. Called “YouTube vs. Boob Tube“, the article explains the business model of online video developing as the old TV model disappears. Read the whole article, but here are my favorite quotes:

Until about five minutes ago, remember, almost all video-entertainment content was produced and distributed by Hollywood. Period. That time is over. There was a time when advertisers could count on mass audiences for what Hollywood thought we should be watching on TV. That time is all but over. There was a time when broadband penetration was too slight and bandwidth costs too prohibitive for video to be watched online. That time is sooooo over.

And, my most favorite one:

Without being overly simplistic or melodramatic, the state of the Old Commercial Broadcasting Model can be summarized like this: a spiraling vortex of ruin. Fragmentation has decimated audiences, viewers who do watch are skipping commercials, advertisers are therefore fleeing, the revenue for underwriting new content is therefore flatlining, program quality is therefore suffering (Dancing With the Stars. QED), which will lead to ever more viewer defection, which will lead to ever more advertiser defection, and so on.

What do you care? For nonprofits, this is a HUGE opportunity. For the first time in history your message can be on an equal playing field as commercial messages. You can’t do the Super Bowl ad, or even a 15-second spot on a re-run of Get Smart. But you can put your video on YouTube and on DoGooderTV and a lot of other places where it can compete in the marketplace of ideas for attention. If you are doing something important — and I am sure you are — and can tell your story, you can grow your support and educate the masses in ways nonprofit professionals have never dreamed possible.

This week’s New York Times Magazine has an interesting philosophical look at philanthropy. How much do you give? How much should you give?

I saw a really great article in the Times by the cookbook author Joan Nathan. Nathan writes about Jewish cooking and in this article, in preparation for the Hanukkah holiday that starts tonight, she writes about cooking with the Satmars in Kiryas Joel, New York. The story of the Satmars and of the founding of Kiryas Joel and its issues is fascinating. Her article brings you in and gives you a glimpse of these folk and how they live and their values. All of this in a story that is supposed to be about food.

Reading it, I thought about two things. First, (of course) wishing she had video of this experience. Second, I was thinking, what a great way for organizations (international ones in particular) to introduce us to the people they work with. Obviously, this would not be appropriate in every case, but I can imagine meeting Indian tsunami survivors or African village teachers through the lens of their cooking. And then seeing a published cookbook or other collateral material created around the cooking idea – as a fundraiser. We feel so different and distant from these people. And we often feel judgmental toward people who are different than us. What a dignified way cooking would be to connect!

Yesterday, Yahoo! announced that their new search marketing system, called Panama, would be available to all US businesses. Yahoo’s search marketing businesses was the first out of the gate and called Overture. Yahoo bought Overture and changed their name to Yahoo Search Marketing. What we loved about Overture was its transparency. If you paid more for a search term, you were higher ranked among the sponsored links. End of story. You could also see what others were paying, and, basically you knew where you stood.

Google, on the other hand, is a black box. You bid for placement, but they take into account your click-through rate and your “relevance” in deciding where you will be placed. And they don’t tell you how they decided any of that because it’s all one big trade secret. For our clients, Yahoo! almost always delivered better ROI. But for Yahoo as a business it wasn’t good. Google ate their lunch and Google’s market value — about $150 billion right now — is due in large part to their ability to monetize search better than their competitors. Google was able to beat out Yahoo! and Microsoft in doing deals to control the advertising space and search with AOL and with MySpace due to the fact that they could pay more, which is due to the fact that they make more. Yahoo has been scrambling to catch up.

To counter this advantage, Yahoo has totally reworked their search system and created what they call Panama. I asked Jon Morris of Internet Marketing Initiative, the guy who knows search better than anyone, what we should think of this. Here’s what he said:

Panama will offer substantially better management controls, but will also probably lower the return on investment for our clients. The new program will probably increase the cost per click.

Could the NFL be an example for nonprofits? (Most nonprofits I know are against violence!) What I am thinking about is repurposing content. An NFL game is a very valuable asset. And the NFL folks are marketing masters. (I get an NFL Shop catalog with a cover showing a player from my team, with my last name on the jersey!) They have found creative ways to monetize and repurpose the asset that is the game. Nonprofits need to be equally creative with their video assets, thinking about how they can get the most from their investment.

Here’s a list of ways the NFL uses a game, and how nonprofits should be thinking about their video assets:

1. Multiple channels. The entire live NFL game will be found on local TV in the markets of the teams playing, on NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV in the US and on other channels in other countries, and as the premier game in additional TV markets. The equivalent for nonprofits is posting video to YouTube, putting it on their MySpace page, and encouraging syndication of the video by allowing their constituents to embed the video on their blogs, website and social networking pages.

2. Pre-game and post-game shows. The live game is interesting to people, but so is analysis and thoughts about it. You will see the game discussed by multiple people, around the time of the game itself, but also on specially-created shows on the NFL Network and ESPN and available on iTunes for a fee. For a nonprofit, this might be some video about a program combined with other materials — video or not — that supply context and analysis.

3. Shorter Games. The NFL Network picks a couple games each week and edits out the down time. What is left is an hour-ish NFL game — play after play, with just enough time in between to think about what they should be doing next. They call this the Game of the Week. In addition, there is a 10-minute highlight edition of every game available on iTunes for $1.99. The point is, while that 20 minute video might be interesting, there is an audience for a 7 minute version at your event and an even a bigger audience for a 3 minute version on your website.

Video content, unlike print, can be reused and repurposed for ever. We are working hard to encourage nonprofits to invest in video, and to make smart use of those investments by getting as much out of it as possible.

I watched the season finale of The Wire last night. If you don’t know this show you should. This might sound like hyperbole, but I would say this is the best show on television, probably the best show ever on television. (Of course it’s from HBO.)

I am writing about this because what makes this show so powerful is the truth of the show. If you are interested and involved in issues related to drug policy, urban poverty, community policing, or African American advancement, then you should be watching this show. The insight that this season gave to the challenges and dysfunctions of public education in poor communities was better than any university report you could read.

If you don’t know the show, best idea is to rent it, one season at a time.

Danny and the team are back from India. Other than falling down the stairs in Bombay and having to get stitches, he seems OK. They said it was intense, interesting and they have an enhanced appreciation for the amazing work that the American Jewish World Service does. We have 20 tapes and a lot of work ahead of us on this project. As we start going through the video we will post some things. Stay tuned.