Major Marketers: TV Spots Less Effective; Eyeing Online, Search

Advertisers will be spending significantly less on television and increasingly more on online advertising in the next couple of years, according to a poll of major advertisers by Forrester and the Association of National Advertisers, writes ClickZ. Some 78 percent of the surveyed marketers said the effectiveness of their TV advertising has diminished in the last two years. Some 80 percent said they would instead invest more in web advertising, and 68 percent pointed to search marketing specifically. Also, 70 percent said digital video recorders (DVR) and video-on-demand (VOD) would "reduce or destroy" the effectiveness of 30-second spots; a large plurality of advertisers said they had experimented with ads on DVRs (49 percent) or VOD environments (44 percent). Some 24 percent said they would to reduce TV ad spend by at least 25 percent and reallocate once DVR penetration grows to more than 30 million households. In addition to online, program sponsorships, product placement and online video ads were mentioned by smaller percentages of respondents. Those polled included Charles Schwab, Colgate, Dunkin' Donuts, Johnson & Johnson, Mattel, Pfizer and Verizon. Partial results of the study were presented at the ANA's 2006 Television Advertising Forum.