Ads key as publishers move online

Magazine publishers are still trying to figure out how to monetise their digital content. The solutions are still fairly traditional, however. Five years from now, cost-per-thousand impressions will still be the norm, according to 39 per cent of top-level media executives who responded to a survey by Accenture in the first quarter of 2007.

Cost-per-action, or cost-per-transaction, was the second choice, favored by 21 per cent. Cost-per-click, a model that has come under much more scrutiny in 2007 in light of advertisers’ concerns about click fraud on the major search engines, was still anticipated as a viable business model by 12 per cent of respondents.

Exposure time, also known as stickiness, was proposed by nine per cent of the media executives, indicating that they took online content seriously enough to make it the basis of their business model.

When it comes to advertising online, these respondents overwhelmingly chose the mainstream media portals (86 per cent) as one of the top three areas on which they will spend the majority of their digital ad budgets.

The next two choices, user-generated content and social networking sites (41 per cent and 38 per cent, respectively) indicate these executives grasp what it means to be on the internet and that interaction with content is key for visitors.

Emerging platforms such as mobile and video gaming received stronger votes of confidence in this survey than in ones taken in other industries.

MTV, AP Study: Internet Makes Young People Happy

Cellphones, the Internet and other technologies are integrally woven into the lives of today's 13- to 24-year-olds, according to a study on happiness and young people by MTV and the Associated Press. Half of those young people polled say the Internet alone helps them feel happier.

PR Newswire has more details about this study.

Internet Ad Spending Set to Overtake Newspapers

Financial Times reports online advertising will overtake U.S. newspaper advertising in terms of size by 2011, according to a new forecast from Veronis Suhler Stevenson. Consumers are shifting to digital alternatives and migrating away from newspapers, broadcast television and other media.

European Online Marketing Spend to Hit 16B Euros, 2012

Spend on online marketing in Europe will double in the next five years, from around 7.5 billion euros in 2006 to more than 16 billion euros in 2012, according to a new Forrester report, "European Online Marketing Tops €16 Billion In 2012," reports MarketingCharts.

Online marketing - email, and search and display advertising - will account for 18 percent of total media budgets in Europe in five years, according to the projections.

The reason for this shift in spending is that audience and attention are moving online, according to Forrester:

Newspapers Suffer Most in Ad Dollars Lost to Internet

Newspapers more than other media are losing ad dollars from leading national advertisers, who are shifting budget away from traditional media to the Internet, according to a new report from Wachovia Equity Research, via Editor & Publisher.

By category, in 2006 only financial services advertisers increased spending in newspapers, which have seen less money from the automotive, retail, telecommunications, general services, media, and tech/Internet categories, according to Wachovia.

Additional findings from Wachovia:

* Of the seven categories considered, only one - financial services - increased spending in newspapers in 2006.
* Television, however, had more money flowing in from four of those seven categories: telecommunications, automotive, media and tech/Internet.
* Among the seven categories in the aggregate, newspapers lost 14.3 percent in advertising dollars, and TV gained 4.4 percent. Internet ad spend increased 17.8 percent. Spend in other measured channels decreased 1.1 percent.
* The top telecommunications advertisers shifted the most ad spend away from newspapers: In 2005 they spent 31.6 percent in newspapers, but in 2006 they spent 24 percent.
* In 2005, the top auto advertisers spent 9.2 percent, but just 4.6 percent in 2006, on newspapers.
* Retail advertisers spent 29.8 percent on newspapers in 2005 and 28 percent in 2006.

Internet ad spend growth would need to be 15 percent per year over the next decade to reach the level of ad spend going to newspapers, according to Wachovia.

GroupM: Internet Driving U.K. Ad Spending on Other Media

A new study from the agency GroupM says online ad spending is actually helping stem losses from other media, reports MediaPost.

The report from GroupM predicts losses at traditional media outlets will either level off or drop only one percent this year. The increased dollars spent online have been, it's believed, contributing to that decline as traditional media outlets find they can't demand the same price increases they once could.

Overall, and largely driven by online spending, GroupM believes ad revenue in the UK will grow by four percent in 2007.

MarketingCharts provides detailed coverage of GroupM's UK forecast.

Europe Online Ad Spend Nearly $11B in 2006

Online advertising spending in Europe reached 8 billion euros ($10.8 billion) in 2006, up from 4.6 billion euros in 2005, according to figures released Monday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (Europe), writes MarketingCharts.

The UK led the 13 countries covered by the IAB's report, accounting for 39 percent of total online ad spend with 3.1 billion euros. Germany (1.7 billion euros) is second with 22 percent; France (1.1 billion euros) is third with 15 percent; followed by the Netherlands with 7 percent.

Search accounted for 45 percent of all online ad spending in Europe, followed by display ads at 31 percent; classifieds, 22 percent; and email, 1.6 percent.

Online's share of total ad expenditures exceeded 10 percent in three European countries: the UK, the Netherlands and Denmark.

Advertisers spent an average of 82.46 euros for each U.K. web user in 2006, compared with roughly 60 euros for U.S. web users - and more than double the 39 euro average for all 13 EU countries measured by the study.