For a hint of things to come in the brave new world of online advertising, look no further than one of the UK’s largest publishers of B2B magazines. Last year Reed Business Information – which produces many titles in 18 vertical sectors – created RBI Digital Media to exploit what Iain Melville, managing director of RBI, calls the ‘massive opportunities’ presented by the Internet.
While continuing to develop each individual magazine’s website to make the content available to individuals who prefer to consume their media via the net, RBI’s digital arm markets what the company terms ‘network sales’ on a horizontal basis across the demographics of the users of all its B2B websites. Agencies that run campaigns for a wide variety of clients in sectors as diverse as technology, financial services and agriculture now have broad-based access to these targeted groups via RBI Digital Media ñ something that could never be replicated in print.
Case in point: One of RBI’s most respected titles, Flight International, has a subscriber base of some 50,000, generating around 200,000 ‘impressions’ a month. By comparison, an RBI website called Flightglobal.com, which targets the four million professionals in the global aerospace industry, generates well over two million impressions ñ with the accompanying ad sales opportunities this presents.
Melville of RBI says that other sites proving attractive to B2B advertisers include industry portals and trade bodies. Forecasting a 50-plus per cent rise in his online advertising business in 2006, Melville – who also chairs the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) – explains: “Online is a very important growth engine for us. It’s a new business opportunity and is entirely complementary and supplementary to our print output.”
A surging industry
While this strong growth may be attributed partially to the fact that web advertising started from a lower baseline than its established counterparts, it has nevertheless already overtaken radio and outdoor in market share and now has its sights on even bigger traditional marketing methods. No doubt about it – online advertising is booming.
Reassuringly, much of this growth seems to be fuelled by new money, allaying some publishers’ fears that increased use of the web might be at the expense of traditional business. Melville continues: “We trade a lot more lead generation activity on our sites, and a lot of that comes from new budgets, not necessarily from marketing or brand budgets. Customers are spending more targeted funds online, giving us access to revenues we didn’t previously have.”
Phil Christer, account director with the planning and buying agency Zed Media, agrees: ìI do think you’re getting new advertisers coming into online advertising. They find that it’s quite cost-effective and accountable, so they’re seeing it as less of a risk.î
Curiously, B2B advertisers face a specific challenge to maximise use of the web. Christer – whose B2B clients include Sage and HP ñ explains: “B2B online advertising differs from B2C in that it’s a lot harder to target people. Although there are specified sites, you have more advertisers trying to reach a smaller base. There aren’t as many sites to advertise on as you might think.”
Staying on track
Nevertheless, as well as providing a potential customer reach that marketers could never have imagined in pre-Internet days, online is changing the nature of the relationship they have with their prospects. Christer continues: “The online medium gives B2B marketers the opportunity to speak to potential customers on a regular, one-to-one basis in a way sales people could only dream of. Another major benefit is that it is both accountable and trackable, so as ROI increases, online advertising will too. The great thing about online is that it’s all results-based. There isn’t another medium where you can track a customer’s journey and exactly justify the ROI.”
This trackability provides advertisers with sophisticated data on the performance of a campaign on a particular site and, in doing so, presents a whole new challenge to one of the publishing industry’s most respected bodies: the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC).
ABC has established an online arm, ABC Electronic, which is owned and run by the industry to replicate the service it fulfils offline, on the web. Yet the highly measurable nature of online gives advertisers privileged – and arguably more pertinent ñ data that may cancel out the need for independent auditing.
Christer of Zed Media says: “Offline ABC is reputable and trustworthy, but in the digital world it’s got a long way to go until it gets to that level ñ if it ever does. Clients are becoming a lot more aware that they have bigger data at their disposal, plus they’re going to listen to their ad agency anyway.”
Conrad Bennett, technical services director with analytics company WebTrends, agrees; “ABC Electronic is there due to demand from traditional publishers who moved online and wanted a similar mechanism, because they’re interested in comparisons with their competitors. What ABC Electronic does is good in terms of standardisation, but its web analytics is very basic. Advertisers know that if a publisher is using a decent analytics programme they can give them more information than ABC Electronic. I don’t know if that’s something a standards organisation can deliver. The chief concern for most web analytics people is the use of absolute numbers.”
Richard Foan, managing director of ABC Electronic, responds, “There are three reasons for an independent audit to ensure that people are measuring to the industry-agreed standard, so that the data is comparable; that the publisher is including or excluding the right things when they come up with their numbers; and check that people aren’t cheating with their numbers. My contention is that the other media have a stamp of approval from an industry body ñ whether it’s RAJAR in radio or ABC in print ñ and that agencies and advertisers expect it.”
Future or fad?
Foan also suggests that the absence of a universally-accepted kite mark may at least partially explain a curious anomaly about online advertising. This is that while it represents around six per cent of total advert spend, it has been estimated to account for as much of one-third of all media consumption. In other words, while people are not spending time where ad budgets are being spent to the extent they used to, expenditure on online advertising still lags way behind actual internet use. Will a ‘stamp of approval’ such as ABC Electronic help to close the gap and drive the growth of online advertising, as it challenges the big traditional marketing methods?
Online advertising is so innovative ñ even volatile ñ from a creative point of view that forecasting future trends is a risky business. Melville of RBI predicts that, whereas to date B2B online advertising has been mainly about delivering ‘clicks’ and lead generation, brand marketing may soon come into its own on the web.
Christer of Zed Media adds: “Online advertising isn’t restricted by the printing press, and it’s constantly changing as the technology develops. What we’re saying is ‘the next big thing’ could be old hat in twelve months’ time.”
