• by Ross Fadner , October 11, 2005

In what appears to be a second dot.coming, offline media may be poised for a boom from an unexpected advertising category: online media. Online retailers, or so-called "dot.coms," have hefty ad plans to drive sales during the holiday shopping season, and they plan to spend almost all of it offline. According to a well-regarded survey released Monday, the 2005 Shop.org/BizRate Research Online Holiday Mood Study, nearly all Internet retailers will advertise offline this year. A robust 93 percent of the online or multichannel merchants surveyed said they would not rely on the Internet alone to market their Web sites to consumers this year.

Direct marketing was the most popular offline marketing tactic cited by the survey respondents. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) plan to mail catalogs to consumers this holiday season, while 59 percent will send direct mail to drive online traffic. Print ads were the second most popular response among the Internet retailers surveyed: 54 percent plan to invest in magazine ads, and 41 percent will buy newspapers. Over a third of the Internet merchants surveyed said they plan to buy television, while 32 percent will buy radio spots.

While Internet ad spending continues to rise at a healthy rate, dot-com marketers are increasing their expenditures in traditional consumer media as well. According to Universal McCann's Robert Coen, senior vice president, director of forecasting, these marketers spent $3.6 billion on advertising in traditional media in 2004--49 percent of the sector's collective media budget.

The Shop.org/BizRate online holiday spending study says that in light of high gas prices, online retailers are particularly bullish about holiday sales this year. According to the survey, 19 percent of online retailers are expecting holiday sales to double from 2004; 54 percent expect to see growth between 20 and 99 percent.

As a result, most multichannel retailers said they plan to begin their holiday marketing efforts early this year in order to align their holiday promotions with consumer shopping patterns. Sixty percent said they plan to start holiday marketing by the end of October, while 28 percent said they plan to start earlier than last year.

Despite the recent surge in gas prices, 79 percent of multichannel marketers plan to offer free shipping as a holiday promotion. This is directly in line with what consumers--who were also surveyed--said. For 79 percent of respondents, free shipping is an important factor in determining where to buy.

Fifty percent of the consumers surveyed said they expect to begin shopping at the end of the month, although just 29 percent said they will start shopping at stores or by leafing through catalogs; this compares to 56 percent who say they will start their shopping this holiday season via a merchant's Web site.

BizRate Research, a division of Shopzilla.com, surveyed 119 online retailers, all of which are members of survey sponsor Shop.org , and 1,891 online consumers.