'Wall St. Journal' Promotes Online Advertising

By: Jonathan Angel (Adweek Magazines' Technology Marketing) The Wall Street Journal has launched an advertising campaign designed to promote online advertising. The latest execution, featuring Nick Nyhan, president of the online research firm Dynamic Logic, broke yesterday on WSJ.com and in many regional editions of the newspaper.

"As a leader in the online publishing field, we felt it important to create a platform for discussing critical issues surrounding the future of online advertising," said Neil Budde, publisher of WSJ.com. "For this campaign, we chose industry experts like Nick Nyhan of Dynamic Logic to share their philosophies, experiences, and future strategies regarding online advertising."

In the ad, headed "The Future of Advertising Online," Nyhan argues that the industry still needs to break free of the direct-response model and pay more attention to the Web's branding power. "You go with what you have," he said, "so the industry started using server logs, page views, and other ways of measuring mouse clicks. They were short-selling themselves in the long run.

"The biggest advertisers in the world," added Nyhan, "are not ones that use the direct-response model." In the ad, designed like an op-ed piece, he argues that traditional marketers such as suppliers of packaged goods, entertainment, autos, and financial services are using the Internet successfully and will continue to do so.

"My mom is happy about the ad," he quipped. "It's really an acknowledgement by the industry that the branding story has become mainstream." Dynamic Logic uses metrics such as brand awareness, message association, brand favorability, and purchase intent to measure the effectiveness of online advertising for clients such as Kraft, Unilever, McDonalds, and Coca-Cola.

Other ads in the series feature Mark McLaughlin, partner at MVBMS Euro RSCG, and Jim Speros, CMO at Ernst & Young LLP. They may be viewed online at http://advertising.wsj.com/online/research/future_series.html.