Memo to media: Supply and demand are out of your hands — Tech News and Analysis

There are plenty of reasons why the traditional media business — including the advertising industry — is in the shape it is in, including a failure to move quickly enough to adapt to changing market conditions. But one of the primary flaws is a failure to appreciate how the structure of the media industry has been disrupted by the web and the democracy of distribution. As David Pakman of Venrock Capital notes, too many media giants are more than happy to have a little disruption, provided it doesn’t change the supply-demand balance they rely on. This is nonsense, of course; that equation has already been blown to smithereens.

Pakman was commenting on a quote from Irwin Gotlieb, the CEO of GroupM, a unit of WPP Group and one of the world’s largest ad-buying and ad-management agencies: a company with over 30 percent of the global market and more than $73 billion…

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