Advertisers Making a Noted Shift from TV to the Web

Some of the country’s biggest advertisers are increasingly pulling funds from their TV ad budgets in a move to place a bigger emphasis on online video advertising, according to new reports.

A May 12 Wall Street Journal report revealed that advertisers like MasterCard, Mondelez International and Verizon Wireless have begun to moved some of their money previously spent on television ads to online outlets in the last 12 months.

In recent years, more and more consumers have turned to online videos for both entertainment and information about new products.

“For us, it’s really about shifting to where audiences are,” Laura Desmond, chief executive of Starcom MediaVest, which purchases approximately $40 billion in ad time and space every year for marketers like Procter & Gamble Co., told the Wall Street Journal. “More and more people are spending time with other channels beyond the broadcast and cable networks.”

Companies have been putting money into online advertising for years — but this marks the first time this money has come out of their budgets for TV ads. According to the Wall Street Journal, both an improvement in the quality of online video content and the ability to measure audience engagement have encouraged marketers to pull money from TV advertising budgets.

“My hope is that these funds will go towards the production of video content for online and not just ad buys from content produced for TV first,” says Bryan Bolan, Founder & Creative Director at b-Mc Creative. “TV ads do not work as online ads. Be creative, be innovative, be unique. Taking TV ads and placing them online is lazy.”

According to techzone360.com, it is predicted that TV advertising budgets will remain larger than digital and online ad budges until 2018; but after that, TV ad spending will slip to 36.1% of advertising budgets and digital, online and mobile spending will reach 36.4% of ad budgets.

For now, TV advertisements still remain highly appealing to marketers because of their unmatched ability to reach a mass audience — for example, as many as 100 million viewers can tune in to see Super Bowl commercials each year, the Wall Street Journal reported. But as younger audiences spend more and more time watching video online, marketers will spend more and more money making videos for them.