The new media mix -- less TV, more online

Tags: Advertising, Marketing, Media Mix

Stuart Elliott of the New York Times today has several insights about advertisers at the Association of National Advertisers reshaping their media mixes away from TV and toward more measurable and targeted media such as the Web. Jerri De Vard, SVP for marketing and brand management at Verizon had some particularly interesting comments:

After her speech, Ms. DeVard shared data on the shifts in the Verizon media mix from 2001 to 2005. Some newer media have increased their share of the company's ad spending. The Internet, for example, now accounts for 11 percent compared with 3 percent, and national cable television commercials are now 10 percent compared with nothing. And some traditional media have suffered as Verizon adjusts its media mix; newspaper ads, for instance, fell to 7 percent from 18 percent and broadcast TV spots to 20 percent from 33 percent.

These changes closely align with the marketing budget shifts we noted in our third quarter report, Marketing 2005: Q3 Marketing Budgets Spike.. But Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, was unwilling to cast stones at competing media types:

"It's a little bit disingenuous to create an 'us versus them' situation," Mr. Schmidt said, because it assumes "a zero-sum game" when marketers are planning their media mixes. Rather, he said, there is the potential for increased ad spending in all media, new or traditional, because more targeted ads can generate improved results.

"We want advertising to be a growth industry," Mr. Schmidt said, even to the point of wanting more students to study advertising in college, because "it's to our benefit if it grows."