According to a study that was conducted by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and by Bain & Co., those companies who are spending the most money on brand building are spending the least on Internet advertising. Ironically, the organizations found that direct response advertising has continued to grow despite the current state of the economy. Yet, brand advertising on the Web has not been growing, despite the fact that it provides the greatest growth upside.

To help media companies draw in customers, Bain has created an “action plan” for them to follow. This plan includes:

· Improving display creative
· Agreeing to new brand-friendly metrics
· Refining targeting options
· Building industry-specialist marketing and sales teams
· Simplifying the buying process

According to John Frelinghuysen, who is the media practice leader for Bain, media companies need to make a concerted effort to improve their product as well as their services. He also stresses the importance of attracting companies who are focused on creating a brand, saying, “being able to attract brand dollars will be important to maintain premium pricing and value of contextual environments.”

Frelinghuysen also maintains that online creative isn’t being utilized to its fullest potential. In fact, he feels it hasn’t changed much over the past few years, resulting in Websites that are filled with non-interactive 2D display ads, small formatting that is difficult to read and pages that are overly cluttered. Whereas marketers and agencies may not be able to create Websites that are more user-friendly and attractive, media companies can pick up the slack.

“Agencies also have to think about how to take advantage of the medium,” said Sherrill Mane, who is the senior VP-industry services at the IAB, in a recent adage.com article. “If an agency isn’t able to produce the creative that captivates and does more for brands, then media partners will.”

Establishing the proper performance metrics is another important step toward better utilization of the Internet.
“The clear message coming out of interviews [with marketers] was ‘we don’t have any of the right metrics,’” Mr. Frelinghuysen said in the article. “And the sellers are saying ‘we have loads of metrics.’ The people who are making these decisions of how much to allocate to online and how to think about that in relation to TV buys are people who’ve grown up with TV. … They think online has digital-specialty metrics and they want metrics that speak a common language with the offline world.”
To assist with this problem, Bain recommends realigning sales and marketing teams so they can address industry-specific verticals while selling across multiple platforms. Interestingly, Bain also found that those companies who dealt with the same agency with both online and offline creative were the most satisfied with the outcome. Therefore, those companies that are able to provide a full range of services with the help of media companies are the most likely to keep their clients happy.