MarketingInsideOut.com

The local online advertising marketplace has been evolving quite rapidly in the last year and I was a bit surprised to read that it is expected to reach $5.8 billion in 2006. 

Spending on local online advertising was up 78% in 2005 according to a new report titled “What Local Web Sites Earn: 2006 Survey,” from Borrell Associates.  Reaching $4.8 billion in 2005, compared with $2.7 billion in 2004, the local online category is expected to increase 21% to $5.8 billion in 2006. Borrell defines “local online advertising” as “advertising placed by locally based businesses for locally focused online messages.”

Online revenues at newspaper websites were an estimated $2 billion in 2005, up from $1.19 billion in 2004, with real estate, help wanted and car ads accounting for 75 percent of 2005 online ad revenue. Newspaper sites were profitable last year, according to the report, but the average site lost market share within its designated market area; the average site controlled an estimated 14.8 market share last year, down from 18 percent in 2004. The search engines have begun stealing share in the local media, offering a new form of targeted advertising that is luring dollars from real estate, automotive, legal and other advertisers traditionally the mainstay revenue stream of the newspaper business. 

Local TV station websites generated $283 million, up from $119 million in 2004 – it is expected that those numbers will increase rapidly as online video takes off.

Borrell examined revenues at 2,266 local media properties, including the sites of 696 daily newspapers, 148 weeklies, 1,154 radio stations, 437 TV stations and 24 independent local sites.

Some 57.1 percent of all web users 18 years and older say the internet serves as the primary source of information about products or services they might want to buy, according to a survey by Burst Media of more than 3,700 web users.

TV commercials, however, apparently still make the most impression. Nearly half (49.8 percent) of respondents cited television as the most effective media to capture their attention, followed by the internet (22.3 percent), magazines (11.6 percent), newspapers (10.3 percent) and radio (5.9 percent).

None of this is surprising.  An integrated marketing approach makes a lot of sense, but the recycling of creative doesn’t.  Today,we were lamenting the fact that so much of the online advertising we see out there feels like it’s an afterthought or a force of one media’s concept into another. And a lot of it is just downright bad.  It’s almost as if it screams the fact that some creative team got an assignment –part of which they see as sexy and part as a “gotta do” weeds kind of thing.  As if someone said to them…”You get to create a :30 TV spot and OH…by the way you also have to create an online version.”

In my book, the recycling of creative executions across media is a wasted opportunity.  It may be the cheapest, easiest tack, but it doesn’t maximize the effectiveness of any medium.

The best campaigns take into account the differences in the media and still hold together as a cohesive, integrated approach.