As a Marketing Manager and one who is, in part, judged by my spending habits, I love online advertising, love it. LOVE IT! And why?
As many CEOs (apart from mine, of course) will eagerly warn, “marketing people will find ways to spend your money”, which may be the truth. Well, half of it anyway…
A recent report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has found that annual advertising fell this year by 16% to £7.5bn and, for the first time in the nuclear age, TV advertising spend was out-paced – by internet advertising. Online advertising now has a 23.5% market share compared to TV’s 21.9% if this quarter’s figures are to be believed, but this doesn’t represent a true picture, as many cite the recession as the deciding factor in the shift.
With all things recession and with budgets duly squeezed in (ahem) every department imaginable, you’d be forgiven for thinking that marketers have taken to a new form of bargain shopping: Cheaper above the line methods targeted at practically the same mainstream audiences. You’d be right, of course.
However, there’s a key word in there and with it a dead giveaway to the real merits of online advertising – “targeted”.
American Express already have a huge online presence
The undoubted superiority online advertising has over TV is that your audience can be profiled, targeted and tracked to see what methods work and, more crucially, which of them don’t.
Now, ALS has never led a multi-million pound TV advertising campaign, actually neither have any of our competitors (that’s not the point I’m trying to make here), but there’s much to be said for the ‘bundling’ of internet advertising. What get’s thrown in to support your initial advertising spend for, lets say flash video, which you can broadcast online and even optimise now thanks, to the might of Google, presents the kind of value TV simply cannot match in its present form.
With each online banner advert, video or editorial comes an array of extras such as email marketing which spares your own companys SPAM listing, profile pages, site-wide links – not to mention forgetful administrators who don’t “no-follow” your links (thanks).
It is little wonder then, given the economic squeeze and the importance of ROI, that marketers are looking to added value for their budget and are thus migrating their spend to focus online.
Blogging: Too big a subject to cover in just one post, but this begins to sum up its value!
However much online spending may be on the increase and a vital part of any modern marketing function, I doubt this shift in advertising spend will last until this time next year.
Since recessions are thankfully finite, I can say without doubt that the ambition of marketers with big bugdets at their disposal are not.
So, as much as this news may have threatened to shake the advertising industry to its core, don’t believe the hype just yet (leave it until well after the recession).
Meanwhile, if you want another reason why I love online advertising, just take a look at this (funny?) video I produced using a new tool our CEO found.
In between dicussing potential (proper) uses for it, such as supporting our customers in using our services, or development of interpreters, I’ve parodied a scene you might find in the slapstick world of DIY translation (canned laughter and dodgy accents optional)…