Spread It Out In a recent article in E-Commerce Times, Paul Greenberg made several suggestions to marketers for weathering the shaky internet advertising viability storm. He points out
that when times are good, there's a whole lot of clicking going on. When times are tough online advertisers sometimes begin to question the viability of the medium, but everyone involved, including
investors, underwriters and analysts, is going to have to give online advertising time to grow up.
Struggling advertisers will argue they have no choice but to cut ad spending. Those same
companies, however, need to determine if their ad dollars were spent appropriately. Greenberg wonders if it really make any sense for companies like AutoTrader.com, LastMinuteTravel.com and
Computer.com to spend up to US$2 million for a 30-second spot in last year's Super Bowl?
Greenberg says that the same cash might have been more effectively using multiple media to establish
strong product identity and branding, and then gradually increase banner ads and online ad spending as the new medium grows, especially since Merrill Lynch analyst Henry Blodget predicts online ad
revenue for 2001 will add up to about $8 billion, $1 billion less than his previous projections.
It is really the computer users who will dictate the rate of growth of online advertising. The
greater percentage of consumers haven't yet caught up with the technology that online ads like to use. Only about 12 percent have broadband access, and fancy graphics and audio don't mean much if
users can't see it or hear it fast enough. Online advertising is an idea whose time is coming.
Read the entire article here.