HAS THE DIGITAL

ADVERTISING
REVOLUTION BEEN
OVER-HYPED?
BA (Hons) Advertising: Creative
Stevie Rowing-Parker
January, 2011
‘Top Copy ’
Bucks New University
Faculty of Design, Media & Management
BA (Hons) Advertising: Creative
Has the digital advertising revolution been over-hyped?
Stevie Rowing-Parker
Phil Dearman
January, 2011
6,921 words
VM603
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Rachel Gott for giving me an insight into
advertising recruitment and general advertising trends. Some lovely
advertising creatives took time out of their Christmas holidays to
answer my questions. This dissertation could not exist without the
knowledge and varied opinion they kindly donated. Thank you
Kieron Roe, Adam Collins, Ben Beale and especially Jon Sayers for his
generous hour-long phone call. Thank you to Phil Dearman for his
enthusiasm and openess. Lastly, thank you to my darling mum who
happily proofed this dissertation for hours upon hours.
CONTENTS
Introduction ............... 01-03
Are television advertisements’ ............... 04-18
days numbered?

Does ATL or digital advertising .............. 19- 28

have the best tools to speak to a
local or targeted audience?

Whispers in corridors, loud ............... 28-38

opinions in the pub and
anonymous comments online.
Is digital or ATL the best area
to work in?

Conclusion ............... 39-40

References ............... 41-46
Illustrations ............... 47-49
 The world is going digital. We share, chat, buy and laugh online. The
new digital landscape is changing our habits and allowing previously
unthinkable ideas to become a reality, but what does this mean for
advertising? Digital advertising has been billed as a television-advertising
killer, but television is still the largest tool in an advertiser’s arsenal.
Two areas of advertising are referred to throughout this dissertation.
They are ‘above the line advertising’ (ATL) and ‘digital advertising’.
ATL is also known as traditional and refers to advertising agencies
that make television advertisements, radio advertisements, posters,
billboards and press advertising as well as any other mediums that can
now include digital advertising. Digital advertising agencies specialise
in online advertising but can also make other forms of advertising.

Introduction Integrated advertising agencies are agencies that do both ATL and digital
advertising.
Damian Blackden, President of Omnicom Media Group suggested
that many ATL advertising agencies use out-of-date business models and
must adapt or die in the digital age (Sweeney, 2009). David Lubars states
those digital advertising agencies that are declaring the death of big ATL
advertising agencies do so as a business posture. This is a sales pitch for
clients and an attitude for journalists. ‘They don’t believe a word of it,’
says Lubars (Gillette, 2010). These differing opinions represent the two
sides of advertising this dissertation investigates.
It is understandable that people are getting excited about digital
advertising. The ever-changing online world is revolutionising the way
in which we communicate, so surely a business built on communicating
would jump in on the conversation but this is proving trickier than
expected. The revolutions we are experiencing online are benefitting
personal relationships as well as increasing the availability of information
but are they a match for the captive consumer audience sat on the sofa
watching the television?

1 2
 Targeting a local or niche audience can save advertisers lots of money
by only advertising to those consumers that are most likely to make a
purchase. ATL local television and press advertisements can look costly
and outdated compared to the intelligent data used by online-targeted
search advertising. This study illustrates the extent of targeted search
advertising within digital advertising but questions the privacy issues of
such intelligent systems.
This report will interview advertising industry members to reflect the
subjectivity and personal opinion prevalent throughout the advertising
industry. Those interviewed are purposefully from different areas of
advertising, ATL and digital. Each industry member interviewed answers
general themes around ATL and digital advertising as well as being asked Are television
this report’s overall dissertation question; was digital advertising over-
hyped? The interviewees express their unanimous opinion on this subject. advertisements’
days numbered?

