New media a sham? That’s what Andrew Marsden, the former Britvic marketing director, believes.

He has delivered a stinging attack on ‘so-called new media’, urging marketers to question its commercial relevance. He also says that brands are still using the same ‘new’ tricks, such as branded websites, 15 years on.

In a report from Marketing Week, Marsden adds that it was time for marketers to get real about new media and its actual benefits for marketing. He made the comments in a speech entitled, ‘Things I’ll Need to Know Five Years from Now’ at the London Marketing Forum.

Marsden says there was “a lot of talk about new media and the new economy”, and questions whether new-media companies are “over valued and under delivering” as many were during the dot.com boom and bust of the late 90s.

“We need to stop, as a profession, getting carried away by new media. It is powerful but most powerful in the dream world environment where everything is free.”

He questions the online advertising model and predicted that, in 2013, most advertising would remain above the line through traditional media.

However, Marsden also attacks the traditional agency model suggesting that too much money went on overheads and not enough on creating the ideas.

“Many clients believe that the current model is broken and we need to find new ways.”

Agencies took an industrial, factory approach to advertising and spent up to 75 percent of the budget on overheads, including buildings and account management according to Marsden.

He does, however, tout a ‘virtual’ network that would draw in resources when needed, which he says would lead to overheads of just 30 percent.