Posted by "Traditional Marketing Budgets Lose to Interactive." That was the title of the news item from MediaPost‘s Research Brief today.
"According to Forrester Research, reported by Richard H. Levey at Directmag.com, 60% of marketers surveyed will increase their interactive marketing budgets by shifting funds from traditional media. Direct mail was cited by 40% of marketers as being one being cut, outranking newspapers (35%), magazines (28%) and television (12%)."
It has been years since Digital Marketers pontificated that traditional dollars will shift online. Even through the economic downturn, as traditional advertising budgets were being slashed, there seemed to be an increase towards the online channel (or, at worst, it remained stagnant from before the crisis). Still, after all of these years, it begs the question: are Marketers shifting dollars for efficacy or because they feel that they can get more bang for their buck in the online channel? While it could well be a combo of the two, it is becoming increasingly obvious that these Marketers are also realizing that consumers are no longer listening, reading and watching their advertising the way they used to. While it’s equally easy to blame this on the fragmentation of media, it’s also plain to see (just look at the trending topics on Twitter), that it’s not just "the Internet". It’s new media “in general” and this includes newer channels like satellite radio, mobile, widgets, apps and beyond. We also can’t just say, "it’s the Internet," as channels like Twitter, video sharing sites YouTube, etc…), news rating sites (like Digg and Reddit) and even aggregators (Google News and Huffington Post) are all very different types of media when you dig into them.
Social Media and mobile is also on Marketer’s minds:
"Among the interactive channels, the study finds social media and mobile marketing spending expanding between 2009 and 2014, with social media jumping by 34% on a compounded annual basis and mobile marketing increasing by 27%. Social media starts at $716 million in 2009, increasing to $3.11 billion by 2014. Mobile marketing expenditures stand at 319 million this year, and goes to $1.27 billion by 2014."
For more information and two very interesting news items that are tied into this, please check out:
– Interactive Marketing Will Cannibalize Traditional Channels: Forrester.
– CMOs Say Budgets Cut By 20% Or More: Forrester.
Are you curious to see if this is just a short-term adjustment or the long, hard shift towards a new advertising and marketing landscape?
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As a media outlet, we’re obviously watching this with close interest. We offer online marketing opportunities to our clients, and are moving towards a much more community-oriented platform for all our titles (beta launching very soon). Even then, we find our clients are no longer as interested in the display element of online, they’re all focusing on lead gen I.e. get people to download my white paper). Our challenge is to help them understand that generating leads is a nurtured process, multi-touch, based on trusted relationships – everything you always talk about. I’m interested in your thoughts about the role of display as part of the digital marketing mix. Some (mostly anecdotal) reports have said that display/branding still has a role to play – that the combination of branding with say, search, leads to better results. My own thinking is that display still has a place – at least for now – but that the quality and intent of the creative needs to shift, to become less “megaphone” and more “conversational/helpful”. Thoughts?
To add to the reference you’ve provided above, here’s an interesting article from MediaPost reporting on private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson’s annual Communications Industry Forecast. The article is entitled “Broadcast Usurps Newspapers, Online Poised To Dominate”, and in a nutshell, says: “In 2002, traditional was 95% of the total. Now it’s 85% of the total. By 2012, it will be 68%.” What’s interesting is the shift in who is providing “new media”: broadcasters and publishers migrating online or so-called “pure-play” Internet companies. Worth the read at http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=87929