Brand Owners Increasingly Seek “Awareness” From Advertisements
by Abe Sauer
Woe is publishing as the almighty ad dollar has dried up. Or has it?
Have brands given up on advertising, or are they just looking for something different?
“Building Brands Online,” a new report from Bain & Company and the Interactive Advertising Bureau, reveals that brand owners and marketers are searching for something more, something that transcends ad blindness, from publishers. More than the old model.
“Brand advertisers reported that they would like to see online publishers create separate offerings for brand-building and direct response, and to develop more engaging ad options and formats, including social networks, video, and other rich media. Ideally, they’d rather have media companies help them create integrated campaigns instead of offering platform-specific media programs…”
Nikon’s recent campaign with Ashton Kutcher is just such an “integrated campaign.”
In a way, the paradigm shift in the ad-driven publishing model is experiencing a retribution moment as brands – long ingnored by powerful publishers who exhibited little care for how those brands’ ads might perform – are now finding themselves with a multitude of options, all with very specific measures.
Of course a focus on numbers alone might be unhealthy for brand building. CEO of digital media agency Mediasmith, David Smith, notes that “The problem results from advertisers getting distracted by traffic-related metrics, which happens when their Web site teams reside in IT departments instead of in marketing. Maybe these brand advertisers have the wrong agency. I can cite lots of examples where advertisers are using online to move the needle on brand awareness, and meet brand goals.” No examples were given, let alone “lots.”
Smith continued in a pitch that sounds awfully familiar to any brand owner or marketer frustrated with ad campaigns under the old system: “They get caught up in click-through rates, and traffic to the site, rather than thinking about whether the advertising raises awareness, or drives people to the store to buy something.”
“Awareness.” Unfortunately, or conveniently, not a Google Analytics report term