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Number
33: December 17, 2003
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return from your vacations. Have a happy holiday season!
This week in Katydid:
Budgeting
for Ought Four
According to a Zenith Media study published in December and reported in eMarketer
Daily, the U.S. will spend about $148.8 billion on advertising
in 2003. Next year the spending will be $156.3 billion. The report only
examined North America of which the U.S. accounted for 96%. As you
finalize your advertising budget for 2004, you may be worried about
diminishing returns.
Magazine circulations have been dropping lately. Circulation
Management Magazine has run numerous stories this year on the
need to boost penetration. Trade magazines seem to have been the hardest
hit by two compounding trends. First, widespread layoffs have cut key
subscribers and increased the workload of those left, leaving little
time to keep up on their industry. Second, digital publishing has begun
to reveal the inflated numbers in subscriber lists.
Additionally, since trade magazine publishers are the primary source
for lists that target B2B markets, many of those names will be obsolete
or plagued by high churn.
The good news is that you can bargain for lower rates in trade
magazines and with list brokers. The bad news is that you might not
reach your intended audience.
Television Week
also has featured many articles this year on the vanishing viewer. Young
male viewers are leaving in droves for other entertainments such as
video games and DVDs. Technology such as the digital video recorder (DVR)
has made it much easier to avoid televised advertising. Another
indication is that reservations for event programming such as the Super
Bowl have been down.
Again, the good news is that you can make great deals. The bad news
is that you don't know who's watching.
Media pundits such as Seth
Godin and Sergio
Zyman have been arguing that the old model of advertising no longer
works. One of the few places you can successfully get someone's
attention these days is the movie theater. In major markets, most of the
theatres have some form of animated slide show or filmed commercials.
Some even give you the ability to market by rating.
Attendance at trade shows is down. Outdoor is as valuable as it ever
was, which isn't exactly an endorsement. Online marketing is crucial but
it will still only comprise 4.4% of advertising spending next year.
Radio is a bright spot. Another report
published in eMarketer Daily showed a disparity between consumers
and advertising executives on the value of radio advertising. Thirty-six
percent of consumers surveyed said they pay attention to it, while
advertisers think the number is closer to 23%.
The good news is that more people are paying attention to radio
advertising. The bad news is that diversity in radio is diminishing as
the industry consolidates stations and formats.
One more contributing factor to the uncertain state of advertising is
the reluctance of marketers to do anything differently. If you keep
feeding the same diminishing results into the system, it will continue
to spiral downward. What the system needs is an influx of new research
and accurate information.
We should all take advantage of the opportunity to negotiate lower
rates where we can. However, the best thing to do is find out for
yourself the state of your market. With the contraction in the marketing
industry, there are many highly qualified consultants willing to stay up
a few nights to get you some real numbers. And since many research firms
are hurting now, you can probably even sell them your results, which
wouldn't be a bad press release. You might even get a little national
exposure in that part of the media people actually pay attention
to – the content.
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Marketing
on the Fly
For the more adventurous, there's a growing trend with great promise –
digital asset marketing. Currently, online marketing has driven this
trend. Digital asset marketing leverages digital asset management
solutions with what it knows about an audience to target advertising.
For example, Barnes
& Noble knows what kind of books I buy. I use my discount cards
to make purchases and they send me coupons to drive me online or to the
store. Content management solutions allow web sites to customize pages
for different targets. Even with a minimum amount of information such as
a zip code, you can find ways to speak more directly to an audience.
Most of the time, companies only change discreet components such as
banner ads, or paragraphs of text. However, it's very easy now to change
other content elements such as images, art, and even branding elements
to suit an audience.
What makes this so seductive is the ability to track results. Not
only can you assemble a campaign on the fly, you can modify it and keep
what works.
The same is true of digital printing. You can assemble collateral
from a database of content elements to match criteria from your target
database. Companies with brands that vary across region can leverage
common design elements. Additionally, companies can support reseller
channels with both print and online media. For example, provide your
resellers with brochures or newsletters that contain specific corporate
content but that also contain space for localized information and the
resellers' branding.
This is now moving into television as well. Full-motion digital media
only differs from static content by size. WGBH-TV
is rolling out a test environment for making digital assets available
across all its businesses. The way it handles the online content for its
popular Nova
series is a case in point.
Also, Visible
World, a television technology company has launched the trial of
IntelliSpot, a product that uses digital asset marketing to build
advertisements on the fly targeted for local markets. For example, a car
manufacturer can create advertising that automatically inserts
information about the closest local dealer in national spots. You can
even modify music to suit the age or region of the target audience.
The real value of digital asset marketing will be consolidating
content across all media. The various industries have not matured enough
for true convergence, but this is the future of advertising and it may
help revive the flagging industry. It requires you to develop much more
content, but efficiencies in the delivery help to offset that cost. To
be effective, digital asset marketing requires more research and
planning up front. Hopefully, that's the real meat of the work you've
been dying to sink your teeth into.
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Thanks for Reading
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Kind regards,
Kevin Troy Darling
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