ISBA Conference: Marketing’s Future

Gary Cunningham’s talk focused on the Internet as the marketing tool of the future. The Marketing Services Director from Proctor and Gamble spoke about the formation of CASIE, an industry coalition which looks after advertisers’ interests in new media. Research carried out by CASIE indicates that technologies such as interactive TV, pay-per-view movies, and video game channels are tending to be eclipsed by computer-based media.

He believes that the Internet is positioned to influence the future of marketing as much as any other medium. It means that an entirely new form of marketing, interactive online marketing, is emerging as a breakthrough way to sell products and services. The advertising available encompasses banner ads placed inside editorial and sponsorship of web sites.

There are six core benefits of marketing online: instant global access; it is self-selective; it can be interactive; it is fully integrated with other marketing techniques; it offers one-to-one marketing; and consumers can buy directly over the net. He also pointed out that as an industry, advertisers need to establish standards for measuring the cost effectiveness of the net versus other media. Accurate measures to gauge the efficiency of the net are also required.

The key to “webvertising” is content, and large amounts of graphics should not be used because such sites are extremely slow in downloading.