Re: Is online advertising accepted as a valid advertising media

From: Robbin Zeff <robbin_at_zeff.com>
Date: Tue 06 Mar 2001 11:21:11 -0600

ANGELA BELL <angela.bell_at_talk21.com> WROTE:

> When researching as a student, online advertising is not
> covered in general marketing textbooks or taught as
> part of degree courses. Therefore how can the next
> generation of marketers emerge and develop the medium
> if they are taught nothing about the subject. Hence my
> main question is do we accept online advertising as a
> traditional media and why?

We've been addressing this issue since online advertising
first hit the scene. At first, traditional agencies weren't
interested in discussing online advertising until it was a
"mass market media." Those days are over...well, almost.
Today, online advertising numbers are put along side
traditional media when totaling US advertising spending
dollars. This is a big step. Media analysts predict that ad
spending in the US for 2001 will break out something like this:

Television: $57.4 billion
Newspapers: $52.1 billion
Radio/outdoor: $27.1 billion
Magazines: $24.7 billion
Internet: $12.1 billion
(Sources: PriceWaterhouseCoopers, IAB, Wilkofsky Gruen
Assoc, Universal McCann, NAA, Paul Kagan Assoc.)

If you look at these numbers, it's clear that online advertising
is not doing too shabby for an industry that started from
ground zero in 1994.

To address your question "Does the advertising industry
accept online advertising as part of the traditional media mix?
The answer is yes. Why? Because no one can afford to ignore
it anymore. Now that the "big boys" (Kmart, Wal-Mart, Target,
GM, etc.) are getting involved in the online space--and it's not
just a bunch of dot-com--no one in the advertising space
would dare say that online advertising is just a passing fade.

In terms of education in online advertising, it's going to take
a while for the college and university programs to fully integrate
online advertising, marketing and e-commerce into their curriculum.
As a person who received her Ph.D. in the late 1980s, I learned
first hand that nothing changes slower than academia. However,
change is occurring. My book "Advertising on the Internet" is
used at colleges and universities around the world (the book has
been translated into 8 languages). Classes are being taught.
Students are learning.

More importantly, today the real learning takes place in the
conferences and seminars and through reading discussing lists
like this. In fact, today learning doesn't just take place in a
classroom. It takes place everywhere. And new information
comes out so quickly that we constantly need to be learning.

Here's to being a life long learner.

Robbin Zeff, President
The Zeff Group - www.zeff.com
Your source for online advertising and marketing training.
Check out our new ALL STAR seminar series
featuring workshops by the hottest talent in the industry.



Received on Tue Mar 06 2001 - 11:21:11 CST