Yesterday, one of the trade publications excitedly reported that Travelocity was shifting 20% of its offline marketing budget to the web. Sure, that’s great news for all online aficionados, but I
don’t understand why so many marketers seem so surprised every time something like that happens. Ever since Doritos decided to spend its Super Bowl budget on the Internet last year, saying the returns
on investment would be greater with online ads, it’s been made abundantly clear that the web deserves a bigger slice of the pie.
Just look at what led up to Travelocity’s decision. Last week, the
company’s agency, Click Here (subsidiary of The Richards Group in Dallas), released the results of a study they conducted with Unicast (the Superstitial people), which showed that out of television,
online print, radio, outdoor, direct mail, email and customer call centers, Superstitials delivered an 18% lift in brand awareness and a 37% increase in purchase intent from the core target audience.
(Since the results were released y Unicast, there was no mention of other online formats and how they compared to offline, but you can probably guess they didn’t fare too badly, either.)
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Did anyone
really expect Travelocity to ignore results like that?
Naturally, Kyle Sawai, Account Supervisor at Click Here, then commented, "Generating this type of return on investment directly relates to
Travelocity shifting more of its media budget from offline to online." Naturally, Jason Pruismann, Travelocity’s director of advertising and promotions, said in an interview, "we found offline wasn't
paying out the way online was. We have found that our online marketing efforts have proven to be the most successful in terms of return on investment."
Granted, Travelocity is an online business
and online ads are a natural fit, but oh, how I wish this kind of stuff wouldn’t make headlines anymore! The proof has been in the pudding for a while now, folks – the web delivers better ROI if used
correctly (and yes, the online ad industry knows how to use the web correctly if given the chance). Would everyone please stop acting surprised and go convince their clients to spend more online?