• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, July 30, 2009

For all the progress online media has made as a “brand” medium, it’s still an also-ran relative to its direct response marketing utility. That was a sobering message delivered by Young-Bean Song, Senior Director, Atlas Institute, Microsoft, during an afternoon keynote presentation at OMMA Behavioral in San Francisco.

In fact, online’s mix of branding vs. direct response looks like the inverse of the overall media marketplace’s.

While brand-oriented advertising accounts for about two-thirds of total ad spending, and direct response is about a third, online has attained a significant share only on the direct side of the ledger sheet â€" about 30% of all direct response dollars.

On the brand side of the equation, Song said “it’s not so good” â€" only about 5% of brand related advertising.

There are many reasons for this disparity he said, including the fact that the online industry simply has not done a good enough job of demonstrating its brand value. Behavioral targeting should help close that gap, Song said, but it needs to overcome some significant ingrained cultural barriers on Madison Avenue that is based on nearly a century of buying media based on “target rating points” and the “cost per point.”

“They’ve been buying, selling, trading TV, print and radio for years, and they have these norms,” Song noted.

Even worse, Song said, is that marketers have invested great sums and time rationalizing the mix of traditional media â€" especially the use of sophisticated marketing mix regression models that “literally” tie traditional media target rating points to sales, thereby affirming their affectiveness.

“They are leaving us out of that analysis, because when they get to the online space, it’s impressions and clicks. How do I put that into my model,” Song said rhetorically.

Source: Young-Bean Song, Senior Director, Atlas Institute, Microsoft