This session is a one of the newer sessions from the ClickZ track that is going to get opinions from some top media buyers on what they expect to see this year, what they are buying, and where the trends going.
First up with Tessa Wegert from Enlighten. She says she will discuss the four major areas that are experiencing growth and changes such as Television, radio, and newspaper. Looking at media spending growth, in 2006 spending is on the rise. A lot of advertisers are looking at spending in local media because a lot of the effect translates down to local advertisers. The local community content fosters site user loyalty. Relevant regional content eliminates need for geo and contextual targeting. There is a lot of untapped inventory out there. Less competition for location site inventory means competitive rate. Local sites are more willing to create more inventory opportunities. On the local media search sites such as Google Maps, Google Coupons, etc.. you can create local business listing, local business ads. Great way to set your business apart from others. Google local business ads is basically Adwords but it appears in Google Maps.
When search and display used in tandem an advertiser's site pageviews up 68 percent. There are a lot of benefits doing a integrated campaign. You can expand audience reach, increase interaction, and increase sales. This nets a wider audience online, drive search traffic. She puts up an example of a integrated campaign. They are doing advertising on national sites like Better Homes and Gardens and the other part is Google paid search advertising.
She next talks about online video. One third of the US population over age 3 watch online video monthly. With video you can create a lot of cross media consistency. It helps with branding. She mentions a study, that fewer video ads needed to create brand awareness than other means. There are a longer banner recall as well from video ads. There are different types of video ads, such as PointRoll an ad type that accompanies the video player, clickable video which cites immediate action but may require unique video content, and long form video which is random ad placement reduces avoidance).
Tessa next goes into custom made media opportunities. She talks about Pandora an online radio station who has experimented with custom ads such as using custom variance, customer text ticker, and combined proven ad unit and custom art. Some of the more traditional publishers are even coming up with custom made media on there sites.
Second up is Robin Neifield and she starts immediately explaining the question better. She says she wants to know where they are spending the money on a wide variety of areas. Is the budget allocation across media predicted on specific goals and current media penetration. She says they look at the spending on a media model in a three tier system of potential customer, window shoppers, and active buyers. She is expecting spending to shift a little bit towards new types of media and testing. They want to expert with community sites, etc.. There are new networks out there that can present some good opportunities. People are spending more money online. Robin says they allocate some of their clients money for testing. She explains that the pressure to monetize increased media budgets, better analytic tools, and a stronger understanding of how to use the data will lead to: more conversion testing, better analytics, etc..
Behavioral targeting is now widely utilized. Mobile is finally moving forward. Search retargeting is a great new area to get into to. There are new targeting options (including video), and new networks. She next goes into mobile advertising. According to eMarketer, mobile ad spending in the US will reach nearly 4.8 million by 2011. From 2006-2007, mobile marketing spending is expected to double. The largest area of growth in 2007 will be through the development of WAP (the mobile internet) pages and supporting campaigns. WAP is the second highest mobile content used sources for mobile browsing. SMS can be difficult because you have such limited space to tell you story.
Click through rates can be substantially higher when combined with an integrated marketing campaign. Extension or complement to TV viewing is a practiced method. Repurposing TV spots for the space is an option, but creating web only video is a better option. Social media is another area. They find that the engaged audience is less likely to click off and complete an action. Blog advertising is not as good. Users are interested in a conversation and ads are harder to deliver effectively. In the end its about getting a story told in search, banners, e-mail, and affiliates.
Third is David Rittenhouse from neo@ogilvy and talks that they works with a lot of different companies but specialize in technology companies. He says that advertising media investment choices are driven by consumer and business priorities. There is a complex environment in which spend allocations are made by advertiser, region, country, campaign, message, medium, tactic, and media company. Challenge is digital media present mass of ever-changing ever emerging, ever under measured options. The next part to this, is that consumer media usage is flux and media \$ want to follow closely. Out of every $100 now it is ordinary to have 1/3 to ½ spent online. Overall media budgets are not growing at the same pace but at the expensed of traditional media like print and broadcast. Some clients are flipping models and putting digital media first. Interesting but understandable.
He feels that growth in digital does not always equal more of the same. On small scale tests over the past several years have yielded learning that are starting to drive scaling up and out. There is a lot going on in online video, microsites, podcasting, mobile, social media & blogs, content syndication, and video games. He says there is a real focus on asking ‘what else can I do?” He gives an example of streaming golf for specific holes for people who loved golf but only wanted to know what was happening at certain holes on the course.
One of the challenges he sees is the availability vs. recommend-ability. The challenge is planning and prioritizing in a systematic way that is based on consumers and advertisers needs. It’s a question of usage, quality, and relevance. One of the challenge is buying acrss a number of different currencies. He means impressions, click, circulation, streams, and all the other “C” words. The second challenging in this is the execution of being efficient when everything is always new. There is no surprise that Rich Media and Search leading the way. Ecosystem is most ready to deliver these with scale and there are few barriers.
David finally goes into search and how is matters in the media business. Search is the fastest growing part of the media business and of Neo’s operations. Increasingly the “way” in to many clients and most logical first dollar spent of digital budget. Search as a marketing application, beyond PPC is starting to realize potential with clients. There is a diagnostic services, natural search and analytics. Though there is some drag that should be dealt with expeditiously. He also mentions that specialization can also lead to isolation. He says he observed that some marketers only do search or this or that and they isolate themselves, when in reality we are all marketers and should work together on that.
Harry Gold is up last and talks about working with B2B companies specifically and how they like to track and measure. Traditional advertisers continue to migrate online. Richard media replaced search as the fastest growing form of online media driven by traditional advertisers. From a recent study 62% of respondents said it was where most of their growth was going into rich media. He says prices are going up! He says that rich accommodates a level of branding and rich media formats that search does not. How efficient are you when you are dealing with new mediums. He says they help clients experience with new forms of media. Ranking of ROI from types of media, search is down near the bottom. Good news about the internet is you can track everything, but the bad news about the internet is you can track everything. Lot of data and everything may not always work.
He is pessimistic and optimistic about search. Traditional advertisers are increasingly looking at online media and search as branding mediums and love multi platform deals. But they still love the metrics and the concepts of optimization and cancellation clauses. Performance and lead gen advertisers continue to buy farther down the conversion chain. Where did those quality leads come from? Look at lead sources and lead quality. What is the most they can afford to spend on a lead? What do those people paying $13 dollars a click know that you don’t They know the quality of the leads they are getting is very good. Its worth it. He explains that they are strong advocates for search so it is expected that it would grow for our clients.
He says this might be a strong statement but rented email is out. Email is always the lowest performing thing on the list. There are spam filters, open rates, click rates, conversion rates, the CPA is way to high. Newsletter sponsorships are great though.
On the performance lead based side. Advertisers are extremely focused on metrics. There is continued growth in search. Low CPM and PPC network buys. Premium buys combined with alternative placements and value ads. There is an increased usage of CPA buys, especially in education. What is happening is that is driving down the cost of the lead. There are overall budget increases. He ends that online is the biggest real time focus group there is. Offline has been in a way driving online. Optimization needs to be integrated and online will be driving offline.
