NewsLine Column: The Changing Face Of Online Media
Following what has been an eventful year for online advertising, Jean-Paul Edwards, head of new media at Manning Gottlieb OMD, looks at how far the industry has come and how far it still needs to go.
Like all media online has been through the mill recently. The dotcom boom of the late nineties and its subsequent bust had profound effects on the business of online media. After a period of exponential growth the money seemed to dry up very quickly. Advertisers wondered what they were doing in a medium that expensive, unproven and immature.
Fast forwarding a couple of years, online has developed a strong niche in certain sectors as a response medium. Over the past two years rates have fallen, sites have consolidated to be able to provide significant audiences, adverting technologies have developed and buyers and sellers have a lot more experience of what works and what doesn’t. The biggest factor, however, has been the user, they are now online in greater numbers (50% of the population), use it more frequently (9 times a week) and spend more money (£354 per month). Financial services and travel were the first two sectors to notice this and now spend significant proportions of their marketing budgets online and the medium is now taking the majority of some client’s spend. Control of online response campaigns is now at a level that cannot be matched by other media, with ad serving technologies providing real time data that allows us to optimise against sale and a whole host of other factors.
Response media, although the easiest to justify, is only one part of the marketing mix. It should be easy to sell to people who are looking for your product, to answer their desire. The creation of desires and needs is where advertising is at its most powerful, if a little more subtle. True growth of the medium will only come from advertisers seeking to speak to potential customers at all levels. The interactivity and accountability of the medium should allow us stitch all of the levels together, from brand awareness, through to interaction and response and then through to sales and CRM. This in turn, I believe, will have a radical effect on the offline media markets as we gain a deeper understanding of the consumer’s relationships with and attitudes towards our client’s brands. How this will happen is the big question.
One of the driving factors of growth in online brand media will be new formats are allowing us to create impactful and engaging advertising that entertains and informs. The new layer formats such as eyeblasters and ad4ever seem to be succeeding in creating impact without annoying too many users, so long as they are well targeted. Creativity online has also suffered in the past from a lack of understanding of the medium or an unwillingness to invest, but as the medium grows and can now justify its own creative budgets, effective online messages are being created.
Overall the worst is over and a new period of optimism for the medium should be around the corner, but then again we have been here before.
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