Online advertising outshines the big screen

Media & Marketing:If you want to advertise a product in this country there are essentially six ways to spend the money - press, radio, television, outdoor sites, cinema screens and online.

In total, between January and October of 2006, companies and public bodies decided to spend €1.4 billion among these six formats. As usual, the press hoovered up the largest amount of this revenue at €917 million.

Also, predictably, in second place was television, with €255 million, the vast majority of it going in the direction of RTÉ.

Further down the list were the other formats, but the key change in the pecking order was that cinema was eclipsed by online for the first time. Companies and public bodies decided to place €8.2 million with the various cinema advertising companies, but online ad space managed to attract a marginally higher figure of €10.8 million.

As outlined in a previous column, online was always likely to eclipse cinema, but the rapid growth of online advertising will still not be sufficient to push it beyond the next format in its path - radio - any time soon. The figures were released this week by Precision Media and compiled by the Irish Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland.

They show that at rate card values, online advertising received €10.8 million of revenue in the period from January to October 2006, whereas radio was able to boast a figure of €100.5 million. For online to become bigger than radio in this country would require a jump of over 800 per cent.

This could happen of course - and probably will - but not in the near future. Those promoting online strategies will have to realise that while online will keep eating into traditional media revenues, it will take many years for the fundamental figures to change. This is particularly the case in Ireland where traditional media - especially press - takes a larger share of the overall advertising cake than other countries in Europe and in the US.

The figures in fact show that some of the oldest parts of the traditional media are growing the fastest - radio and press. While these figures partially puncture the balloon of online cheerleaders, complacency is not advised.

In the UK for instance some traditional media executives are voting with their feet - only this week the main strategist for traditional media company Trinity Mirror jumped ship and joined Google, where he will devise new strategies to increase that company's share of the advertising cake.

Homegrown success

One of the most enduring myths among media and marketing executives in Ireland is that in our fast-moving globalised economy, the death of local media is only around the corner.

With a profusion of digital television channels for instance, surely the carefully nurtured market shares of local TV stations will be under threat?

While overall market shares may come under threat for the likes of RTÉ and BBC, there is increasing evidence that the profusion of services is having the opposite effect and is propelling viewers back towards local services. The top 10 programmes in Ireland in 2006 have just been released and advertisers are already noting the strong presence in the top 10 of Irish programmes. For example, the most watched programme - for the sixth year in a row - was the Late Late Toy Show with 1.1 million viewers. This was marginally up on the pervious year.

You're A Star, while down on previous years, managed to pull in 810,000 viewers. Initiative, the Dublin-based ad agency, commented this week: "Even as we become more cosmopolitan and international, it is homegrown programming with a local appeal that continues to attract Irish viewers. Our growing sophistication and urbanisation will lead to a further desire to connect with the familiar and the local. Irish people are still very much patriotic and parochial, and the local hero element in both sport and talent shows are huge".

While falling audiences for the GAA All-Ireland football final might undermine this notion, the overall assertion would appear to be borne out in the figures.

Metro setback

It may be a success everywhere else, but Metro, the freesheet, has not managed to build a successful business in Poland. Earlier this week it was announced that Metro International has closed its six-year-old Polish-language edition Metropol, following a severe downturn in the title's financial performance.

The title, which launched in Warsaw in 2000 and employed 70 journalists, was one of Poland's largest daily newspapers and was distributed across major cities.