Online Advertising Grows, Shown More Effective

In tighter times, where will your marketing budget find the best return? Online advertising is growing and becoming much more effective, according to three new studies.  And at least one new platform to automate and streamline online media buying is in the works.

CHART:  Sources of Leads that have become more effective:

When it comes to leads, online advertising is shown to me much more effective than offline advertising, according to recently released research data from Hubspot. “Outbound” is old-school media you send to your prospects, versus new-school “inbound” marketing tactics.

• Hubspot has published “50 Charts & Graphs” pulled from a variety of sources including surveys, and their own analysis of over 2500 customers which shows the distinct trend to focus online for “inbound” marketing efforts (chart above).  Download the free PDF.
• According to a recent study by the research group BIA/Kelsey, 36% of media buyers budgets will be spent online in the next four years. As reported in that study, “…local online media is gaining not so much because it can tap smaller marketers that have tended to be overlooked by major media, it’s because traditional outlets are losing ground in general.”
• eMarketer reports a “WorldWide” increase in ad spending on Facebook up 39% between 2009 and 2010

And a strategic look at the effect of media management behavior itself on the media buying trends, from the Nieman Journalism Lab, has uncovered a new media buying player that could shake things up further. Noting that online media buying is more costly because it is more complex, the article on “The Newsonomics of online ad spending, and its costs“, profiled a new service in beta called “Transis”.

“Transis automates the entire digital media buying process from planning through billing and centralizes all related communication. It aims to bring the diverse tasks of ad placement — from building media plans, handling RFPs and insertion orders, billing and reconciliation — into a single console for ad agencies. The intent: more ad volume for Centro and the 2,000 or so websites on which it places ads.”

So, several major studies continue to show a decided up-tick in online ad buying, but like all forward looking projections — they are guesstimates at best. What we do know is that technology is evolving quickly, and new media buying platforms have been shown to greatly affect buying behavior in the past — witness Google Adwords. And, we know that consumer “mobile behavior” is rapidly tilting toward the online realm with 800 million web browsing smart-phones sold in 2009. So, my bet is with BIA/Kelsy — 36% of media ad buying online by 2014.