The Scramble for Interactive Expertise

Last month, I saw a review on CNBC dealing with Super Bowl ads. A creative director from a major advertising agency was being interviewed and he made an interesting comment, something to the effect of, “We just throw things together. In the end, we’re not sure what’s really going to work.” I found this to be ridiculous. What’s more ridiculous is the major advertisers that give up millions of dollars for this guesswork in advertising. I find this to be a huge disservice to the clients of agencies that think along these lines. It’s no wonder advertising budgets continue to shift towards interactive media. Now that this shift is occurring in greater numbers, traditional agencies and other organizations are scrambling to find experts in interactive media.

A recent survey conducted by AdMedia Partners found that mergers and acquisitions for Internet marketing will significantly increase this year. 54% of companies surveyed stated that they expect to close an acquisition this year. The top four categories of this survey were Interactive Advertising (18%), Search Marketing (18%), Pay-for-Performance Marketing (11%), and Interactive Media (11%). In addition, valuation multiples for Internet marketing companies is expected to be six to ten times pretax profit, compared to five to seven times pretax profit last year.

The reason for all this activity is simple—interactive marketing is more cost effective than traditional forms of media. It also provides accurate metrics far beyond traditional media, which allows marketers to optimize campaigns. In other words, it’s less expensive, it’s accountable and quicker to achieve optimal results. However, the expertise needed for successfully directing interactive marketing efforts is scarce. Many people left the interactive industry after the dot com crash, but many people didn’t know what they were doing during that period anyway. Now, the Internet is more mature, faster, and the people that have remained in the industry are taking a more intelligent approach to utilizing the Internet to its fullest potential.

So the point I am making is to start looking for marketing experts with interactive experience. Whether it is specialists in just one aspect of interactive, or a full service interactive agency, start looking now. This is the future of marketing and advertising. The interactive tools available today are too numerous for an in-house marketing department to be proficient in all of them. In order to remain competitive, companies will need to integrate interactive tools into their marketing mix. There is a scramble for integrating these tools now. Don’t be left behind. Contact us today to learn more.