Notes from Jupiter Advertising Forum

This week’s marketing tip is something new: a bit of on-site field reporting — as I am attending the Jupiter Online Advertising Forum 2000 in New York — blended in with a bit of less relevant, but always juicy, trade show highlights.

Some background for those of you who may not be familiar with Jupiter Communications. Jupiter Communications is one of the leading Internet research firms, which has recently announced plans to merge with another research firm, Media Metrix. Jupiter, and its peers Forrester Research, The Gartner Group & AdRelevance, help us judge the state of the industry with its forecasts, surveys and data analyses. So, being the good little Internet marketeer I always try to be, I signed up to attend this year’s New York Conference. I thought you might be interested in some of the things I heard and learned…and you don’t even have to pay $2,000 to hear it!!

If statistics and figures float your boat, here are some of the highlights:

* By 2005, online advertising spending will reach roughly $16.5 billion. That figure will exceed advertising dollars spent in outdoor, cable, magazine and yellow page media.

* By that same time, approximately $635 billion will be spent in the off-line world as a result of online influences.

* Although 71% of all ad dollars currently spent flow to only the Top 15 sites, the Top 15 advertisers only represent 21% of total online ad spending.

* By 2005, 30% of online advertising will be paid on a pay-per-performance basis.

* The most continuous threatening element to marketers, both online and off, is CLUTTER.

During the course of the day’s presentations, I also noted a few interesting concepts:

“Visit Yield” - a measurement concept used by free ISP NetZero to judge the TOTAL impact of a visitor’s online experience, as opposed to simply the click-thru. Their argument is that a user might see a banner, be interested in the offer but not be willing to interrupt their current session for an ad, and then later go directly to the advertising site as a result of previewing the banner. This end-result visit should also be factored into the metrics of site performance (and NetZero can do so because it measures everything its users experience while logged on). For more information about free ISPs, see our A New Marketing Channel- Free ISPs tip from 06/22/00.

Opt-In Is Not Just Good Enough - giving users a choice to select whether or not they will receive email offers from you is not just good enough anymore. Sites and email delivery services have a responsibility to explain exactly what the subscriber can expect when opting-in — educate them from the start and you will be more likely to retain them.

Multi-Channel Suppliers (brick-and-mortar retailers with catalog, telemarketing, as well as online shopping) ought to look at leveraging their many channels to help build their own in-house databases. To do so, incent sales and customer service employees with monetary promotions and recognition awards.

Media Buying Across Channels - if there are multiple channels in which to buy ad space (e.g. network tv, cable tv, print and radio all owned by the same company), it can be worthwhile as a media buyer to negotiate multi-channel ad buy packages, vs. trying to buy all individually.

Now, from the trade show zaniness file:

First of all, one of the buzz words that certainly got over-killed today was “agnostic,” as in “without preference.” It was used in such terms as “marketing agnostic,” “agnostic integrators,” and “platform agnostic.”

The most amusing award (at least in my mind), goes to Boston.com, who had some poor fellow, in 89 degree heat, dressed up as a full-sized furry red lobster. In addition giving away such likable items as Win-A-Lobster-Dinner scratch-off cards and nifty hard-covered, half-sized spiral bound notebooks, lobsterman and his colleagues were there to tout the fact that Boston.com has more reach in Boston than such sites as CNET and Monster.com. Heck, their outrageousness got them mentioned in here, right?

And finally, on the note of give-ways (a.k.a. “tschotschkes”), here are some of the more creative:

* 2″ retractable modem cord holders (from Avenue A)
* Tubular, bead & liquid-filled “water wigglies” from engage/AdKnowledge
* mini ball-in-maze pens from Unicast, and
* dissolving rice paper mint “films” from NetZero

And with that, this is Hollis Thomases, reporting live and signing off from Jupiter Online 2000. Ta-ta!

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