Data Drivers: New Media Offer New Links To Customers

With Google and Yahoo leading, search-engine advertising has established itself as the financial force in new media. Where will the next change in advertising and customer-data strategies come from? Here are some possibilities.

Blogs: They're a potentially fertile marketing channel, but businesses haven't made major ad commitments. Atefeh Riazi, CIO of ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, warns companies to monitor how much customers use blogs to research purchases. "If you have a crappy product, and there are, say, 20 blogs talking about your product, [it's] going to be dead," Riazi says.

Podcasting: It may one day be among the Internet's most potent advertising channels, but only the most adventuresome companies have tried so far. It doesn't help that podcasting has primarily a talk format because of the complexity of obtaining licensed music. Pepsico Inc. is giving it a try, promoting Gatorade on Endurance Radio, a podcast focused on endurance sports. Gatorade says it's too soon to discuss the effort's effectiveness.

Video recorders: They've sent advertisers into a tizzy over viewers habitually skipping commercials. But as TiVo and its ilk start giving marketers a picture of what each household's viewing tastes and habits are, the data will let them target ads, says Forrester Research analyst Elana Anderson. "The future of advertising starts to look a lot more like direct advertising," she says.

Broadband video: Leave it to Paris Hilton to reveal its potential. Carl's Jr. restaurant's self-described too-hot-for-TV ad depicts a scantily clad Paris Hilton washing a black sedan. Paired with a paid-search campaign, it led 60,000 visitors to click on Carl's Jr. online coupons.

Online gaming: Ogilvy's Riazi says one automaker client is seeing online game product placements deliver an interactive nature that placement in movies can't match. Massive Inc. has created a video-game ad network, with early gaming advertisers Coca-Cola, Dunkin' Donuts, Honda, and T-Mobile.

Text messaging: While E-mail marketing appears to be leveling off, Short Message Service, or SMS, on mobile phones has just started. Getting American Idol fans and baseball fans to vote for their favorites has worked. Getting customers to share their mobile numbers and give permission to receive messages is a much-bigger hurdle.

Illustration by William Rieser

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