Trevor Beattie, advertising’s self-licensed controversialist, has proclaimed the death of the 30-second ad – and asserted that in future ads should be no longer than five seconds. Aside from the fact that short-form ‘blipverts’ already exist, he is right that the long-form ad is an anachronism and a bore says Dominic Mills.

As Campaign release the annual top 100 agency rankings, Dominic Mills, a past editor of the magazine, remembers once having a livid agency boss scream into his ear that judging performance based on billings was nonsense. These days, Mills is inclined to agree and argues that in the current ecosystem, a good creative or media agency is about much more than ads or media spend…

Why, if TV is the powerful medium, and radio the personal one, did Tesco – and a host of other big brands for a variety of reasons recently – use press to say sorry about its products?

Netflix has acquired vast amounts of data about its viewers’ watching habits – but can it really use this to predict what we want? Dominic Mills is not so sure.

As a term, big data is now a jargonistic cliché, says Dominic Mills. It’s over-used, mis-used and abused. It’s become the prerogative of people who peddle snake oil in the form of hugely expensive consultancy and software, luring in the suckers…and now marketers have got some major hurdles to overcome.

Given the price of Superbowl ads this year, you can hardly blame an advertiser for trying to maximise the bang/buck ratio by generating as much pre-game chatter as they can, says Dominic Mills. But is this making advertising strategies cynical as they compete to be talked about before kick off?

Do you have any idea of the difference between something ‘overtly’ sexy and something ‘mildly’ sexy? It’s not easy, is it? My ‘mild’ might be your ‘overt’. So it’s both interesting and amusing that the ASA has knocked down complaints that M&S’s new lingerie ads were ‘overtly sexual, degrading to women and reinforced sexual stereotypes’.

Dominic Mills argues that while tablets may accelerate the death of print, they may actually be the saviour of publishing – and there is a clear chain of links to follow if we want to predict the ways things are going to go this year…

Channel 4, Group M and, most importantly, its clients, will be mighty relieved the trading dispute between the broadcaster and the media agency was resolved last week – but such high-profile stand-offs make a nonsense of media agency claims about the importance of strategic and channel planning.

So here we are, in that listless post-Christmas netherworld…and the ads are the usual flotsam and jetsam. I’ve often wondered why more advertisers don’t go for something special during this time…