By Patricia Wilson, founder of BrandCottage

Advertising is dead. Long live advertising!


Or so the chant continues as advertising spending continues its march from economic doldrums and adjusts to changes due to technological innovations and shifting consumer media habits.

Interpublic Group’s Magna Global recently lowered its 2012 worldwide ad revenue projections, but still predicts total ad revenues to be up 3.7 percent — nearly $153 billion — in the United States. Similarly, ZenithOptimedia forecasts a 3.6 percent growth expenditure for the United States in 2012, pointing to continued newspaper declines and flat magazine advertising,  but increased market share for Internet advertising.


Biggest gainers: digital and mobile ads aimed at driving new revenue from a growing appetite for tablet computers that come in all shapes and sizes, from the innovation-leading Apple iPad to the low-cost Amazon Kindle Fire (see PCMag’s tablet review). However, even within the television and digital ad spaces, changing priorities in ad spending look like the norm for 2012.


(See related BrandCottage blogs: Advertising’s Recovery: Not all Media Created Equal and Advertising Spending Looks Up in 2010.)

TV Advertising Maintains Market Share

Holding its own in the battle for advertising dollars: television.


Cable “cord cutting” is expected to continue in the U.S. at an annual rate of 500,000 subscribers for the next few years,” said Vincent Letang,the executive vice president and director of global forecasting at Interpublic Group’s Magna Global (reported by MediaDailyNews). But dollars won’t be lost as much as they are redirected to other video channels and platforms.

Print Down But Not Out

A poor performance in the second half of last year resulted in an 3.1 percent decline in magazine ad pages for 2011 compared with 2010, according to a report recently issued by the Publishers Information Bureau (PIB). Category declines included food and food products, home furnishings and supplies, public transportation, hotels and resorts and direct response companies.


There are, however, some “pockets of strength” in the apparel, cosmetics and financial sectors. In fact, according to Mediafinder.com, 239 new magazines launched in 2011, up 24 percent from 193 new launches in 2010 (see MediaDailyNews). Business-to-business magazines almost doubled, from 34 new titles in 2010 to 62 last year.

Innovation Drives Advertising Disruption

Three emerging trends are the direct result of disruptive technologies, according to a 2012 market survey conducted by AdMedia Partners:

• The distribution of content across trans-media channels.
• The demand for real-time, more personalized content across multiple devices.
• Exponential growth in the ability to collect, manage, analyze and execute on marketing data.

“As a consequence, digital media and marketing services are experiencing more rapid growth than both the overall economy and marketing spending as a whole,” according to the AdMedia report.


The Internet is and will continue to be the fastest-growing medium, according to ZenithOptimedia. Major Internet advertising trends, worldwide:

• Display is growing the fastest, at 18.9 percent a year, and is driven mainly by online video and social media.
• Paid search is growing more than 15 percent a year, but growth is “slightly restrained by the shift in search behavior from desktop to mobile devices, where costs are currently lower.”
• Google increased its global share of the Internet market from 34.9 percent in 2006 to 44.1 percent in 2010.
• Facebook has overtaken AOL with a market share of 3.1 percent in 2010.

Digital advertising has quickly advanced from a fringe buy to an imperative part of companies’ media mix,” notes Jenna Levy in the Marketing Conversation blog.


Even more amazing, Forrester Research predicts that U.S. advertisers will spend $77 billion on interactive marketing in 2016 (thanks DailyDOOH).


That’s the amount spent on television today!

Patricia Wilson is the founder of BrandCottage, a media marketing company with offices in New York, Atlanta and Washington, D.C.

By Patricia Wilson, founder of BrandCottage

Gone are the glory days of Mad Men when ad campaigns consisted of a glossy television spot that ran on three networks, reaching 90 percent of U.S households. There are now many new devices and platforms. There are new consumer-controlled choices including time-shifting, downloading and sharing.


Everything about media planning and buying has changed dramatically. We have moved from:

• A passive ad market to an engaged ad market.
• A brand-controlled ad market to a consumer-controlled ad market.
• A few brand managers controlling the brand to a social universe controlling the brand.

The Multidimensional Brand Jungle

Remember when a brand media plan had just three mediums: TV, Print, Billboards?


Today’s media landscape is cluttered with thousands of choices, driven largely by technological innovations. And there is no sign of media proliferation slowing down.


Traditional media has evolved to multi-platform channels. TV is no longer just one screen, but now four (TV, computer, tablet and mobile). Print is no longer just print but tablets now offer fully interactive magazine experiences on mobile devices. Digital ad buying is much more than banner buys. Viable digital media options now include ad networks, rich media, video, behavorial targeting, retargeting, contextual, search, mobile, email and social media.


In addition to considering “where” strategies, media planners must also consider “how” strategies for complex ad technology solutions. In addition to knowing the right target segments for ads, marketers must also know how to deliver ads in the most meaningful ways to consumers.

