At yesterday’s DoubleClick Insight conference in New York, a panel of experts unveiled the results of a cross-media study, which yet again proved that increasing the Internet’s share of media dollars
is a good idea for traditional brands.
The study reveals that by using standard media planning tools for both offline and interactive marketing, marketers such as American Airlines, Subaru and
Kraft Foods, could increase reach by shifting dollars originally spent on television to the Internet.
According to the results, dividing the campaign target audience into online and offline
segments, the online portion of the target tends to watch less television, be younger, more affluent, more educated and more likely to be a professional, therefore more desirable to marketers. The
study found that by increasing online spend, American Airlines, Subaru and Kraft could increase reach of light television viewers.
For example, to reach American Airlines' target audience -
business and leisure travelers aged 25-54 with incomes of over $60,000 - AA’s advertising agency, Temerlin McClain primarily used spot TV and cable augmented by newspapers. In addition, in contrast to
the other campaigns in the study, a relatively high percentage of the media mix was already devoted to online (5%). In comparison to the offline target audience, the online target audience was more
desirable, since they were younger, with a higher income, and watched television infrequently. In order to increase reach among its target audience, a planning scenario was developed which increased
online spending from 5% to 15%. This lead to more than 3 million additional consumers being reached due to the increase in online spend, revealing a reach increase of 3.2 points from 61.1% to 64.3% of
the target audience. Also, among light-to-medium television users (the more desirable portion of the target), GRPs increased from 34.9 to 44.1.
Similar results were achieved with other study
participants.
This is nothing new in the online world. As Kelly Colbert, IAB’s Vice President of Marketing, wrote in response to yesterday’s Minute, “We agree! As the IAB continues to
release results from the ongoing Cross Media Optimization Study, the research points to online stepping forward to take (and Deliver Results!) a larger portion of the media pie. It's all about ROI
after all. And online, as we’ve seen time and time again, is cost effective and lifts branding metrics. It links marketers to their targets where they are spending a greater part of their time online.
Online is a no-brainer.”
I only hope more traditionalists see it that way.