What I learned from an NYC agency today.

Spent some time with a New York City based advertising agency today. Spoke with the interactive buyers, as well as those in charge of broadcast and print. Guess what? They’re ALL interested in buying web in some form, even non-banner inventory, even though they may have originally been focused on broadcast or print, or plain ole banners.

At first I thought all 3 buyers would have a separate bucket of marketing dollars from which to pull. But no. All 3 that I talked to, had access to a central pool of dollars that they could use to solve a marketing challenge; whether it be in print, broadcast, online or some other form of marketing or promotion.

Makes sense. The days of relying specifically on one form of marketing or another, are over. Lucky for me, I had a fairly large bag of tricks up my sleeve; rich media display ads, sem/seo, online video solutions, as well as event marketing placement.

More Local Advertisers Moving to Web

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Local advertisers want to buy Internet advertising, it’s obvious from the outstanding turn out we get for our “Web Advertising 101″ seminars. SEE PICS ABOVE. In every city we travel to, from Chicago to Orlando, small and mid size businesses are moving more of their marketing budgets over to the Internet. Once they get some some basic education, encouragement and proof that it will work, they starting making the move to web. An article in today’s New York Times highlights how some papers want to make sure they get their hands on those new web dollars.

Who will teach the local advertiser? Optimally, it should be the traditional reps from the local media company. They have the relationships, the trust, and the ear of the local advertiser. The challenge though, is that the traditional reps need a better understanding of how to effectively sell the benefits of the web, in a clear, simple way that the small business can grasp. That is not easy, especially when many traditional reps rely on the local “web expert” to help them through the sales call.

TIP: it’s not a good thing when a newspaper or TV rep responds to a client who wants web, and says…..”let me get my web guru in here to talk to you. I’m not too sure about this web thing”. This makes the traditional rep look out of touch and disconnected from the new world of advertising.

The race in on. Ad dollars are moving online, with TV, Radio and Newspapers ramping up their local sales efforts with varying degrees of success. The current soft economy only accelerates this process. The smart local properties (usually newspaper) understand they’re primarily competing with independent dot-com companies like Google, Shop Local, and other online media companies that have their eyes set on local ad dollars.

Few will profit, most will fail. In each market, only a very few Broadcast & Newspaper companies will turn an online profit. With outside ‘pure-plays’ taking about 50% of every dollar out of the market, the remaining ad dollars will be sucked up by the most aggressive, serious players. In most cases, it’s the local newspaper, and one (not all) of the local TV broadcasters.

EXAMPLE: Radio gets less than 2% of every online dollar spent in a market.Why? Radio has yet to put together a strong plan to play in this space. The chart below shows where local, online advertising dollars are spent. Ironically, Radio’s sales force and large listenership makes them well positioned to do well online. It’s just that the seasoned radio executives can’t run the web efforts in their spare time with little or no resources, training or assistance. Thus, Radio is stuck in the mud with driving web revenue.