This Business Development Manager hopes for more profitable volume for less spend this year.

Joe Alfano leads the development of online marketing campaigns for Capital One Auto Finance, Inc. (formerly PeopleFirst.com.) As a Business Development Manager, he heads up the growth of the vertical sectors of the Trip/Reward, Membership and other select Affinity-based entities through the establishment of marketing partnerships. Since joining Capital One in late 2002, he has worked on interactive marketing solutions for both agency and client alike, including: WorldCom, VeriSign, American Power Conversion (APC) and Intranets.com.

iMediaConnection: How has the media mix changed for you over the last few years? Is online still "an afterthought" or are campaigns, for the most part, conceived of in an integrated fashion from the get go? Or are you somewhere in between?

Alfano: Our Auto Finance products/services are online-driven, so it really hasn't fluctuated over the last few years. And, as long as consumers flock to the Internet to research and transact, our business model will support this. From a marketing mix standpoint though, we have conducted isolated tests in the offline world and have found it difficult to see the same synergy. Unless things drastically change, online will continue to get the lion share of our DR budget allocation.

iMediaConnection: What was your most successful online or integrated campaign recently and what made it successful?

Alfano: No one campaign sticks out, but we have continually found that those campaigns that provide deeply embedded integration (anywhere a consumer is researching either auto buying and/or their financing options) yield the highest conversion. With a product skewing toward a highly targeted, in-market demographic, the deeper within this funnel, the more apt we are to drive response.

iMediaConnection: What is the greatest benefit of online advertising? The ability to measure? Precisely target? Gather data? Something else?

Alfano: Online's biggest value proposition is its vast, ever-growing audience. It's the only medium that supports a highly targetable pool of both "at home" and "at work" users. Not to mention its "quick-to-market" test landscape that allows for fast, measurable results which, in the end, affords marketers the ability to impact their bottom line sooner rather than later.

iMediaConnection: What still frustrates you most about online advertising? What can be done to improve the situation?

Alfano: Whether you were a brand or direct marketer, it used to be that the more you spent, the deeper the discount through subsequent negotiations, thus allowing you the opportunity to achieve more optimal results over time, while also building a history with the property. In the end, the better your performance, the more you'd spend overall with that property -- everybody's happy! However, with competition over share of voice so fierce, what has ensued is a dynamic that says that the more you spend (although as media buyers, we're told that it's never enough), the tougher still it is to achieve our desired pricing.

No doubt the market has driven up cost, but as marketers, we look at Web properties one of two ways: as vehicles to either "tell our story" or to acquire customers. As such, we have to assume a certain level of "partnership" with a particular property because it requires a mutual effort in order to make things "work." The divergence though -- sales organizations are driven by revenue generation and not typically focused on helping make things work through offering discounted pricing.

We want to spend less and make more, while Web properties want to charge more, give less. Respective sales organizations need to recognize that such conflicting objectives can be met, not overnight, but over time -- adopting a sort of "if we give now on price, the reward may come later." Perhaps it does force a "roll of dice" on betting that the advertiser will be in it for the long haul, but the tradeoff of losing them altogether over short-term revenue goals doesn't appear the better option either.

iMediaConnection: Are you doing any behavioral targeting? If yes, please describe.

Alfano: We just started a couple of tests with a few of the larger properties this month, and won't have the results until later in the quarter. Beyond that, we'll evaluate and see if this is something for which additional budget will be allocated.

iMediaConnection: Are you being affected by any consumer-generated marketing (CGM) -- blogs, user groups, etc.? Are you using any blogs or other social networking tools to market?

Alfano: Although we're not currently tapping into any of the CGM offerings, I can definitely see the value they provide -- it brings viral marketing to a new level with consumers aiding other consumers in the ways of opinions, tips/advice and reviews in a discussion forum. As a brand marketer of a service that targets higher-end demos, I don't deny the power of consumer-to-consumer marketing, but with some -- they're still a little too bent for me, and thus a potentially bad place to have my ads juxtaposed.

iMediaConnection: Have you found agencies to be able to handle your changing interactive/integrated needs? What could still be better?

Alfano: This is not an area we have had to worry about -- we operate under an in-house agency setting.

iMediaConnection: Have you done much with wireless, iTV or other emerging mediums?

Alfano: Again, we stick with what works for our business model. Additional emerging media like these could someday be part of our mix, but online is where we're applying the majority of our efforts for now.

iMediaConnection: It's the beginning of a new year. What do you hope to accomplish this year?

Alfano: Like I say every year, and this being January, it's a clean slate -- I'd like to get more profitable volume for less spend this year. Sure, this is a moving target, but it's the quest of every direct marketer.

iMediaConnection: What are you reading these days, other than iMediaConnection.com, of course?

Alfano: As a former agency guru, I continue to read up on agency happenings with Adweek and Ad Age. Beyond iMedia, ClickZ is a distant second.