Could this be a sign of good things to come for the online advertising industry? Everyone's been bemoaning the speed (or lack thereof) with which traditional advertisers are embracing online ad
vehicles, but it seems some progress is being made. Slowly, but surely.
Unfortunately, I only have one example, but it's worth mentioning - Ask Jeeves. Last week they announced that
brick-and-mortar mainstay Coca-Cola had signed on, and today nine more advertisers - Autoweb, Apartments.com, Intuit, Hertz, iVillage.com, Travelocity.com, JustFlowers.com, Marriott and Toyota -
joined the roster.
The new signings come just as Ask Jeeves said it would lay off nearly 15% of its workforce.
Although the majority of the new advertisers are dot-coms, note the Marriott,
Toyota and Hertz. As Ask Jeeves VP of targeting and acquisitions Peter Hershberg told AdWeek, "We feel the dot-coms we have advertising with us are very stable companies," he said. "We want to
increase our number of traditional advertisers, but not decrease the number of strong dot-coms we have advertising as well."
The fact that Ask Jeeves is now offering four new ad unit options -
branded response, branded animation, DirectLinx and interstitials - could have something to do with all of this. Advertisers simply have more real estate to work with.
But that's not all. Some
say that as more marketing managers understand the difference between these 'units,' we'll begin to see more offline companies spending their ad dollars online. As you can see, that's already
happening on Ask Jeeves. Slowly, but surely.