Competing for Ads Amid Media Clutter

By: Lucia Moses NEWS ANALYSIS

These are tough times for national marketers. Pressure to demonstrate a return on their media spending is huge. Yet research shows that half the population uses more than one medium at a time, suggesting that marketers may be wasting ad dollars on people who aren't fully engaged in one medium. According to a new Simultaneous Media Usage Survey by BIGresearch in Columbus, Ohio, 94% of people who say they go online while watching TV regularly, or occasionally, tune out mentally when a commercial comes on.

Consumers, in general, are increasingly tuning out marketing messages. They're zapping commercials with their TiVos. More than 50 million have signed up for the national do-not-call list. Demands for new anti-spam laws are growing.

All this means the playing field for ad share is wide open, says Bob Liodice, president and CEO of the Association of National Advertisers, an organization representing more than 300 companies that shell out more than $100 billion a year on marketing and advertising. As marketers look for the best return on their ad dollars, Liodice says, "They're looking at almost a zero-based budgeting approach to all media." As a recent Goldman Sachs survey found, ad executives, no doubt fed up with the rising cost and diminished reach of network TV, expect to shift their ad budgets from network to cable and other media.

How will newspapers, the forgotten medium in the minds of most national advertisers, fit into this new world? Jason E. Klein, president and CEO of the Newspaper National Network (NNN), the marketing sales organization for national newspaper advertising, believes newspapers have some of that share coming to them, given their cost, attractive demographics, and reach advantages. And whereas multitasking is common with other media, he says, "Most people tend to monotask newspapers." Indeed, BIGresearch data show that 95% of those who read a newspaper while watching television mentally tune out TV commercials.

National is the smallest of the industry's three main ad categories, representing 16.3% of all daily newspaper ad revenue last year, but it wasn't always this way. In 1956, national represented 23%. Although lower now, it has been on the rise since dipping below 12% in 1995, since papers have been adding color capacity and creating organizations like the NNN to make it easier for national marketers to place ads in multiple markets at a time. Today, papers count auto, wireless, entertainment, and technology among their strong categories.

The opportunity for growth seems huge, considering the 15 categories in the NNN's sights spend a scant 3% of their budgets with newspapers. Klein is broadening the NNN's target ad categories and trying to shorten the time it takes to schedule a campaign, among other improvements. With advertisers looking less at a medium's reach and more at matching their brand affinity to that of the medium, he's also thinking about how to place ads within the paper for maximum impact.

Liodice says papers can capitalize on their ability to zone geographically. But media need to do more than just reach many consumers frequently; they have to prove return on investment and engage an increasingly tuned-out populace. And newspapers, like TV, also can be guilty of being "filled with [ad] clutter," he says. They also need to keep in mind that, as Gary Drenik, president of BIGresearch says, media buyers need to plan based on how different demographic groups use media, and how those groups spend their money.

Increased color ad pages capacity is a step in the right direction, but papers also would do well to step up the creativity in the ads themselves. Another thing advertisers would welcome is "newspapers stepping up to the plate and demonstrating how they can improve their penetration," he says.

The newspaper industry may have a strong story to use against network TV, but it will have company. The magazine and radio industries also are going on the attack against the networks. And even as marketers discard old assumptions about advertising, old biases die hard. "I don't believe that in the past the newspaper was viewed to have the same impact with the consumer as TV, Internet, radio," Liodice says. By cross-selling with the Internet and television, however, newspapers can combat their image as a static medium. "There may be some great opportunities in there," he says.