I don't get it

Yesterday I thought that I had laughed too soon at the talks of crisis in digital marketing industry, and figured that the way the agencies might get hit after all is in the area of their accountability. Clients will require to know where their every dollar of the campaign goes, and will ask for measurable results. Because so few agencies (if any) can actually prove that they are making successful campaigns, the crisis is going to make them - hopefully - to resort to marketing strategies they can measure. Linking metrics and accountability seems pretty straightforward. Except that we are talking about the ad industry, after all. Nothing is as what it seems here. Well, maybe search ("Spending on search advertising continues to exibit nearly relentless growth ... search spending surged 27% during the third quarter, compared to the same period last year."). Google, Yahoo and Microsoft ROI averages improved during the third quarter - that is, they actually CAN measure their ROI. Which can not be said for the rest of the digital ad world. And this is why budgets for video games, mobile, web video, and virtual worlds are the first to go. Yes, these formats can generate user engagement & brand awareness (think Elf Yourself, which excelled in the former but achieved who-knows-what in the latter) but we just can't measure it.  At the same time, Obama's placing of the "first presidential campaign ads in online video games" has been written about in the New York Times as extremely innovative move in the ad world, targeted to reach elusive male 18-24 demographics. Hey, I thought I have just read that this same industry just said that it is not sure about "experimental media"? To be specific, WSJ article details that "ad executives say creating an entirely new form of advertising to put in untested places like virtual worlds -- or three-dimensional online computer games -- may not be worth the effort in tough advertising times". Indeed. But the fun does not stop there. Viral video is also lauded as a successful marketing tool, albeit the one without any benchmarks to measure its actual success. AdWeek's article from this past Monday details on a survey claiming that 70% of surveyed advertising and media agencies plan to increase their spending on viral videos, but benchmarks of success remain relative throughout the marketing business (well, don't allow anything to diminish your enthusiasm ...).  Viral video = online video = unmeasurable tactics = 70% of agencies plan to increase their spending?? It seems to me that those people clearly have no idea what to do. The econ. crisis may just have made that more apparent.