Making Sense of the Jungle

More than ever, CMOs and marketers need experienced media strategists working on behalf of their brands. Media planning strategists must serve as valuable neutral parties who can filter, evaluate and recommend the right media tools. However, too many media planners fall into one of two camps: classically trained in traditional media with little knowledge of digital media capabilities or digital planners with little knowledge of integrating digital initiatives into the larger communications plan.


Successful media plans are best served by classically trained media strategists with proven media planning skills and plenty of experience across a range of clients and brands. Today’s best media planners have evolved into the digital space, especially in terms of the tools required to deliver and engage consumer targets. Proven media planners are well trained in gathering consumer insights, synthesizing business objectives and developing a fully integrated plan.


In short, the best media planners embrace a holistic planning approach with no bias for one media option over another. They analyze and develop the optimal media mix in which to achieve objectives against a given target audience.

Asking the Right Media Planning Questions

Here are some critical media planning questions that marketers must ask to develop a successful media plan:

• What is the objective of the media plan? Awareness? Web site traffic? E-mail capture? Social engagement. Word of Mouth generation? Customer data? Coupon redemption?
• How will the media plan success be measured?
• What is the budget?
• What is the geography to be served?
• Who is the target segment?
• Is there purchase seasonality? Times of heavier spend and greater opportunity?
• What are the creative considerations?

It is also important to ask the right questions to determine target segments. For example:

• Do affluent business travellers use FaceBook as much as Gen Y?
• What about mobile usage among moms?
• In mobile, is SMS as effective as mobile apps?
• What social networks index highest among heavy fast food eaters?
• In digital, who is really watching video?

Answers to these questions can often be found using syndicated research like MRI, MMR, comScore, Nielsen, proprietary customer insights and a variety of other tools.


Finally, it is essential to understanding the delivery of ads. This reguires a deep understanding of ad technology solutions, along with an understanding of how to integrate technology with data to drive efficiency and target reach. Critical areas to consider include:

• Dynamic creative delivery options.
• Publisher partnerships and sponsorships.
• Audience data warehousing.
• Demand-side platforms.
• Social Media technology.
• Video serving options.

Media and technology will continue to evolve. Return on media investment will continue to be driving forces for every brand’s C-suite, not just CMOs. Experienced, well-rounded media planners will be critical in helping companies navigate swiftly changing media jungles to carve out the best paths to brand success.

Patricia Wilson is the founder of BrandCottage, a media marketing company with offices in New York, Atlanta and Washington, D.C.

By Patricia Wilson


The iPad. Promoted tweets. Interactive ads. Which hot new trends have merit for advertising? Getting to the soul of marketing. These were just some of the main topics covered at the 2010 Ad Age Digital Conference held April 13 and 14 in New York.


BrandCottage was on hand at the conference. Here are some of the event’s highlights:

Best speaker: Jim Farley, group vice president of global marketing at Ford Motor Co.


Farley, who is the cousin of the late comedian, Chris Farley, explained that Ford is riding a wave of advertising success based on the “democratization of marketing.” In both digital and traditional marketing, he explained, Ford puts the brand in the hands of real consumers. “That’s what digital has shown us: how to earn credibility among consumers,” he said.


One out of every four advertising dollars spent by Ford goes to digital, including social media. “Social media has shown the importance of being authentic, even in traditional media,” Farley noted.


Few could argue with Farley’s authenticity. At 16, he purchased his dream car, a Ford Mustang. “To be good at marketing, you have to understand the soul of what you’re selling,” he said.


See Ford’s Jim Farley Says Recession Was a Blessing for Digital in Advertising Age for full story.


Biggest news: Twitter COO Dick Costolo announced promoted tweets. It was refreshing to hear from Costolo that consumers and advertisers have a “wait and see what happens” attitude about the acceptance of promoted tweets and that Twitter was going to move ahead carefully (testing of promoted tweets began during the conference).


“We wanted to do something that just enhances the conversation that companies are already having with their customers on Twitter,” Costolo said. Of course, Twitter also needs to build a revenue model to capitalize on the company’s reported 50 million daily tweets — a fact not lost on attendees.


Twitter’s initial version of promoted tweets — in the form of keyword ads — will appear in search results. Later the ads will appear in user feeds on Twitter and on third-party clients such as TweetDeck, TwitterBerry and Tweetie, which Twitter recently acquired.


In short, each ad is a tweet that will appear at the top of a search. The promotional tweet can be re-tweeted, just as a regular tweet is passed around today. Costolo said ads would be available on a CPM-basis.


See Chats, Stats and Secrets about Twitter in Advertising Age for more information.


Biggest antagonist: Yahoo! Scientist Duncan Watts, who questioned the value of tweets.


Watts reported that, based on his research, a tweet’s average influence score is 0.28 people. “Most of them will send tweets and no one else re-tweets,” he said. “A lot of times, not that many people are listening on Twitter.”


However, Watts did not discount the value of thousands or millions of many-to-many connections. In fact, he said that advertisers would get more value from a lot of small influencers than from a big influencer such as Kim Kardashian, at $10,000 per tweet.


“If you recruit enough people who, on average, influence just one other person, you could get a much better return on investment,” he said.


