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eMarketer proves annoyingly obvious once again
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If you say so...
Guess what? Ad spending is down. I know, I know — you’re so very surprised to hear that. Yet again, our friends at eMarketer have the numbers to prove what everybody already knows. I’m waiting for the study that shows how parents of babies tend to buy more diapers than college students do.
Media companies know they’re in a bit o’ trouble right now. Ad revenue keeps falling, readership doesn’t want to pay for content, and the nature of how we gather and read or interact with media is a constantly shifting landscape. Everyone’s looking for new models, new answers, new opportunities.
When we consult with media companies, we recommend that they move away from a pure subscription model and a pure advertising model. Banner ads and full-page print ads aren’t effective by themselves. We’re all growing more and more immune to the messages they convey. When was the last time you clicked on a banner ad? Or even a sponsored link on Google?
The best thing you can do for your advertisers is stop calling them advertisers. All advertisers do is create static objects that may or may not capture the attention of their target audiences.
Instead, create sponsorship properties based on the many assets you have available, and approach your advertisers as sponsors. Give them an array of platforms on which they can build their brands, whether it’s a thematic approach to stories and features, or experiential marketing opportunities at events, presence on your Facebook fan pages, or even their branding on some of your regular features. Whatever you do, add value to your offerings by creating opportunities for your audience/readers to interact with sponsors’ brands. Calls-to-action, like contests and events, are still powerful traffic and awareness drivers.
Price out your packages to leverage multiple assets, and sell the crap out of them by talking about the ways they reinforce sponsor messaging again and again in many different forms.
We talk about creating constellations of brand experiences for our clients. Media companies should be leveraging their assets to do the same for their sponsors.
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