@ OMMA: Online Ad Industry Continues To Talk Upbeat As Financial Markets Teeter
This story was written by David Kaplan.
Judging from the comments I solicited from a dozen ad execs at the OMMA Platform Wars conference in Times Square expressed unwavering confidence in the ability of online media to withstand the shocks coming from the financial markets this week. Perhaps its the power of positive thinking or simple true belief that the shift from traditional advertising to new media is inexorable. In fact, this could be the perfect excuse for marketers to accelerate the shift to online, as marketers become more interested in direct response campaigns desire to stir customer acquisition. That said, display ads, which have already been trending downward, are not expected to be slammed hard, along with the ad industry at large, as marketers become more cautious with their budgets overall. A sampling of comments follows below:
-- For some, a bad year just got worse: In general, the ad industry slumping since last year. And when a company like troubled insurer AIG takes ad spending out of the market$119 last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence, of which 470,000 went onlinethat could still cause ripple wide effects. But Brian Wieser, SVP, director of industry analysis, contends that there will be no impact on the industryat least in the short term. "The broader trend of ad dollars shifting into non-measured media marketing and new media will continue. Even given the current turmoil, there's still room for growth, as more marketers have already begun a steady move to alternative media. So unless you get a scenario where you have a couple retail institutions combining or consumer facing effort, you won't see an impact. If two retail banks combine, for example, we could still see an uptick in ad spend as the merged companies feel the need to execute a branding campaign. Outside of that, for the financial services firms and publications and agencies that rely on them, a bad year just got worse. But that's not the whole market." Lots more after the jump.
-- Marketing 101: Bant Breen, president, worldwide digital communications"A recessionary market brings a move from brand awareness, broadcast efforts to more response driven efforts. It's happened before and been documented by every business school professor for generations. As for online, I think social media is in a good position, although the lack of a truly comparable set of metrics remains a challenge. We have many clients focused on cost-per-lead, cost-per-sale, cost-per-action. And they expect us to link our social media initiatives into those efforts."
-- Display struggles: Mahi de Silva, CEO of social media marketer Frengo: "You did see some correction in display advertising on sites like Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO). But it expands and contracts based on seasonality, and coming into Q4, I don't expect display to take a huge hit. As for search, I think Google (NSDQ: GOOG) showed some softness in Q2, but I think that it will bounce back."
-- Going for gold: Patrick Sarkissian, president of interactive shop Sarkissian Mason: Most of our clients are steady, but they are becoming extremely conservative about where they put their media. They tend to go for the tried and true, so experimentation is pretty much out. Also, our clients are continuing to emphasize search. There's so much hype around Google and Yahoo right now, clients feel it's like buying gold. It's going to go up and there will be results."
-- Google wins: Mike Davidson, president/CEO of news aggregator Newsvine: "As marketers in general have gotten more econmical when it comes to their ad campaigns, the one company that stands to benefit from what's happening now is Google, because of the promise that you can directly track how your ads are doing. If you cut out 98 percent of your ad spending, the 2 percent you're going to keep is AdSense."
-- Small sites win too: Kevin Wassong, president, financial "infotainment" site Minyanville "Small publishers that are seeing strong online audience growth are in the right place because at this point in time, they're going to benefit immensely. The ones that are going to be challenged are the bigger players that have huge numbers that they have to continue to try to build on. to appease investors. Where is the growth going to come from?" Case in point: Wassong added that Minyanville has had a good week too, claiming that the site had its highest traffic ever on Wednesday.
By David Kaplan