Yahoo (YHOO) is playing to its strengths as they held an event in New York they named "Yahoo In Front," where they took aim at marketers to persuade them to use Yahoo in more of their advertising strategies. This is in reference to the upfront which is three months away, and has went through changes since last year when big companies held back their money to keep it available for potential cross-platform spending.
This is a good move as there is a lot of uncertainty now, even though the scatter has been strong for some networks, there is still a lot of caution and uncertainty whether that will transfer to a stronger upfront this year, especially with the weak auto industry.
Lost Remote cites Wenda Harris Millard for trying to show the strengths of Yahoo versus TV; she said concerning TV that here is no way to know “who may or may not be interested in the product being advertised.” An obvious remark aimed at the strength of Yahoo and the Internet to measure users much more accurately.
Millard also reminded them that only 6 percent of advertising spend is targeted online, while 17 percent of all media consumption is online.
She went on to say that marketers are missing a lot by not understanding that huge difference.
The upfront should really be interesting this year, for the very reasons mentioned by Millard. With a huge gap between consumption and spending online, and the auto industry cutting back huge on spending, other companies may just hold back as well this year, causing even more uncertainty in the industry.
I think this will become the way of life for several years until online marketing spend catches up with Internet media consumption.
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