Advertising Moves Dollars Away From TV Toward Digital

DVRs Mean Consumers Watching Fewer Commercials, Using Internet More

If you want to know which media is hot, just follow the money.

As technology changes consumer habits — using the DVR to skip commercials and using the Internet to access more video content — advertisers are smelling the scent in the wind. A study by the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) released late last year predicts a continued upward surge in digital media investment for 2010. According to eMarketer’s summary, “81 percent of the brand executives surveyed expected an increase in digital projects in 2010, and one-half will be moving dollars from traditional to digital budgets. Further, more than three-quarters think the current economy will push more allocations to digital.”

Todd Gregorcic, president of online video advertising provider Click My Video, Inc. (www.clickmyvideo.com), said the survey tracks with what he has been seeing in the marketplace.

“The Internet is becoming more and more attractive to advertisers with big budgets as well as those with modest budgets because there are more eyeballs than ever and better ways of tracking them,” he said. “With TV, you have to rely on Nielsen ratings to tell you who you reached, and with the advent of the DVR, who really knows who is watching, when they’re watching and what they’re watching. With digital media, you can track Web site visits, collect marketing information and even email consumers directly with rich media like video. More than that, advertisers are able to target their audience based on key demographics and enthusiast interests on a granular level that just isn’t viable with any other medium.”

Gregorcic said that many advertisers are using digital in unique ways, to fit the habits of Internet users.

“Every day, millions of people email YouTube videos and links to interesting things they see on the Internet to their friends,” he added. “Consumers are used to getting video emails, so emails from advertisers with rich media aren’t as unwelcome as they used to be. In that sense, advertisers are now becoming content providers, using video to deliver actual content related to their message embedded in direct marketing emails to consumers. They aren’t just emailing TV commercials, but rather, they are creating or co-opting funny or informative emails and wrapping their advertising message around it in order to suit the habits of Internet users.

He said that his experience with advertisers has demonstrated that most people are willing to open the emails and watch them, and many respond back to the advertisers as a result of the video.

“We are seeing and tracking a high percentage of consumers who watch a video they were emailed by an advertiser who then click through to the advertiser’s Web site,” Gregorcic said. “And even when they don’t respond, we can track it and adjust the campaign. That’s something you can only do in the digital world. You’d never be able to react on the fly like that with a TV campaign.”