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| Commercial breaks the bank |
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| Talk,
Graham Bower,
13 January 1999 | |
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It's a well known fact that the world's most expensive commercial break is during the television coverage of America's Superbowl. Numerous famous advertising campaigns have been born in this hallowed interruption of a nation's favourite sporting event. Perhaps most famously, way back in 1984, Apple interrupted the football with its "Big Brother" ad - a sideswipe at rival PC maufacturer IBM to mark the launch of the Macintosh computer. But this is just the start of the IT industry's love affair with expensive TV advertising.
There are few companies in the world that could afford to advertise during the Superbowl - a single ad can be worth as much as $3 million! Last year, only two dotcoms touched down at Superbowl - employment sites Monster.com and Hotjobs.com. But with the huge market capitalisation of dotcom companies on the NASDAQ, there's a new breed of big spenders in town. This year's Superbowl was filled with numerous dotcom ads, including some from internet startups, who've blown millions of dollars of investors' money on this expensive form of communication.
So why the big enthusiasm for offline advertising from online companies. Afterall, anyone who has run an internet site knows that you generate far more traffic from online advertising than offline - It's too much work for potential visitors to make a mental note of you web address and enter it into their browser the next time they're online - far easier to be seduced by a tempting link - and single click and immediately you're there.
Anyone in advertising will tell you that the primary role for Above the Line advertising (advertising where you pay to appear on someone else's media - like magazines, TV and bill boards) is to raise awareness and increase mind-share against competitors. Advertising is a tool for building brands, and brands are an invaluable tool in establishing differentiation from your competiton.
If you're an Excite, how are your going to convince Lycos users that they're better off using your service - effectively there's not much between the two services, but with a memorably advertising campaign, there's just a chance they'll think of you in the future - especially if the TV advertising seamlessly integrates with online banner advertising - the double whammy approach - the TV raises awareness, and a banner ad reaches consumers in the right context, reminds them of the TV ad, and leaverages the good associations generated by the TV to tempt them to click.
Of course there's another reason why dotcoms are attracted to expensive tv advertising in preference to online marketing techniques - corporate hubris. They advertise on TV because they can afford to. It must be frustrating for big media companies who have invested millions on web ventures to see that independent sites (like foocha!) continue to prosper, and are often better than their expensive rivals. The liberating effect of the internet is that a kid in his bedroom can put together a site in just the same way that a major multinational corporation would. Gone are the days when you needed vast sums of money to reach a mass audience. So, perhaps the big corporates use old-fashioned, mega-buck, off-line advertising to sooth their dented egos.
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