Yesterday, the team at Forrester Research released a report (detailed in an article on Ad Age) that projects digital advertising will overtake TV advertising by 2016. In fact, digital advertising is expected to reach a whopping $103 billion by 2019, compared to TV advertising spends that will total about $86 billion. What’s driving the change? Forrester says marketers are committing more ad dollars to digital because they can prove that it works. Basically, you can measure performance in digital advertising more easily than you can with TV advertising.
“So what,” you might say. “That’s great for big brand advertisers. But how does this affect my business? We don’t do a lot (or any) TV advertising.” Well, friend, there are some really good nuggets in this report that apply to you, even if you do nothing with TV advertising.
3 Takeaways from Forrester’s Digital Advertising Report
There were three key points that stood out to me from this research, each of which has direct application to anyone engaged in digital marketing today.
- Measurable media is preferred. If you have limited advertising budgets, you have to pick and choose where you’re going to spend those dollars. And if you’re under pressure to produce positive ROI, you’re unlikely to spend those dollars in a place where you can’t measure the results. This is where digital has the clear advantage over TV. With digital, you can track every impression, every click, every path and every conversion (and failed conversions) to find out just how strong a performer that advertising spend was.Key takeaway: when considering advertising options, look for ways you can measure performance and develop a measurement strategy.
Paid search is still king of the mountain. The Forrester report compared different forms of digital advertising spends and found that, by dollar volume, search marketing gets the lion’s share of the budget. Why? Because it is measurable. Notice a theme here? With search, you have a wide variety of options including standard search (text-based ads), display networks, shopping/product ads, video ads and more. And each of these ads is triggered by something that is intended to make the ad relevant to the searcher. And that’s a win for you and your marketing budget.
Key takeaway: evaluate the variety of search advertising options available. More than likely, one of these options will be a strong performer for your advertising and marketing efforts.
Email remains a strong performer. Compared to the other channels examined in this report, Forrester noted that email marketing is relatively inexpensive, but still quite effective. As I’ve written about previously, email marketing can be a very strong channel for marketers as part of your overall digital marketing strategy.Why? It is measurable (there’s that word again!). You can track performance within your email campaigns to a high degree of detail. And as a bonus, email marketing fosters long-term relationships with customers, which keeps them returning to you time and again. And who’s going to argue with that?
Key takeaway: invest in a strong email marketing program, especially if you are involved in eCommerce.
What’s Next for Your Digital Advertising Strategy?
The advertising world is rapidly moving towards measurable, accountable ad buys. No matter if it is paid search, paid social advertising, email marketing, or the like, you must find ways to measure your efforts to ensure that you’re getting as good a return on that investment as needed. At Atlantic BT, we work with many of our clients to help them develop a digital marketing and advertising strategy to achieve the results they are looking for. Interested in learning more? Call a member of our consulting team at (919) 518-0670 x6 or use our contact form. We’d be happy to help you explore the options that work best for your company to help you get the results you need from your digital advertising.
*photo courtesy of Bonnaf on Flickr via Creative Commons License.
