Ad dollars drive online move

Why are magazines transitioning from the dual role of print/online entities to publishing exclusively online? The answer is as simple as “follow the money.”

One VP of advertising at a major high tech vendor who declined to be identified said his company has seen a significant decline in the ability to “break through” in print. “What we found is that feeling better about our brand is decreasing and decreasing in print,” the executive said, adding that if the print medium is not dead, “it might be dying.”

His company was trying to build brand awareness, not looking for a direct response to a product. Conventional thinking suggests that brand advertising works best in print; in this case, the executive said, that was not the case.

With additional research showing that the average person spends only two seconds on a print ad, the executive said they were forced to go where “the eyeballs are going.” That’s online.

And, if a company is looking for a more immediate response to an ad, Dick Reed, CEO of Just Media, points out that only in online advertising is there a direct linear response to an ad: online ad, reaction, lead, sale.

“If a company comes to us and said ‘We want to generate leads for our sales people,’ not in a million years would we run a print ad,” Reed said.

According to Reed, the push to shift ad budgets comes from within the vendors’ marketing departments, which put a premium on the Internet’s ability to deliver immediate results. An advertiser can log into any online campaign and immediately see what is working and what isn’t. If the marketing campaign looks like it is failing online, an advertiser has the flexibility to change the message or offer in mid-stream, adjusting what is working and dropping components that aren’t, Reed said.

With print media, on the other hand, traditional metrics allow only limited research about the target audience before the campaign and again at the end of the campaign. “At the end of it, you hope you achieve the goals you set out with, but either way, you’ve spent the money,” Reed said.

Chuck Shaw, vice president of client services at ID Media, comes at the issue from a direct marketing perspective, where measurable response is crucial. Based on the metrics of cost per lead and cost per sale, digital is always more effective than any other vehicle hands down, said Shaw.

Online also allows flexible “message delivery.” For one of the company’s biggest software clients, ID Media was able to set up solution centers and deliver Webcasts, white papers, and live chats with industry experts. “Flexibility is second to none,” Shaw said, when delivering diversified communications, via multiple channels, to a hard-to-reach audience.

The executive at the Fortune 500 company agrees, saying they are turning to video online, which can tell a longer story than any other medium. “We are going down the path to branded entertainment,” he said. Instead of just getting an ad out there into the ether, his company is attaching itself to content that is interesting. “You can’t just throw an ad out there. You have to intrigue your audience to receive your message. It is easier to do that on the Web than anywhere else.”

With the business model for print based almost exclusively on advertising, will we soon see the demise of paper-based publications, at least in high tech? Shaw doesn’t think so. He sees customized editions of print publications targeted by region or by other demographics as a possible solution to print advertising woes.

No matter what happens to print, however, online advertising will continue to take a growing portion of advertising budgets. “Because of the digital landscape, we can refine how we talk to people and how people want to be talked to,” Shaw said.

It is exactly that powerful collaborative capability that has crowned online as the new advertising king.