Does anybody care about commercials?

Posted by Eric on March 21, 2009
Business, Sports
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Industry executives project online ad revenue for the NCAA tournament will reach $30 million dollars this year, up 30% from 2008 according to Business Week. Companies like AT&T and Coca Cola lead a list of 35 online advertisers for CBS this year. Anyone watching the NCAA tournament games this weekend has no doubt seen the Capital One commercial where the mom picks the picture of her kid covered in spaghetti to put on her credit card.

But does anybody care? The trend chart below shows that overall Internet chatter about both AT&T and Capital One is flat, if not down since the tournament started. If online sponsors aren’t getting any more chatter, what are they getting? Is the sponsorship investment paying off?

March Madness sponsors

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4 Comments to Does anybody care about commercials?

Patchchord
March 21, 2009

First off, not all web users are alike. Just because they’re not chattering online doesn’t mean they’re not noticing the spots and sponsorships.

Jonathan
March 21, 2009

Completely aside from the fact that we are in the midst of a huge recession right now, the entire marketing industry is in the throes of an unsettling change in the way things work. In a capitalist society, consumers learn about products and services through advertising. But if the sellers of those products and services suspect people are not reading papers, or watching commercial TV or paying a whole lot of attention to online pop-up ads, what do they do? Where can they turn?

I don’t think we’ll know the answers to those questions for quite some time. But in the meantime the advertising industry will probably continue to trundle along with tradition TV and radio spots.

It’s all they know.

Chris Shore
March 22, 2009

Online chatter is a fair way to research the effectiveness of the ads on traditional media as those ads, being interruptive in nature, must create a buzz with humor or emotion to make up for the interruption. If consumers are not talking about those ads, then they are not noticed enough to be effective. Advertisements in traditional media must create a buzz, and since most of the world is online and chattering, you can rate that using online tracking.

That being said, it is time for more companies to look at the online communities where this chatter is happening and become involved. But they must not approach these communities as advertising areas. They must approach it as an opportunity to connect with their current and prospective customers. This connection will cause conversations. And markets are conversations.

Shari Weiss
March 24, 2009

Man, do I ever agree with Jonathan [above] — my ad students reported that Pepsi “misspent” 60% of their $400 million last year . . . doing what they always have done. Do the execs go home and watch commercials? or TIVO through them. No, we don’t know what’s coming, but we’re working on it . . . and it won’t be what we’ve got today. It WILL be what we use today’s technology to create.

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