We’ve been watching this battle for advertising dollars for the last several years and now for the first time online ad spending will be greater than print spending in 2012.
I think the only surprise here is that it took so long for this to happen. Consumers have been spending far more time online gathering news and information about the world and doing research for products and retail outlets for years. It’s about time the advertising dollars have finally shifted to reflect time spent by consumers.
There are several reasons that this has taken so long. The first has to be that online advertising is a moving target. What worked yesterday may still work today but be trumped by the newest thing. Search engine marketing maybe the best example as early on search engines didn’t even exist and now a retailer can use the Google ad network to buy a “local” ad on the New York Times site that will only be seen by consumers in his market. Buying a local ad on a national site is still beyond the comprehension of most local retailers.
Another reason the spending for online took so long to pass print spending is that so much can be done on the Internet for so little money. The local ad on a national site program from Google costs a fraction of what a 3 col. x 10″ ad costs in a local paper. A mere fraction. Social sites are effective marketing tools for local advertisers and there is no publication costs at all.
The third reason this has taken so long relates to the second, it’s cheap. Because it’s so inexpensive it’s hard for traditional agencies both large and small to make money on such low cost efforts. So we don’t have anyone, especially in local markets representing the value of the Internet to local retailers. The Internet is a self-serve business model and local retailers just don’t have the time to keep up with all that is happening.
The lesson for national brand managers in charge of local advertising is to provide local retailers with the insights, assets and capability to promote themselves online. Thank goodness there are marketing platforms that can help with print and the Internet making life much easier for retailers and deliver better ROIs for brand managers.