One popular trend that advertisers implement into their marketing strategy during a recession period is to transfer their offline advertising to the Internet. Hoag Levins of AdAge writes,
“Many analysts now agree that when marketing budgets come under pressure in a stressed economy, those sectors that can best document their connection to ROI, such as search-engine advertising, are far more attractive to corporate chiefs than other kinds of less-trackable traditional advertising.”
Tessa Wergert of ClickZ.com observes that several businesses, including the newspaper industry, have managed to flourish in the business by prioritizing online ads through displays and classifieds. What is even more interesting is that these newspaper companies have managed to collaborate with their competitors by advertising online!
According to blogger Andrew Chen, there are several businesses that continue to thrive with online advertising:
- Search
- Ecommerce
- Classifieds
- Shopping comparison
- Remnant ad networks
- Lead generation
- Product reviews
The competition between these businesses creates pressure among the industries that will encourage search results to become stronger within search engines. Chen elaborates and asserts that they prove to be more helpful than direct mail, yellow pages and newspapers.
Video, social networks communication forums are also considered “some of the most brand-dependent companies out there,” notes Chen. Although there is some difficulty in capitalizing on these applications (since users are not in the mood to buy when using the products), these trends offer an opportunity for new companies to partner with more established media businesses to increase profit.