Page 187 - Convergent Journalism an Introduction Writing and Producing Across Media

Advertisers Evolve to Multimedia

to reach broad national audiences and radio and billboards for local
markets. Because audiences were big, using targeted media was not an
issue for many products. As video games, cable TV, VCRs, CDs, and
the Web gave people other entertainment and information options,
companies began to integrate their marketing efforts and use a multi-
media approach to advertising. Unlike the one-size-fits-all approach of
mass media marketing, multimedia advertising targets users based on
their lifestyles and choices of media. It gives marketers better control
of the reach of their ad messages and guards against ad burnout. Best
of all, it uses various media as building blocks to surround users with
the media they choose to use in their daily lives.
Multimedia advertising creates a media multiplier effect that often
adds synergy to a campaign. People see or hear messages about a prod-
uct in multiple places—on the radio, the Internet, at the ballpark, in
the mall, on cable TV, and on a cell phone. This integrated multichan-
nel approach gives an ad campaign “lift” or added awareness with its
target audience.
How people use media is changing as digital technologies give peo-
ple more options. A study in 2003 by researchers from the Center 177
for Media Design at Ball State University (http://www.bsu.edu/cmd)
found that 39 percent of TV watchers also use the computer at the
same time. This trend toward simultaneous media usage is supported
by other research that shows people often use two media at once.
The evolution to multimedia advertising in the past decade has
been slow because the advertising media industry is so entrenched in
the TV-centric mass media model. It wasn’t until several large global
advertisers began to shift money away from mass media to targeted
micromedia that the ad industry began to take notice.
The shift began when P&G, the world’s largest advertiser,
announced in 2001 that it was moving $300 million of its $1.5 billion
U.S. media budget to do a cross-platform deal with media conglomer-
ate Viacom. The deal included advertising in Viacom’s TV networks,
CBS and UPN; eight cable channels; syndicated TV (think shows
like Seinfeld reruns and Wheel of Fortune); and nonmedia promotions
and sponsorships. Since then, many major advertisers have pulled
money out of TV and announced cross-platform, multimedia cam-
paigns. Recently, the Mitsubishi Motor Company pulled all of its
prime-time network TV ads—$120 million worth—because of high
prices and smaller audiences. An American Advertising Federation sur-
vey found that advertisers allocated 8.35 percent of their budgets for