Top 10 Reasons why the financial crisis is good for the online advertising industry
As Greece protests, Portugal shakes and Italy is facing a gloomy few months, it is right to feel uneasy about the days to come. Bailout packages are trying to steady the course as companies around Europe, indeed the world, pause and wait. As the average employee sits and hopes to just hold on to his/her job, thinking carefully about each euro spent, what reactions can one expect from advertisers? After all, companies will not spend extravagantly on advertising if the consumer is not willing to buy their product - at least not just yet.
As we learned from the previous financial crisis, this is how the events unfolded back then:
Marketing and advertising agenies received the bulk of the wrath. Big names, blue chip clients cut their spending and held their breath. What resulted was mass lay-offs. I remember friends of mine employed by a large advertising agency in Sydney got called into one room, around twenty of them, and told that they are being "let go". Amazingly, those same employees were being called 4 months later and asked to contract for hefty sums to plan, design and develop integrated marketing campaigns, the significant portion of which was, you guessed it, online.
So what happened? What generated a push in online advertising as aopposed to the traditional above-the-line campaigns such as T.V., radio and billboard advertising?
Well, after the dust settled, it seems taht clients started focusing on advertising strategies and suddenly realised that the web is the way to go. Why is that?
1- Web is cheap! Well, it is cheaper than Radio, T.V. and print campaigns. For around ten percent of the cost of traditional TVC, they could develop a huge online campaign interacting with customers in various touch points: Facebook, Twitter, Newsletters, Apps, Youtube, viral campaigns and much, much more.
2- Web is revamp-able at relatively low costs. In these days of ongoing web 2.0 activites, sites can adjust to cater for their users almost instantaneously. If something was not working, it could be changed to reflect the users' needs.
3- Web is measurable. This point may as well be number 1. With T.V. it is almost like a stab in the dark for business owners. Well, maybe land-line connected cable television subscribers are a good market to view but still, it is nothing compared with web. Through web statistical tools, advertisiers can know how many people visited their site, which page they viewed most, where they clicked, what they liked, disliked, web trends and so on. With data such as this, the web is a powerhouse for research and development.
4- Web is mobile. Do you want to reach your customers as they take the train home? Mobile online advertising may be in its infancy compared to your normal laptop or desktop but it sure is the future. Have a look at this CISCO report to know what I'm talking about. a little quote from CISCO is here:
There will be 788 million mobile-only Internet users by 2015. The mobile-only Internet population will grow 56-fold from 14 million at the end of 2010 to 788 million by the end of 2015.
5- Web is in the clouds. This is a referral to cloud computing of course. You see something online and save it? It is there on your mobile phone, on your iPad, on your smart T.V. when you get home. The constant exposure to the brand is extreme, being drilled into the consumer's mind at various touchpoints throughout the day.
6- Web is your social friend. Sharing advertisers’ content on social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter would dramatically increase brand awareness on a global scale in a way that no other marketing platform could.
7- Web is target-able. Do you want to send your ad to single women aged between 20 and 25 living in Munich only? Well, your online market segmentation does just that. We have built newsletters for clients who could not legally send alcohol-related newsletters to anyone under 18. Well, we did that with a click of a button.
8- Web is fun. Users love sharing fun with their friends. Did they see a funny clip on Youtube yesterday? Be sure that they will send a link to their friends to check out the video again and again.
9- Web is global. T.V. is not.
10- Web is T.V., exponentially empowered.
Written by PodWork
