Mastering the New Media

Nikola Tesla, Philo Taylor Farnsworth and Tim Berners-Lee are three names not typically associated with advertising. Each, however, is credited with the invention of a new form of communication and technology, each of which eventually became an opportunity for merchants to hawk their wares to an increasingly bigger and broader marketplace, changing the face of advertising.

Advertising is the opportunity that knocked with the invention of radio (Tesla), television (Farnsworth) and the World Wide Web (Berners-Lee).

As with all new technologies, it took many years for the mastery of each to be developed as a source of advertising. We can learn from the history of the two earlier mediums as we prepare to master the third.

Radio was introduced in the U.S. in 1920 when KDKA, Pittsburgh, PA went on the air as the first licensed commercial station. The first radio commercial is believed to have been in March, 1922 when Remick’s Music Store in Seattle, Washington sponsored a once-a-week music program on station KFC. With the sponsorship they encouraged listeners to come into Remick’s the next day and purchase the music they heard performed on the show.

By mid-April, 1922, radio advertising was ordered to “cease and desist” by the Hoover administration, since direct advertising was not permitted under DOC regulations. Radio and broadcast pioneer David Sarnoff even said, “The wooden music box has no commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?”

When the DOC regulation was lifted, advertisers were unsure of what to do with the new medium. Early commercials were often nothing more than print ads, written for newspapers, read on the radio.

It would not be until the 1930s that the art of creating advertising specifically for radio began to develop. By 1947 radio advertising was so much a part of the culture that a viciously funny movie, The Hucksters, starring Clark Gable, lampooned it.

But by 1947 television had already started to make its appearance. Approximately 6,000 households had TV. Shows and broadcast times were limited and many of the early TV shows were simply radio programs adapted for the new medium. By 1951 the number of households having TV increased to more than 12 million. TV was accepted even faster than radio and by 1955 half of all U.S. households were watching TV every night.

In 1955 the influence that TV watching had on consumer behavior started to be noticed. Advertisers were quick to embrace the new medium, but it wasn’t until the breakthrough TV ad creative produced by Manhattan agency Doyle, Dane, Bernbach in the early and mid-1960s that creative standards were set for achieving product and brand dominance through TV advertising.

For both of these mediums, the time span from introduction and acceptance of the medium to mastering its use for commercial advertising, took a span of approximately 15-18 years.

Think of that in relationship to today’s new media – the Internet. It was in 1991 that the World Wide Web (WWW) was presented in general release and access to the Internet was provided by AOL for DOS. In 1993 it was declared that WWW technology would be freely usable by anyone with no fees being charged and AOL was launched for Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows.

By the end of 1995 only .4% of the world population used the Internet. In 1996 President Bill Clinton said, “When I took office only high energy physicists had heard of the World Wide Web. Now even my cat has its own page.” Today approximately 75% of the U.S. population uses the Internet. And that makes it, like radio and TV before it, the new media for advertising.

As with other media, mastering the use of the medium for advertising is not being done overnight. It is evolving. Given the same time paradigms as new mediums before it, one could expect us to finally master advertising on the Web sometime between 2011 and 2014. And that is why you need to be doing Web advertising now.

The Web is the new media. It continues to grow as THE source for product information, business connections, and personal information. In 2009 it is expected that $7 billion will be spent just on search marketing.

In 2008 candidate Barack Obama spent over $16 million on Web advertising while opponent John McCain spent only $3.6 million. Web advertising needs to be an essential part of any company’s marketing budget. Now on its heels is mobile marketing, a process that chronologically is still in its infancy.

As you look at integrating Web marketing into your overall strategy, there are many options available for you. Look at which ones work best for your type of business, your customers and your prospects.

Mastery includes knowing how to create advertising messages for the medium. It is not about adapting TV commercials or print ads to Web technology. It requires thinking about Web technology and creating ads that use it properly.

It requires that you understand the various media opportunities. The number of new media options is staggering in comparison to old media. The questions you need to answer are:

Should you advertise on search engines, and if so, what words do you buy? How much should you pay per click? Should you be running ads on other sites that have a visitor synergy with yours? Should you use social media? If yes, how will it work for you? Is a blog right for you? Do you have the staff to properly maintain and monitor a blog?

You should also consider e-mail marketing. Should you be doing e-mail marketing? Do you have your own e-mail database? Have your e-mail customers given you permission to e-market to them? How often is the right frequency for you? Do you know how to construct e-mails to get maximum delivery and avoid being blocked?

What will your follow through be for Web and e-marketing? How do you get the contact? How do you make the sale? Is just getting respondents to your Web site going to be enough? Is your Web site set up for e-marketing or is it still the same old site you put up five years ago?

This is a critical time for integrating Web marketing into your strategy and budget. The questions I just raised are only the beginning of what you need to answer in order to implement your Web marketing campaign so that you can master the new media.

It isn’t an option of “if” you should do it, but “how” you will do it. Marshall McLuhan, author of Understanding Media where he first wrote that the medium is the message, said, “It is the framework that changes with each new technology, not just the picture within the frame.”

As you work on a greater integration of Web, Internet and e-mail marketing be sure you are changing your framework and not just the picture.

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