Media services director describes three versions of integrated marketing.

As SVP, director of media services, Michael Comins oversees the media department at WhittmanHart, including search and affiliate marketing. An accomplished agency and media executive, Michael has more than 17 years of successful experience including stints with NetPlus Marketing, Digitas, HookMedia, Media First International, J. Walter Thompson and Dailey & Associates. Comins' online advertising career launched in 1993 with a Prodigy campaign for Northwest Airlines. During his five-plus years at Digitas he helped grow the media department from six to 70 employees, a growth rate he exceeded during his first six months at HookMedia.

iMedia: What has been the biggest change that you have experienced in the online advertising industry over the past year?

Michael Comins: In the past 12 months I've seen a significant increase in my clients' confidence in online advertising. As our channel moves up the food chain I'm finding myself involved in more and more discussions with the traditional media agencies. In these conversations I'm finding my traditional experience is invaluable as I fully understand what the traditional agency is proposing as well as the role the internet can and should play in the overall mix.

iMedia: What do you hope to accomplish or try this year?

Comins: I expect that our recent acquisition by WhittmanHart will open numerous opportunities and provide a depth of support for my team enabling us to see significant growth in our online advertising practice this year.

iMedia: How do you evaluate media placements?

Comins: I recently saw that one of our competitors has rolled out a tool where publishers can "bid" on the right to carry a particular campaign. While this is an interesting way to drive costs down, it takes no consideration into the quality of the inventory, the relevance of the audience or the size and placement of the individual ad unit. Perhaps it would work for a purely direct response client or someone trying to reach the masses, but for most of our clients our evaluation varies from program to program depending on the client's objectives and the intricacies of their products. Generally, relevancy, cost and impact potential are the most crucial elements for a placement. 

iMedia: What needs to be done internally as well as in partnership with the clients to better coordinate integrated marketing efforts?

Comins: It really depends on your definition of integrated marketing. Is a campaign that features television and print an integrated effort? Often a successful integration simply means using the same or similar creative assets across multiple channels. In that instance, all that's required is for the traditional agency to share their creative assets with the online agency. 

I've also heard integration described as buying multiple channels from the same publishing company (e.g., TV commercials on ESPN, print ads in ESPN the magazine and banner ads on ESPN.com). It's my experience that the internet typically gets short shrift in these types of buys. Usually they're driven by the TV buying agency and the buy is treated as $XXXX worth of media as a throw in with a much larger television campaign. Even in those instances where it makes sense to buy both properties, the client is better off when the online agency negotiates a specific package first and then the television or print agency can ask for a further discount on the internet as the added value.

A truly integrated campaign features interrelation between the creative and the medium in each channel. Some of the best examples of this are television or print ads whose sole focus is to drive traffic to a website (e.g., Mitsubishi's www.whathappensnext.com campaign). For these programs to happen requires not only coordination between all of the stakeholders, but also a level of trust between agencies who may offer similar services. If the idea originates with the internet agency, for instance, the traditional agency has to be willing to put their collective egos to the side and accept, enhance and implement the idea in their respective channels.

iMedia: Behavioral targeting is a hot topic. Are you using it for any of your clients? How and what have the results been like? 

Comins: As with any tactic, there are clients and campaigns where behavioral marketing makes sense. However, for the most part I would rather place my clients directly into contextually relevant placements than rely on intercepting them elsewhere based on known previous behaviors. We have done some testing and results have been mixed.

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

Comins: Whether they know it or not, I think most clients are being affected by CGM. The bigger question is how can we leverage this activity to our clients' benefit? This is definitely an area we're testing and watching during the coming year.

iMedia: Are analytics getting any easier? Where do you see this aspect of online marketing going?

Comins: Analytics are getting easier in that clients are better understanding their value as well as their shortcomings. As internet advertising becomes more and more mainstream, the challenge continues to be finding good comparative metrics that can be used between channels. Some strides have been made, but I believe we could be doing better.

iMedia: We recently asked brands what they thought the future of advertising agencies is. Want to weigh in on the topic? What do you think agencies' greatest role will be moving forward? 

Comins: I see the agency world dividing into two groups, each of which will be relevant to their own unique set of clients. On the one hand, I see the agencies that try to be everything to everyone at the lowest possible cost. These shops will offer their clients "one stop shopping" for all their agency needs. They will promise their clients economies for buying multiple services from the same place (although these economies are fictitious -- departments in the big agencies are just as territorial about their particular domain as the specialty shops are). At the other end of the spectrum are the specialty shops that focus on delivering superior work in their area of expertise. I think in either scenario, for the agency to survive we will need to work in partnership with our clients to develop strategic, impactful and effective campaigns regardless of the channel.

iMedia: What are brands still not getting about interactive marketing? 

Comins: I think brands have come a long way with regard to interactive marketing. What many of them have not yet embraced is the accountability of an online advertising impression. Where other channels are tracked based on "opportunity to see" the internet provides trackable delivered impressions. The disparity in these two types of impressions is enormous.

iMedia: What marketing or business books do you most recommend?

Comins: It's neither a marketing nor a business book, but a colleague once recommended Atlas Shrugged by Ayne Rand as a surprisingly pertinent book if you're an online marketer.