• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, November 11, 2011

For The Home Depot, the home improvement retailer, freestanding print inserts were key drivers of store traffic for many years.  But with steady declines in newspaper circulation and readership, the company has shifted strategy and is moving away from FSIs and toward digital buys.

According to Kantar Media, FSI distribution expenditures were down more than 6% for the first half of 2011. 

According to Robyn Simburger, director, media at The Home Depot, the new strategy was put into place earlier this year, around the time the company changed media agencies -- from Interpublic’s Initiative to Aegis Group’s Carat.

Speaking at the Ad:Tech New York conference late Thursday, Simburger told attendees that digital demand-side platform and real-time bidding techniques have given the company much greater capability to target, buy, and track the numerous constituencies within its customer base. Ihey also allow it to switch strategies on the fly.

“It’s all about reaching the right audiences with the right messages at the right time,” Simburger said. “And it’s really quite challenging,” she added. During any given week, the company is running 15 to 20 different campaigns targeting different groups, such as contractors, do-it-yourselfers, and multicultural segments as well as the general market.

The company also tries to communicate with customers during different phases of home improvement projects, such as planning or “inspirational” phases.

Geotargeting is critical and digital enhances the capability, Simburger said, noting that during the recent and early snowstorm that blanketed the East Coast, customers within range of the storm were getting ads related to snow removal, while other areas were simultaneously being pitched fall lawn care products.

The company is very sensitive about the environment that its ads appear in, said Simburger, indicating that it controls -- “down to the page level” -- which sites are acceptable and which are not.

Since ramping up its DSP strategy nine months ago, Simburger said, click-through rates are up more than 60%, while the cost-per-click is down 5%. The cost of exposing an ad to every 1,000 consumers “is down by half,” she said.

In the coming months, Simburger added, the company is planning an aggressive push into the mobile and online video sectors  as well.