The way people around the world are consuming media is changing: just ask yourself 
how you keep in touch and up-to-date with the news, and you’ll probably find that the 
Internet and the mobile phone are increasingly your media of choice. As a result, 
traditional media companies have needed to reposition themselves just to survive in 
a fast-changing market. 

Even global behemoths like News Corp believe that they are in danger of becoming 
irrelevant within 10 years if they do not transform their businesses and break free 
from the traditional confines of legacy media like print and television. Just one 
example of the sea-change in the market: BusinessWeek shuttered its European and Asian
print editions on December 30, 2005, in favour of online editions. 

Online advertising spend is following the trend. According to data from TNS Media 
Intelligence, online brand advertising (excluding search revenues) in the US totalled 
$6.1 billion for the first three quarters of 2005, up 11.5 percent over the same period 
last year.

In South Africa, the same trends are becoming evident. The local online publishing 
industry recorded a 13,8% increase in local readership to 1,98-million readers (unique 
browsers) and 97,37-million page impressions in the third quarter of 2005 over the second 
quarter of the same year, according to data from the Online Publishers Association.

Many of our clients in South Africa are paying more attention to the growth of online 
media. In 2005, Acceleration saw a sharp increase in online spending, especially on geo-
targeting (targeting South Africans on International websites), rich media, paid search 
and site analytics, and expects these trends to increase throughout 2006. 

If you’re one of the marketers not paying attention to online media, it is time to rethink 
your strategy: More than three million high net worth South Africans actively use the 
Internet as a primary channel for news, information gathering and daily communication. 
Can you afford not to have online in your mix this year?

What’s more online advertising offers a host of unique benefits to marketers, in addition
to the traditional benefits of advertising. Spending money on online advertising can 
enhance brand awareness, purchase intent, message association and so on, in much the same 
way as other advertising channels do. 

But where online really comes into its own is in converting consumers from prospects into 
customers and one-time buyers into loyal repeat customers. 

Advertising is no longer a one-way street: customers are driving the relationships they 
have with brands. Marketers can use a range of diverse tools and technologies to achieve 
their goals in a market where customers are saying: “Enough about you – what about me?” 
These tools range from site analytics through to online advertising and email marketing.

What is important is that a marketer is able to combine all of these tools into a holistic 
marketing strategy and use them when and where appropriate in service of that strategy. 
Online and offline marketing acted in isolation in the past, as did retention and acquisition 
marketing. Now, marketers understand that they must be blended to achieve the best results. 

In future columns, we will discuss the goals that a range of online tactics and tools are 
best suited to achieve, and even more importantly, how these technologies and activities can 
be integrated with each other as well as offline marketing strategies to maximise return 
on investment.

Source: http://www.marketingweb.co.za/marketing/781384.htm
Richard Mullins is a director at Acceleration eMarketing. Acceleration combines specialised 
marketing skills with best-of-breed technology to offer solutions and support for highly 
effective and measurable returns from e-marketing.1