The First Of A Series Of Monthly Columns By New Media Age Editor Mike Nutley
One of the most popular statistics in the Internet advertising community at the moment is that while the Internet accounts for 12% of people's media consumption, it only accounts for 1% of companies' marketing spend. The challenge, the way the industry sees it, is to find ways to fill that gap, by persuading more brands of the value and effectiveness of online advertising.
The reasons cited for the gap include problems with auditing, a lack of case studies, and the still widely-held belief that the Internet is just discredited dotcom hype. The problem was thrown into sharp relief for me last November, at the Ad:tech conference in New York, when a panel of leading brands including Sprint, Kodak, IBM and Nikon all admitted that, while they loved online for fulfilment, for supply-chain management and for CRM, they didn't believe online advertising was the best way to drive customers to their Web sites.
While this is worrying for anyone in online advertising, it also raises a deeper question: what constitutes online advertising? Or, to put it another way, do we really believe the gap between media consumption and advertising spend is going to be filled by more banners, skyscrapers and pop-ups?
My answer would be no. I would argue that the history of advertising on the Internet, at least until very recently, has been the history of importing advertising models from other media. The static, text-heavy look of the early Internet looked like print, so we got advertising that followed the print model. It may move around, but it's still really press advertising with knobs on. Likewise, streaming video is really only TV advertising. In fact in most cases it is TV advertising. What has taken time to emerge is advertising that truly makes use of the unique qualities of the medium.
In fact there are already many examples of truly interactive advertising, but not many of them are recognised as such. Instead they tend to be described as online marketing, or simply ignored. Pay-for-performance search is a perfect example of this. It's not traditional advertising, but it's hugely effective, and can only be done in the interactive space. Search engine optimisation is the same. Even Amazon's recommendation service can be seen as a form of advertising that simply couldn't operate offline. After all, it sells more books.
This is how I believe the gap is going to be filled. All the research shows that people online are active rather than passive users of the medium.. They're looking for something. They're on a mission Anything that aids that mission is useful, anything that hinders it is irritating. And as Modem Media founder GM O'Connell said recently, you can't irritate people into liking you.
The online advertising and marketing that is going to work in the future is going to be relevant, useful and will add value. It may not look like any kind of offline advertising you've ever seen, but that's the point.
Michael Nutley, Editor, New Media Age, http://www.nma.co.uk/