Best quote: “I’ve seen the future and it’s covered in greasy fingerprints,” said Simon Dumenco, Ad Age’s Media Guy.


Dumenco gave a lighthearted speech on the transformational power of the iPad, for which he believes fingerprints are about the only down side of the device. Still, he added, publishers have only begun to scratch the surface of the iPad’s potential. “So far, the iPad’s killer app is demo-ing the iPad,” said Dumenco, quoting technologist Ben Rosen.


Cautious optimism: Digital is here to stay and marketers are getting on board in big ways. However, most CMOs and brand marketers say they are not hopping on the next shinny thing just to be first. “We never hop on the next hot thing, but the iPad made a lot of sense for us,” said Vivian Schiller, president and CEO of NPR.


For companies such as Dell, however, it’s full speed ahead. “Dell is a total digital company and it’s part of our corporate DNA,” said Dell CMO Erin Nelson. On Twitter, Nelson said the social media platform “has collapsed our customer feedback cycle and dramatically improved product development.”


In conclusion: Understanding how consumers use various media, how they react with online ads and why they join social networks in the first place — these are all important strategy questions for branders. We’ve moved way past mere reach and frequency.


What is clear is that (1) no single media owns the consumer and (2) the consumer now has a lot of influence. Smart marketers understand that consumers now seek authentic and trustworthy brands — new realities thanks to digital and social media.


Patricia Wilson is the founder of BrandCottage, a media marketing company with offices in New York, Atlanta and Washington, D.C.

By Patricia Wilson


We are very pleased to announce (see press release) that BrandCottage has teamed with The Farm, a creative advertising and production services agency, to launch a new USA TODAY campaign, What America Wants.

The campaign starts today and targets advertisers and media buyers — essentially people just like us. The campaign emphasizes USA TODAY’s continued leadership role and connection with its readers via print, USATODAY.com and on the iPhone.


By the way, if you haven’t seen USA TODAY’s mobile application, you really should. It’s impressive. It “share article” feature fluidly links with Twitter, Facebook, text and e-mail applications to enable the easy sharing of information with your communities.


The campaign is running print and online advertising in trades such as Mashable, Adage, Adweek, Brandweek, Mediaweek, TechCrunch and CNNMoney.com. Ads will also appear on television, on Facebook and LinkedIn, and on elevator screens.


Campaign components also include guerrilla marketing and social media tactics.


The multimedia world is rapidly changing and this is producing many opportunities for small, experienced agencies. What wins today are strong ideas, speed and flexibility. We are humbled to be part of the USA TODAY brand initiative.


Patricia Wilson is the founder of BrandCottage, a media marketing company with offices in New York, Atlanta and Washington, D.C.

By Patricia Wilson


For online advertising providers, the honeymoon is finally over.


As a seasoned media planner, I was not surprised by a recent report designed to provide much needed damage control for the under-performing online advertising industry. The document, from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Bain & Company, highlights the many online advertising challenges being fac

ed by marketers. More importantly, the report, Building Brands Online: An Interactive Advertising Action Plan, attempts to provide a road map to improve the industry’s growing negative perceptions about the brand-building value of online advertising.

The IAB/Bain report is a much needed response to last year’s findings that online advertising inventory is highly undervalued by brand

marketers. At the heart of the problem, according to an Online Media Daily story:

. . . online sales organizations have lacked the sophistication necessary to turn the perceptions advertisers and agencies have about the value of online advertising . . .

The report also identifies five key obstacles that have kept marketers from shifting more of their budgets online:

• Online ad formats and creative have not evolved to meet marketers’ needs.
• Media companies lack category expertise when they sell to brand marketers and engage with them too late in the media planning process.
• Marketers want integrated campaigns instead of platform-specific media programs.
• While marketers see high value in online advertising and believe that it could be effective at all stages of the purchase funnel, current industry practices inhibit greater investment of brand ad dollars.
• Marketers express needs for differentiated services for their brands and believe that media companies and agencies have to meet those differentiated needs for online advertising to grow.

Measurement Intoxication

What I find most interesting is that the once-mighty “click” measurement is now out of favor, having underperformed miserably and showing no signs of being resurrected.


“Ultimately, marketers are looking for media companies to offer a true triple-play service model from direct response to awareness to high impact brand engagement,” said John Frelinghuysen in a press release. Frelinghuysen is a partner in Bain & Company’s media practice and lead author of the study.


As a classically trained media planner, I place a high value on measurability. However, just as with traditional media, we must be careful not to chase what we can measure – what fits under the microscope and what shows some ROI – just so we can rattle back some good news to CMOs and CFOs. Click rates, foe example, may NOT really be a true indication of what’s driving the Brand long term. We must avoid becoming over-intoxicated on the wrong digital measurements.


Despite all the Technorati talk of measurement over the past few years, it appears online advertising has come full circle. It is now faced with the exact same question we’ve always asked about media, including the traditional television, print, radio and outdoor channels: How do we best measure online advertising’s full impact on our brand?


Patricia Wilson is the founder of BrandCottage, a media marketing company with offices in New York, Atlanta and Washington, D.C.