Advertisers Leading Ad Agencies into New Media

Advertisers Leading Ad Agencies into New Media

Internet radio and TV, online newspapers and magazines, and the so-called consumer-generated media, CGM, such as blogs, have opened a new way for advertisers and ad agencies to advertise products and services. However, are well known full service advertising agencies ready to use this new media?

Barbara Bacci Mirque, executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers, ANA, recently observed that "more and more advertisers are leading their agencies into new media, not the other way around," and that "clients are the ones who are personally and professionally experimenting with new media forms and directing their agencies to look into them."

"When I started out in this business in the mid 80’s as an assistant product manager at The Frito-Lay Company, we expected our advertising agencies to be innovative and inform us about what was hip and cool – now it appears to be the other way around," she wrote in the ANA blog.

Max Kalehoff, vice president of marketing for Nielsen BuzzMetrics, a global measurement service for consumer-generated media, is asking a very important question.

"So how about the traditional full-service advertising agencies, the old bedrock of Madison Avenue? Don't they bring unique talents of insight, creativity and big ideas? Sure. But like the PR agencies, there are a few progressive ones, which have invested substantially and created value for their clients. But for the most part, they are lagging. Perhaps it's because CGM still seems so trivial and miniscule relative to those big television budgets? Why bother?", he wrote in his MediaPost's column.

His predictions for 2007 are optimistics, "client-side marketers will continue to lead, though they'll soon begin to receive (and expect) a far higher level of support and expertise from the larger agency landscape."

Total U.S. advertising spending is expected to increase 2.6 percent in 2007 to $153.7 billion, according to the full-year forecast released by TNS Media Intelligence, This anticipated tepid gain is the smallest since the media economy emerged from its 2001 recession and follows estimated advertising spending growth of 3.8 percent in 2006.

Internet display advertising is expected to continue growing at double-digit rates in 2007 with 13.4%, followed by syndication TV (6.6%) and outdoor (5.7%), according to TNS.

Major advertisers expect to spend $132 million in online advertising targeted to U.S. Hispanics this year, up 32 percent from last year according to the 2006 media markets report in the December issue of Hispanic Business magazine.

" One of our most significant shifts in the past six months has been one-on-one marketing, which seeks to engage consumers with the product and enhance their experience of the brand,” says Cindy Knight, Toyota marketing communications manager. “This is something TV cannot do.”

Online U.S. Hispanics Are Internet Trend Setters, Study Show

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