• by May 9, 2001

A just-completed survey by BtoB and American Business Media, reported by Bill Niles of Erdos & Morgan, to be presented at the American Business Media spring meeting, finds that cross-media advertising packages clearly appeal to media buyers, but buyers and sellers judge the value and success of these packages quite differently.

Among the survey's highlights:

- 75% of the respondents reported their companies buy or sell cross-media advertising packages.
- 40% whose companies do not buy or sell packages expect they will do so within the next year or so.
- More than half of buyers and sellers believe cross-media advertising will be a key media component in the future.
- About half the companies that buy and sell cross-media packages report outstanding successes

The survey also found:

- 62% of buyers were involved with cross-media packages
- 87% of buyers spending $10 million or more on advertising bought cross-media packages
- 37% of those spending less than $1 million said they bought them
- 68% of spenders in the $1 million to $9.9 million range bought cross-media packages

Benefits and obstacles

-51% of respondents believe the most important benefit of cross-media advertising packages is to deliver an integrated marketing message across multiple platforms
- 58% have found that cross-media advertising packages encourage creative marketing solutions
- 57% percent say it promotes co-branding
- 53% feel it promotes better relationships between media companies and marketers
- 36% of all respondents see reduced media rates as a benefit of cross-media advertising packages
- 72% of companies spending less than $1 million on advertising see reduced media rates as a benefit
- 60% of respondents believe that finding better measurements presents the greatest challenge to the effective use of cross-media advertising packages
- buyers and sellers tend to blame one another for the shortcomings of the packages.

Of those buyers who said the use of cross-media advertising packages had led to a change in their companies' advertising media, 40% said the Internet has benefited most. Equal groups of 20% said that direct marketing and magazines have benefited from their use of cross-media advertising packages. Ten percent or fewer said that TV, newspapers and radio have benefited from changes in companies' advertising mix.

Click here for more about the differences in attitudes.