iMediaRants

Everyone is looking ahead to what will be the “next BIG thing” for our beloved interactive channel this year. I’ve put together a list of both evolutionary and old school interactive media trends to watch for this coming year.

1. More Search
Everyone in this business (clients, account managers even media teams) are always on the lookout for the “next big thing” in interactive marketing. If you have kids like I do, they can never have enough NEW toys, even if there is nothing wrong with the ones that they have. Paid search is nothing new, but it typically accounts for 50-60% of interactive media budget dollars… because it works. It doesn’t get much better than consumers actively looking for your brand (products/services), while you only pay IF they click… performance marketing at its best. Not to mention the amount of $$$ you save by not having to create multiple creative assets in multiple sizes. All this combined with site analytics that give you the granular insights into what ad groups, keywords and ad text works best to deliver ROI, which will never grow old in my opinion.

2. More Targeting
Today’s interactive media planner needs to be well versed in all available targeting options. Gone are the days of simply targeting by geo and demo and HHI. Today, your targeting considerations include such tactics as: content placement, weather triggers, IP targeting, day parting, user-provided demographics, contextual targeting, behavioral targeting, and even re-targeting targeting. Look for interactive media plans to evolve in terms of both complexity and accountability. This means more data/results for the clients (and account teams) to digest. It also means that agencies need to staff accordingly, as these campaigns take longer to execute and require knowledgeable individuals to monitor and manage them. It is up to you/us to translate this data into digestible stories that are easily told and understood by both clients and account teams. Remember: numbers don’t tell stories, people do. Its something that marketers/agencies need to get better at.

3. More Accountability
With online media being so quantifiable, we have already seen both clients and agencies expect more from this media channel than any other of its peers: TV, radio and magazine. (I didn’t forget newspapers; I’ll be throwing a party later in the year to say goodbye to this old yet beloved media channel. Join me, won’t you?) When was the last time a client called you to see how many of their magazine ads have been viewed? What other media channel gives you real-time results with the control to optimize your buy on the fly? Look for clients wanting more visibility into their online campaigns, more face or “talk time” with the teams running their accounts. Agencies will need to become more efficient at managing these relationships. Look for the roles and responsibilities of today’s interactive media planner to grow. Look for the traditional planners to become more involved. Continuing education for today’s media planner is essential. How many RSS feeds related to interactive media do you subscribe to? If none, contact me and I’ll give you a list of quality feeds that will get you started. What associations do you belong to? What events are on your calendar to attend? When is the last time you hounded your boss to send you to a conference? Staying within the theme of accountability, what are YOU going to do this year that is different than the last?

4. More Adoption
Websites will need to adopt the “performance” model of CPC, CPL. How can they afford not to? This performance based approach will encourage media buyers to take risks on these lower-level sites. Look for this to start at the bottom of the value chain: radio and newspaper sites. To be fair, not all newspaper sites are created equally. There are a handful of sites that have evolved into quality online destinations, such as: NYTimes.com, AJC.com, and Chicagotribune.com. They have focused on developing proprietary content, reducing ad unit clutter, offering various targeting options (such as behavioral, contextual and retargeting) and yes, they support all or most rich media formats.

Now, lets talk about all other lower-level sites (and you know who you are). What do you have to offer? Currently: nothing much. Most offer the same inflated CPMs of $15 -$25, limited reach, and most deliver extremely low performance in regards to CTR. You would be lucky to get a 0.10% CTR. How can you not evolve to a performance model? I can’t believe I’m about to quote Robocop, but: “I’d buy that (click) for a dollar”. If you believe in your offering, then start backing it with a performance model. You’ve evolved to the point of offering rich media andmobile partnerships, but I can execute those without you. To all the radio.coms: offer me a unique “integrated” platform that leverages your on-air strength and your online destination. Offer me on-air promos together with online placements that drive traffic to my client’s site with the goal of registration (sweepstakes, newsletter sign-ups, product purchase). Partner with some of the online leaders in this space such as Permission Data and Revenue Science. That’s a proposal that I’ll read and feel good about presenting to my clients.

5. More Integration
I try to stay away from cliches as much as possible, but when it comes to servicing clients well these days, “it takes a village”. Media can’t do it alone, nor can the creative team, and let’s not forget interactive, which right now is a separate entity. Should interactive be a separate division of your agency? Isn’t that counter-intuitive to the concept of integrating new media capabilities across the organization? Yes, eventually. For now, though, there needs to be a separate interactive arm with the ultimate goal of education and enablement of the rest of the company, such that the separate arm ultimately seeps into the rest of the agency. That is when interactive will be thought of early as part of the broader strategy, and interactive tactics will be part of a wide toolset. It’s not an easy process. It takes patience, persistence, a consistent effort from all parties involved and a lack of ego on all sides. The traditional parts of the agency have to admit that they don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to interactive and that they need to be open to learning. The interactive division needs to understand that they are nothing without the traditional core and that their ultimate goal really is education, not perpetually being the cool kid that gets it. What will happen if agencies and businesses choose not to integrate and adopt the new business structure that is quickly evolving? Good question. Start by visiting your local travel agent. I’m sure he’ll have plenty of time to share his opinion.

Accept this: you will fail. Don’t spend your time pointing fingers and placing blame. Work together in understanding what went wrong, and offer constructive feedback on how to fix it. Set short-term attainable goals, both departmental and organizational. Eat the elephant one bite at a time.