From TV to Web

As more eyeballs gravitate to the Web, companies are strategically shifting advertising dollars from TV to the Internet. Analysts have predicted that broadcast TV’s upfront dollars will be down this year and the big question for the Internet economy is how much of the ad dollars that don’t go to TV will move to the Web. Last year Proctor & Gamble, the world’s largest advertiser disclosed that it was cutting its overall ad budget by 10%, and various brands like Crest and Tide started moving dollars "aggressively" to the Web. While Proctor & Gamble is the largest advertiser, it didn’t take long for other major brands to follow the leader. Reckitt-Benckiser has announced that it plans to shift $20 million to the Web from TV.

According to Ad Age, the company plans to shift an estimated $20 million in TV ad dollars to the web for more than 15 of its brands, including Lysol, Air Wick, Mucinex, Finish and Clearasil. The strategic shift is significant for the company, which has traditionally spent upward of 90% of its $475 million measured-media budget on TV, and less than $1 million in measured spending on the web in 2008, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Even though its 2008 internet advertising through the first half was already double its full-year internet spending in 2007, it was still only 1% of media spending.

Reckitt has tested the waters when it comes to social media and e-mail based consumer-relationship management promotions in the past, but has not tried online video until now. "We've seen a fundamental shift in consumer consumption and media habits migrating over to digital video. Obviously YouTube started it, but we want to [be] aligned with professional content," he said. "With broadband getting to the scale that it has, the shift has happened. The integration of traditional and digital media is here now," said Marc Fonzetti, Reckitt-Benckiser's media manager and internet specialist.

While Reckitt has shifted their budget to capture the audience, it has also been looking for a more efficient pricing strategy to reach a thousand viewers. Adam Kasper, senior VP-director of digital media for R-B's digital media agency, Havas' Media Contacts said "The CPM was the driving factor here. We needed to make it compelling from a buying standpoint in terms of how these CPMs related to TV CPMs, and we had to deliver the impressions more efficiently than TV did," he said, referring to a more targeted audience.

The need to satisfy the ever-demanding requirement to prove positive ROI still rings true when it comes to nontraditional mediums such as social media and online video. As such, it will be crucial for brands to monitor brand engagement and other various metrics to see if the tactics are working effectively. For Reckitt, Marc Fonzetti said this campaign will be measured using a method that combines TV's gross rating points with the web, with additional interactive layers such as online coupons and click-throughs driving traffic to each brand's microsite. Each brand's audience metrics will then be paired with data from Nielsen's Homescan panel, a shopper product that uses ad exposure on TV and the web to determine in-store purchasing behavior.

As more brands test the waters with these new forms of communication, it will be interesting to see what the results are. These new multimedia strategies that utilize online video and social media take time to develop. Likewise, since these are new tactics there are no hard metrics set in stone, it will also require some companies to take a leap of faith. Rest assured, many marketers and companies are trying to figure out the best possible scenario—to engage consumers via these new technologies and also prove positive ROI.