3 4
The Internet is the home of viral video. It is now normal to huddle with
friends and colleagues around a computer screen to watch that must
see video on YouTube. Even if you are alone, friends can share videos
with you via social networking websites. Digital entertainment is more
flexible than traditional cable television. Obscure and older content can
be viewed for free with a simple search (Alang, 2010). This is a huge
change from reading the television guide and staying in to catch your
favourite show. This flexibility has encouraged consumers to spend more
time online. The digital advertising industry has been able to capitalise on
the Internet’s popularity as digital advertising grew by over ten percent to
$23.4 billion in 2008 (Schonfeld, 2009).
Does this increase in digital advertising mean consumers are now
spending more time online than watching television in the traditional
way of sitting in a comfy chair watching a television set? A survey named
Touchpoints 3 concluded television was watched more than any other
medium. The Internet came third in the survey at nineteen percent
beaten by radio at twenty-six percent and television at fifty percent
(Thinkbox, 2010a). The rise of the Internet has enabled conversation
about television, Comparethemarket.com’s Alexandr the Meerkat has
over 700,000 Facebook fans and The X factor has 1.49 million fans
on Facebook. The viral video sensation Susan Boyle was seen by over Figure 1 Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent,
11 April 2009. Over 150 million people
150 million people worldwide, this was of course a video taken from a viewed her performance online worldwide.
traditional television broadcast. The Internet is being used to talk about
the television we are still watching (Thinkbox, 2010a).

5 6
 Television sets are in many people’s homes. It could take years to In Edelman’s fourth annual (2010) Trust in entertainment industry
change the habit of watching the television. For many families the report a survey of 18-34 year old UK residents asked what their sources
television is the centre of family activity and entertainment. Watching a of entertainment were? The second largest entertainment source was
programme in the traditional way of sitting on the sofa with a remote internet/web at twenty-six percent beaten only by television at forty-four
control is for some an enjoyable way to consume entertainment. You percent (Edelman, 2010). This shows the Internet is seen as a form of
leave yourself open to whatever is next on television rather than having entertainment but not as popular as television. Edelman’s report also
to choose each video, which could be either positive or negative. Having asked those questioned to name some entertainment companies off the
no control over the programming means you may watch things you top of their heads. In the UK thirty-six percent mentioned a television/
would not have bothered with but enjoyed once you watched. The network related company but only two percent mentioned a computer
negative is lack of flexibility when you know what you want to watch related company (Edelman, 2010).
and want to watch it now but it is not on the schedule. The passive Social media is a new form of online entertainment. A report of the
watching experience may be enjoyable but will consumers demand more market share of visits in the US in November 2010 showed Facebook
interaction and flexibility in their living rooms now they know what the has now overtaken Google as the most visited website. Google came in
Internet is capable of ? second followed by YouTube in third. The fourth to tenth places were
Google TV claims to take the best of the web and the best of all mail or search websites (Cohen, 2010). If Facebook were a country it
television and merge the two together. Google TV comes in-built to would be the third most populated country in the world (Espresso, 2010).
a new television or as a box for existing television sets. The famous How can advertisers use this area of entertainment to sell more products?
Google search bar is the main component of the Google TV interface.
You can search for programmes while watching another. Users with
android mobile devices can use their device as a remote control for
Google TV. Google TV has full access to the Internet allowing the user
to use their television to display photos or update their status. Whilst it
will be free for the next five years, Google have many protective patents
and its owners MPEG LA plan to charge for its use (BBC News, 2010).
Google TV still uses the traditional television model of
advertisements before and during content. Does this mean television
advertisements will stay as they are apart from migrating to online video
and in turn the media placement costs rising to the same as traditional
broadcast television? Will online television be classed as television
advertising or online advertising? Only time will tell.

