• by Masha Geller , November 20, 2001

No matter how much we wish otherwise, the relationship between online and offline advertising remains very unbalanced. Generally speaking, advertisers think about their offline presence first, and online much later, if at all.

Considering the fact that the web is still a very young and largely unexplored ad medium, it’s almost natural that many advertisers ignore it and latch on to reports of the web’s inadequacy as excuses for not trying. And to this day, barely a week goes by when someone somewhere doesn't say that the web is a waste of ad dollars.

Those who have seen the web work know to ignore the most vocal naysayers, but what's more dangerous to the development of the medium are those reports that say nay quietly.

I read an article this morning, written by Tessa Wegert, a media planner with Montreal-based Interactive marketing agency BAM Solutions, where she talks about the importance of integrating offline and online advertising efforts. The point that attracted my wrath was the following: "As most online marketers are well aware, the first step in developing an Internet advertising strategy should always be to analyze the advertiser's offline presence."

What's wrong with this sentence? Even though Wegert spends hundreds of words communicating suggestions on how to make an online campaign work better by ensuring that offline and online efforts complement each other (a perfectly unassailable idea), she's put her online component on the back burner from the very start.

Tough as it may be to accomplish in the current ad agency environment (and we all have to work to change this), online strategy has to be established concurrently (at the same time as; in tandem; alongside; whatever synonym you want to use) with TV, radio, outdoor and whatever other media is in the plan. If the online component of an ad campaign is thought of as the last order of business, it will never grow up to be anything more than a source of inspiration for online advertising critics.