Shifting Media Dollars from TV to Digital

FEBRUARY 20, 2009


Beverly Thorne, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Century 21 Real Estate LLC

In a category caught in the middle of the economic crisis, Century 21 earlier this year announced it would pull all national TV advertising and redirect its focus to the Web.

Beverly Thorne leads strategic development and program execution for consumer, broker and agent marketing programs for the real estate company and its 8,500 franchisees. She manages all direct marketing, national advertising, interactive marketing and technology, agent and broker marketing, and targeted market and partner promotions. Ms. Thorne spoke with eMarketer about her strategy.

eMarketer: You made the decision to shift most of the company’s media budget from offline/traditional media—national TV, print, radio—into digital media and marketing efforts. What was the rationale behind this decision?

Beverly Thorne: We are clearly using some offline media, but we made that move because as we looked at the new year, we focused on making our investments in those media that have the greatest relevancy to our target audience and the greatest return on our investment.

Our own empirical results showed us that our online investments were performing substantively better at generating leads. We have a clear obligation to our franchisees to stimulate clear and tangible leads, not just positive preference.

eMarketer: How did you figure that online media gave the company the best results in terms of the lead generation?

Ms. Thorne: Well, we used both internal metrics and tools and external third-party measures. We made media investments in 2008, and each week and each month we measured what came from them in terms of leads generated. The most important metric we have is an internal proprietary tool which tells us what kind of leads are being generated.

We did classic display advertising, some online partnerships that are typical for a real estate company—that is, partnerships with Websites for displaying our property listings—like Yahoo!. We make our property listings available to them, and to varying degrees we enhanced those or modified those, represented them differently and at different investment levels.

As we looked at each of those campaigns or programs, we measured the number of leads that we got from them and the ultimate cost per lead. Of course we made some investments where we didn’t get a lead back.

eMarketer: Can you share the ultimate cost per lead?

Ms. Thorne: I cannot, but I will tell you this: From December 2007 to December 2008, we improved the efficiency of our lead generation by reducing our cost per lead over 60%. At the same time, we multiplied our number of leads by over 235%.

Web Is Sole Bright Spot in Auto Ad Mix

AUGUST 19, 2008

Detroit advertisers look to online for economy.

The automotive industry is having a rough year, and the effects are spilling over into its advertising. In Q1 2008, online was the only medium for which automotive ad spending did not fall, according to Bernstein Research. The research firm said that even Internet ad spending by automakers rose only 3.8% over Q4 2007, accounting for 8.6% of total online advertising.

"After consistently leading the US in advertising spending, the automotive sector has dropped into the No. 2 spot behind retail," said Lisa E. Phillips, senior analyst at eMarketer. "Ad spending in the sector is going in reverse—everywhere except on the Internet."

Automakers have seen light truck and SUV sales plummet as well as increased demand for more fuel-efficient vehicles that will require retooling and change from the entire industry.

Autobytel reported that its top 10 requested vehicles in 2007 were fuel-efficient models—even if they are more expensive and smaller than their siblings. And although trucks and SUVs accounted for one-half of US sales last year, they were missing from Autobytel's most-requested list.

In this environment, advertisers large and small are using digital to make every dollar count. eMarketer estimates online ad spending by the entire automotive industry (excluding car rental and insurance) will reach $2.98 billion in 2008.

National Advertising Already In a Recession: GOOG, YHOO, TWX, et al Not Likely To Be Spared

from Silicon Alley Insider by Henry Blodget

Says TNS, via Reuters. Please do not hallucinate that this will somehow not affect online advertising. In most prior recessions, advertising spending on all media except small, emerging ones has declined. The Internet no longer qualifies as "small" and "emerging." (And this status didn't spare it last time). Online ad spending should do better than spending on traditional media, but if current trends continue, this won't be saying much. Reuters:

U.S. advertising spending is seen "challenged" for the rest of the year after slipping 0.3 percent in the first half to $72.59 billion, according to a report by TNS Media Intelligence issued on Tuesday. It was the first time U.S, advertising spending has fallen for two consecutive quarters since 2001, the report said, and reflected an overall weakness across economic sectors. "While the protracted downturn in automotive spending has been a prime contributor, the overall results reflect weakness across a wide range of industries and advertisers," TNS Chief Executive and President Steven Fredericks said in a statement.

Full Article: http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=120363