7 8

Figure 2 Blentec: Will it Blend? This episode
shows an Apple iPad being successfully
blended by a Blendtec blender.
9 10
A long-standing example is Blendtec: Will it Blend? The blending
company made online videos of the Blendtec destroying items and
allowed users to interact with suggestions of what to blend next. Users
wanted to see an iPhone blended, so they blended an iPhone and the
viewers loved them for it. Home sales of blenders increased by more
than seven hundred percent (Bullas, 2010). Website Mashable.com’s ‘5
winning social media campaigns to learn from’ article included only one
video as a key element of its campaign. The other successful campaigns
were based around clever uses of technology or innovation to offer a
consumer something they wanted. Gap teamed with popular group-
buying site Groupon to offer $50 of clothes for $25. In one day 441,000
groupons were sold, this came to a little more than £11 million in total.
Starbucks used location-based application Foursquare to give deals to
frequent visitors as well as using Twitter to promote freebies. Kieron
Roe, digital advertising creative said ‘usually creative work in these
areas is more clever than creative’ (Roe to Rowing-Parker, 2010). Does
this mean we might see the end of purely entertainment based digital
advertising? It depends on each individual’s definition of entertainment.
It could mean a funny video, learning about something that fascinates,
getting a bargain or using online tools to free up more time.
Shopping has now got social. Websites such as Amazon incorporate
customer reviews into every product page helping potential owners make
up their mind. If this culture continues will selling a duff product on a
big advertising budget become impossible? Imagine a supermarket of
the future where user ratings out of ten are placed under each item. Why
would a consumer buy a product with a funny advertisement but a 3/10
user rating when the own brand alternative sat next to it is the same price
or cheaper with a user rating of 9/10? More brands are using Twitter
to talk about themselves and talk to their customers. If a brand is not
talking about themself online then someone else will and they might not
talk about the brand as flatteringly as the brand would (Reyes, 2010).
 Will digital entertainment mediums take over from television? The
Institute of Practioners in Advertising report Marketing in the era of
Accountability found campaigns that used television were on average
twenty-five percent more effective than those which did not (Institute of
Practitioners in Advertising, 2007). Why is this? What can television do
that other mediums cannot? IPA research suggested emotion and fame
were the most effective creative strategies and television excels in these
areas (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, 2007). Does this mean
consumers do not want to be advertised to when they are in their online
social spaces? Television adverts do interrupt content but consumers
have grown used to this model and can see the benefit of free content
for advertisements. This means the advertiser has the consumers’
full attention when speaking to them as opposed to contending with
other content on a webpage. Online users like to use their laptop while
Figure 3 Facebook logo.
accessing other media such as the television. This can create short
attention spans making it hard to compete for a user’s attention online.
This could make it harder to speak to a consumer online than speaking
to a consumer sat on their sofa looking and listening to a television
advertisement.
Nevertheless digital is still proving useful to advertisers as more than
eighty seven percent of advertising firms say they are most likely to use Figure 4 Twitter logo. Figure 5 YouTube logo.
Facebook in client campaigns, followed by Twitter (57.1%) and YouTube
(39.3%) (Hesney, 2010). This shows how advertising agencies can use
all of the tools available to them. ‘In terms of on-demand content,
interaction, layout, detail, cross-linking etc, that you simply can’t compare
the media types, and television will never grow to become as flexible as
the Web’ (Twitzer, 2010). There is no denying the flexibility of the web
but when faced with an online advert, consumers can use this flexibility
to escape online advertising.

11 12
 Social media is a stage for conversation. Television is a one-way
communication compared to peer-to-peer social media communication
in which the consumer shares the advertising out of choice. They decide
what is good and bad and who should see it. This is positive because
it becomes earned media rather than paid for media. The Internet was
forged on sharing and communicating, this is what advertising has always
been about but there was not a medium that could enable peer-to-peer
sharing on an immediate, large scale. There are 1.3 billion people online
with 50,000 new users each day who are accessing social media to share
their opinion, recommend, complain and seek out others’ opinions
(Muelleur, 2010).
Portable devices are getting smaller and smaller. We are already
complaining of the downside to portable entertainment with friends
being glued to their devices rather than you (Clancy, 2009). It has been
proved that advertising works better when consumers watch together
(Thinkbox, 2010a). Television is a viral medium as advertisements
are talked about in the living room as they are broadcast. Viewers can
share their experiences of advertisements and often take ownership of
favourite advertisements, pointing them out to others. The optimum
number of people to produce engagement while viewing is two as it
gives another opinion and an opportunity to share experiences without
so many that it becomes distracting. This is all good news for television
advertising as shared viewing accounts for seventy percent of television
viewing in the UK (Thinkbox, 2010b).
Looking at technological advances and trends can give us some
indication as to where advertising is going but a great indicator is to see
where clients and advertising agencies are choosing to put their hard
earned cash.
13
Among Advertising Age’s “100 Leading National Advertisers,”
69 allocated a smaller share of their total ad budgets toward the
four traditional measured media - television, radio, newspapers and
magazines - in 2006 than in 2005.
58 of those advertisers both decreased their spending share on
the four traditional media and increased the share going to the
Internet.
Combined, the 100 top advertisers spent nearly $230 million less
on the traditional four media in 2006 compared with 2005, while
boosting Internet advertising spending by $558 million (Marketing
Charts, 2010).
Advertising Age’s survey is good news for digital advertising. The
issue for digital is that it is forecast very positively but does not back this
up with solid data.
Television remained the top advertising choice in the first quarter of
2010, with just under forty-two percent of advertising agencies saying
their corporate clients are more focused on television than any other
medium, though the number was down a substantial twenty-seven
percent from a year ago. Whereas Internet/digital advertising continues
to increase with sixty-eight percent of advertising agencies reporting that
their customers are more focused on digital than they were a year ago
(Hesney, 2010).
Just as radio gave way to television, we can see that television is
slowly giving way to digital. The good news for television stations
and networks for now is that they remain the dominant medium.
Our survey taps into the perception that digital has its limitations
in reach and effectiveness and must still be used with traditional
media like television. But the trend is clear (Strata, 2010).
14

