Traditional Advertisers consider web advertising

• May. 27, 2003

With the increased adoption of broadband in the US advertisers are beginning to explore the option of providing an additional form of advertising to their customers.

While most companies still prefer to invest heavily in media and print advertising, there appears to be a broadening perception that online advertising is a virtually untapped market which these "traditional" advertisers can exploit.  Firms such as McDonalds are going so far as to move advertising money from Television into the internet this year.  McDonalds Chief Marketing Officer Bill Lamar has said that his company will be shifting $716 million more from television advertising to internet ads this year.

The reason for the company's announcement? A series of studies conducted with McDonald's, Kleenex maker Kimberly-Clark, Colgate-Palmolive's Colgate toothpaste and Unilever's Dove soap that found statistically significant evidence that an increased investment in online ads boosted consumers' brand awareness and their intent to purchase. Colgate, for instance, saw purchase intent jump 9% when it boosted its online ad spending to 7% of its media budget. 

Another reason for moving money into internet advertising?  Cost.  It is cheaper to produce online advertising.  It costs about $5 to reach 1000 Internet users, versus about $31 to broadcast the same message to 1000 households on prime-time network television. Premium sponsorships on flagship events such as the Super Bowl cost even more.

Our own research has shown that while people may be affected by other media advertising, they tend to turn to the internet to research the product which ultimately defines their purchasing choice.

Further, our research shows that while paid ads such as paid placements and pay per click advertising are effective forms of search engine marketing, traditional SEO provides the highest ratio of visitors with the intent to purchase to most websites.

Rob Sullivan
Production Supervisor
Searchengineposition.com
Search Engine Positioning
specialists