Print Media Commissions are not in Mad Men Visions
In 2012, Google billed over 20 billion in advertising dollars. This was more than the total of all U.S. print media. What a contrast to what magazines and newspapers sold just five years ago! In 2006, print media sold 60 billion dollars more in advertising than did Google! How will this change brand marketing? This isn’t your Mad Men’s day of advertising. (“Mad Men” is AMC’s TV show based on Madison Avenue’s advertising business and people in the early 60’s.)
So what does this mean for brand management performed by many of today’s advertising agencies? Well, they had better get their act together. They need to deliver branding power that can compete or at least do co-branding with the Googles, E-Bays, Amazon.coms, and many others, which will keep coming down the Internet superhighway.
The big question is how much of a threat is online advertising? Is it delivering the ROI experienced through print media advertising? It’s vital to realize that Google, just 14 years old, is now taking in more ad revenue than print media, which has been here for over 100 years!
However, it must be accounted that Google has a global operation, so this can’t be simply analyzed. It must also be analytically figured that Google has seen a 15% decrease in ad Cost-Per-Click, CPC (the average fee that advertisers are charged for each clicked on ad) in 2012. But now, Google’s CPC drop has slowed and perhaps turned the corner in January, as their CPC share increased due to click share on tablet devices. As more people are watching content across a variety of their mobile devices, Google has decided to pull out of its 5-year effort to build its TV Ads product. Since 2009, they have shut down similar services for print and radio advertising.
Google is concentrating on beating Facebook in the sale of online display ads. (Online display ads feature the advertiser’s content message on a destination website, usually in a box on the top or side of the page.) The company is planning to lead web-search ads and online display ads that feature graphics, interactive communications and videos.
Google’s significant increase in display ads that concentrate on brand content is evidence that they have ambitious brand marketing goals. Now Google is building and developing plans for their advertisers to more efficiently buy across a multitude of sites.
This is not only an important story for the online aspects of our businesses; it is also a good brand invention and reinvention story to watch in real time.
Where has Google been and where is it going – stay tuned… the next generation of Mad Men is in the digital works….
Arthur & Peggy Winters co-teach SXB 200 Brand Marketing Communications for Image & Meaning and SXR 050 Intro to Branding: The Art of Customer Bonding.