Despite vastly increased competition, and turbulent technological changes, the Ad Council surpassed the $2 billion mark in donated media this year for its various PSA campaigns—the highest amount since it invented public service advertising 65 years ago.

While radio remained the largest supporter in fiscal 2007 (ended June 30), supplying half the media (just over $1 billion), television came on strong. Its support increased 48 percent to $465 million.

The Ad Council's biggest campaign in the year was theTVboss.org—an effort to inform parents about the V-chip and other means for controlling the kinds of  programming coming into the home via broadcast, cable or satellite TV.

The campaign was backed by $168.5 million in donated media—not surprising, given that the campaign's sponsors included the TV and Hollywood lobbies and several major media companies.

Ad Council President Peggy Conlon may be hard pressed to set a new record in 2008. It's an even numbered year, which means that inventory at many TV stations will be extremely tight as they try to capitalize on the political campaigning and the summer Olympics.

Plus, the Ad Council will have to compete with the pledges of the NAB and NCTA to set side hundreds of millions of dollars in TV time for PSA campaigns to inform viewers about the DTV transition and the February 2009 deadline for analog broadcasting.

Despite the challenges, Conlon is undaunted. She now has a platoon of executives cajoling media companies for time and space, and, like all advertisers, she is learning to reach consumers in new ways.

In this interview with TVNEWSDAY Contributing Editor Arthur Greenwald, Conlon shares her strategies for blending old and new media to better serve the public good.

An edited transcript follows:

As we can see from the current writers strike and other indicators, there's a lot of concern about the health and viability of advertiser- supported media. Does this threaten the basic Ad Council strategic model?

The Ad Council has really evolved over the last 65 years to take advantage of what's happening in the media landscape. So I would say it's just the natural progression of us following the target audiences that we need to reach.

Are you finding it harder to get the messages on the air?

It gets increasingly difficult for a number of reasons. We're in a very robust ad market right now, so in order for us to get meaningful inventory, the stations and networks have to thoughtfully carve out some room for us and we've been very lucky that they've done that. We're also competing with tune-in advertising, which is getting more and more important.

Major advertisers have said that 2008 is going to be an especially tough year because it's both an election year and an Olympics year. But the Ad Council must also compete with station group commitments to run PSAs about the digital transition.

I couldn't have said it any better myself. Those are exactly the three things that we're concerned about and I suspect that it will be a year where we have to manage our expectations about the kind of support that we get in television.

So what then do you do for your clients in that situation? Do you plan to use other media?

Well, we don't buy media. We advocate for donated media across the board. The good news is that we get terrific support from other media platforms that may not be as challenged as television in terms of available inventory. We get 50 percent of our support, over $1billion, from radio and I suspect that that will continue.

We can count on markets that aren't caught up as much as others in the political advertising to continue supporting us. All of these broadcasters also have online platforms and we get terrific support there. Our support from the outdoor industry has just been growing and growing—we have over $120 million in outdoor support. We see very good support across the board and if we have to take a little bit of a hit in '08 because of the market dynamics, then we'll be right back in '09 stronger than ever.

In some ways, the Ad Council is a microcosm of the entire ad industry. And while a robust ad market is good news for stations, there's also concern that the reach of broadcast advertising is no longer as effective as it once was. When you look at media as a whole, has the Ad Council strategy started to shift to other media?

Just like paid advertisers, it really depends on the target audience. If you're talking about a young male target, it's harder to reach them on broadcast television then it once was. We go wherever the audiences are, | More …