The Digital Advertising Agency Disconnect
March 19, 2008
Digital Advertising vs InterActive Marketing vs Traditional Advertising vs Search Engine Optimization vs Search Engine Marketing vs Social Media Optimization. So many terms, and why the the disconnect on the definition. When an advertising agency is going hell bent on digital, what exactly does that mean?
Let’s first define what these are:
Digital Advertising – It’s literally just online advertising – IE: buying media online… banners….. rich media placements.. things along those lines.. the full page flash ‘taking over the screen’ on Yahoo’s main page for example.. until 2002 when popups were rampant on the Internet would of fell under this definition. Some firms try to call this InterActive Marketing… but marketing is one thing.. advertising is another.
Interactive Marketing – now this is classic, it’s a umbrella term for several disciplines and the answer varies according to who you ask. If you ask Yooter InterActive Marketing what InterActive Marketing is their answer would be ‘mostly search engine optimization, social media marketing and viral marketing such as YouTube and Google Videos’ … if you ask Carat what their definition is, the answer we got with a quick phone call was ‘mostly online media buys’. In short, we got several answers to the same question.
Traditional Advertising – The least controversial in terms of definition. Basically it’s everything offline… and it’s where the majority of larger holding company Ad Agencies generate revenue. Print Media, Television, Radio, Billboards …. it’s the stuff that most predict will fall in size and scope at the expense of the other online methods..
Search Engine Optimization – The weakest link for everyone but yet the most important for all as it generates the highest ROI out of all forms of marketing, mostly because no one has final say on what’s right and what’s wrong other than the guys and girls in Mountain View California. Google’s market share exceeds all others by a mile in terms of search volume. Some Advertising Agencies are better at it than others, Tribble Advertising Agency ranks the agencies from time to time in terms of SEO ability, but the vast majority of agencies are painfully inadequate in terms of SEO savvy. None of the larger Advertising Agencies have contributed any significant resources to SEO, none of the top tier SEO firms have been purchased by an Advertising Agency holding company to date. Allowing SEO firms to literally get millions in revenue that should of went to the Advertising Agencies. It’s a tactical error that is biting ad agencies back in a serious way. You can’t have these little SEO companies growing… their concept of marketing is very different than what an agency considers marketing, and during a recession their method might make more sense in some aspects. It’s worth stating that a few fortune 1000 firms have switched from traditional to 100% online marketing for the rest of 2008 and 2009.
Search Engine Marketing – This is largely Google Adwords. Yahoo and MSN both have programs, but they are tiny in market share compared to the king ping of online advertising… Google. It’s a bid per click system. You pay each time someone clicks on your ads. Click Fraud is a problem that Google has attempted to address (fraudulent clicks, clicks by competitors, etc etc). But the overall scope of SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is growing, and growing in a large way. Generally it’s considered one of the higher ROI generating marketing methods.. if done right.
Social Media Optimization – Again the lines have blurred. Social Media Optimization is making use of the newer social media sites, such as digg.com and Google owned YouTube. These sites generate massive amounts of traffic, if done correctly, to a company site. These also translate to better search engine rankings for Search Engine Optimization, as if the message is out.. others blog and link to it and it increases a websites rankings in organic search during the aftermath of the initial flood of traffic. Some believe it’s just an extension of SEO, others believe it’s a differing discipline. Both are right, social media optimization could increase rankings, so the early adopters of it were … you got it.. SEO firms. However some firms exist solely to get sites promoted in Youtube, Digg and other Social media sites.
The aftermath, overall the problem facing the traditional advertising agencies is that their market is shrinking in terms of revenue and overall market share… however still the lions share (at least 85% of the advertising dollars) are still going to quarter million dollar ads in print media and hundred thousand dollar TV spots.
This is subject to change over time… and Advertising agencies have been looking to purchase or develop in house digital, SEO, SEM and InterActive firms to maintain cash flow and growth during a recession. Some have been stating that it is too late to develop the skillset in house and it is what is forcing these agencies to have only purchase as an option. Generally us a Tribble Agency agree. We will see how 2008 and 2009 pan out.. but as it stands it’s well predicted that online will take a larger part of the pie for the next 2 years… and further into the future.
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