• by Masha Geller , April 8, 2003

First it was Doritos deciding to spend its Super Bowl budget on the Internet, saying their ROI would be greater with online ads. Following suit like many others, in the beginning of March, Travelocity announced it would be shifting 20% of its offline marketing budget to the Web. At the time, Jason Pruismann, Travelocity's director of advertising and promotions, said, "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."

This week, Travelocity told MDN that a chunk of that budget went to the esoteric online giant known as Internet Broadcasting Systems (IBS).

On January 1, IBS, which hosts and operates more than 60 local news websites of TV stations owned by NBC, Hearst-Argyle, Washington Post, Cox and McGraw-Hill, started promoting local Travelocity travel specials both on-air and in the travel sections of its "TV At Work" network of sites. IBS, which has long ranked in the top ten visited online properties with Nielsen//NetRatings and comScore, says that Travelocity will reach more than 60% of the US TV households through the network.

In addition, Travelocity functionality and travel specials are integrated into local TV content and brands, but delivered to a mainly at-work online audience. Tolman Geffs, CEO of IBS, says, "At work is when a lot of travel planning happens, both business and personal," which combines with an on-air campaign in selected markets that reinforces the local Travelocity travel specials.

The attraction to the Minneapolis and New York-headquartered IBS is that it provides advertisers with a large, unduplicated, and highly attractive audience, primarily at-work, across 93% of top market households. Advertisers spent $43 million with IBS in 2002, and the company was on track to run over 1,600 ad campaigns in Q1 of 2003.

Geffs says that NBC and IBS jointly approached Travelocity with the idea of a TV+web campaign and the result is "a prime example of what we have done well for similar advertisers -- integrating the partner's (Travelocity's) functionality in the relevant part of our sites (travel), running local TV spots calling attention to the local offerings, and driving our large at-work audience (just when folks plan business trips and vacations!) to Travelocity from our sites."

It took 6 months to put the deal together, which is longer than the normal sell cycle, Geffs says, because of the convergence nature of the campaign.

IBS has done similar things in Employment (Yahoo/HotJobs, for 3 years running), car shopping (AutoTrader) and real estate (HomeStore.) All these advertisers had convergence elements that drove increased traffic online and helped localize client branding on-air, Geffs says. "These advertisers understood the value of linking their premium brand with the trusted brands of the TV stations to tap this "TV At Work" audience."

The most surprising element of the campaign, according to Adam Gordon, IBS' VP of National Ad Sales, is the length of the deal - 2 years. NBC's Director of Business Development, South East, Joe Cottone said, "the concept we talked about was a two-year deal so there would be enough time to get this up and going." The longest contract to date IBS has signed is a one-year deal with Matchmaker.com, which is currently in progress.

So far it's working surprisingly well, says Geffs, citing click-throughs on the integrated functionality on the sites in the 6-7% range.

According to Gordon, IBS is probably one of the few media companies who look at convergent deals as being "TV that makes sense in context with online components" to drive both branding and direct response. "That's what cross media does," he says.

But it's not just cross media, it's local cross media. "Local really works," says Geffs. "Travel, like many other products, is marketed nationally but actually used locally - everyone starts their trip from a specific city."

IBS is "national in reach and local in aspect," adds Gordon.

Another story behind the campaign is the "sea change," as Geffs puts it. "Advertisers have long understood the power of TV to get their message to this audience." Now, he says, "these broadcasters are using their "web channels" to carry their large audiences during the work day, when the attractive adult demos mostly go to work, and then drive them back to TV in the evening.

"These audiences are turning to the web for news during the work day. And they are doing so in numbers larger than expected. Smart advertisers are taking advantage of this change in audience behavior.

Cross-media buys are far from the norm, Geffs says, as most advertisers still prefer straight online buys that get them the audience, content and trusted brands of TV at work, when viewers generally don't have a TV, but "a few pioneers, like Travelocity, are taking it a step further by combining TV & the web and using both to reinforce their brands, and the localism of their products, via the trusted TV brands on-air and online. That's the context for this campaign."