Media buyers are facing an increasingly volatile online advertising market, making targeted niche media opportunities attractive alternatives to traditional buys. Explore the possibilities.
Growing niche advertising opportunities and the challenges of media fragmentation for advertisers and media buyers captured the headlines in 2007. Every week, it seemed, we heard about new media, technologies and tactics for advertisers to reach consumers and prospective customers with more precision and timeliness than we've ever seen before. Media fragmentation and the shifting of ad dollars from mainstream media like television, newspapers and radio to online channels had disrupted the industry -- or so it seemed.
A look back tells a different story. In 2007, media buyers invested the lion's share of their ad dollars into mainstream and traditional channels. Even online, media buyers were averse to straying too far from the best known sites. For example, the top 50 websites in the U.S. accounted for more than 90 percent of online ad revenue in the fist half of 2007, while the top 10 sites accounted for 70 percent of the revenue, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. These findings demonstrate that even among online channels, media buyers continue to compete fiercely for ad space in the highest profile and most expensive web properties, while emerging online opportunities remain untapped.
Looking ahead, strong evidence suggests that 2008 will be the year for advertisers to truly diversify their ad placements, take advantage of more targeted and emerging ad opportunities ranging from online niches to creative outdoor/out-of-home ad placements, and spend less to get more. Savvy media buyers will seize these opportunities, making 2008 the year of the niche.
Feeding frenzy in lean times
Ad space in mainstream media, both traditional and online, will be hotly contested in 2008 due to political and promotional ad spending around the U.S. presidential election and the summer Olympics in Beijing -- thereby decreasing available inventory while driving costs up.
Concerns about the strength of the U.S. economy may also impact media buying budgets in 2008. Advertising and media buying executives expressed reservations about increasing their advertising budgets for the next six months according to an online survey of 2,047 executives conducted by Advertiser Perceptions in October/November 2007. The survey findings indicate that online media will continue to perform well, but only 16 percent of those surveyed expect to increase radio ad spending in the coming months -- a decrease from 29 percent when Advertising Perceptions polled ad executives last spring. Expectations for increasing broadcast television ad spending also declined from 29 percent in the spring to 22 percent in the October/November survey.
In the next year, media buyers will be navigating a more volatile advertising market, and the most successful agencies and media buying organizations will adapt. Targeted niche media that reach fewer but more relevant consumers combined with creative approaches beyond traditional mainstream media and the most popular online web properties will be the hallmarks of successful advertising campaigns in 2008. People have been touting this for some time now, but for 2008, small truly is the "new big."