Figure 6 Cross Media Advertising Market share in the
U.S Advertising Market – 2008. Taken from the Internet
Advertising Bureau ‘Internet Ad Revenue Report.
15
Figure 6 illustrates data from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB)
for the USA advertising market in 2008. Newspapers top this table at
$34.3 billion. This is interesting as newspaper advertising is an ATL
medium choice. Another ATL medium, television distribution comes in
second at $28.8 billion followed by the Internet in third place at £23.4
billion. The subtitle of this figure is ‘The Internet has continued to
grow in significance when compared to other ad supported media’. It is
interesting that this was the most important finding in the IAB report’s
opinion as it was given pride of place as the sub title. This is curious
given the chart clearly shows that Internet advertising came third at $23.4
billion. Furthermore, the categories the IAB report chose to display their
research have been broken down into three categories, TV Distribution,
TV Networks: Cable and TV Networks: Broadcast Network. The
highest of the these TV categories was TV distribution at $28.8 billion,
this is only $5.2 billion more than Internet advertising, making Internet
advertising look a popular medium. Internet advertising could also have
been organised into separate categories such as; search, social media,
classifieds, digital video. When all three television categories are added
together, television jumps to the top of the table at $68.2 billion. This
is not $5.2 billion more than Internet advertising as it was when broken
down into three categories but a rather larger figure of $44.8 billion.
It could be argued that the IAB report divided television advertising
into three categories to make television’s contribution appear smaller.
Television advertising is the largest medium in figure 6 and it would
take a significant amount of growth for Internet advertising to overtake
television’s contribution.
16
 In contrast to the implied findings of the IAB, television advertising
is far reaching. ’You can reach 73% of people in a day on television,
within a week you can reach 92% and within a month, 98% - no other
medium can better that’ (Thinkbox, 2010a). This is further illustrated
by the role television debates played in the 2010 UK general election.
Ten million Britons watched a relatively unknown candidate Nick Clegg
win (by popular opinion) the first televised candidate debate. Television
gave Clegg the opportunity to show 10 million potential voters that he,
(the underdog) was the man for the job. This was dream publicity for
Clegg, an even stage to broadcast to the masses (Huffington Post, 2010).
In broadcast moments like these it can feel as if the whole country
is watching the same programme at the same time, united. This is an
example of the power of television.
Television’s days are not numbered. Digital advertising is merely
denting television advertising. Television remains the most popular
medium whereas digital advertising is currently the third most popular
medium behind newspapers and television. Despite this, television and
digital when used together can give a brand the opportunity to reach a
Figure 7 Nick Clegg during the first
wide and varied audience. televised UK general election debate.

17 18
 The world is getting smaller. Targeted advertising tries to speak one to
one with their target audience. This is a very useful form of advertising
if the target audience is in one specific location or the product is in a
very niche market. Which area is best equipped to deliver this, digital or
traditional?
ATL can use press advertising in local newspapers and magazines.
These publications can be lowbrow and contain cluttered local
advertising. Although cheap and targeted, these publications could
possibly bring a brand’s image down by advertising in them. A good

Does ATL or digital example of this is my hometown’s local newspaper The Saltash Journal
in figure 8. The newspaper has one story of less than twenty-five words

advertising have and the rest is made up of text crammed advertising.

the best tools to

speak to a local or
targeted audience?

Figure 8 Saltash Journal is a local newspaper

in the town of Saltash in Cornwall, UK.

19 20
 Interestingly, the second most used form of communications in
2010’s IPA Effectiveness Awards was press advertising, used in 31 of
the 38 winning entries (a combination of national newspapers, regional
newspapers and magazines) (IPA, 2010). It would be hard for advertisers
to find local niche press. If a client only wanted to advertise to bikers in
one area they might be forced to advertise in local generic press unless
there was a biker’s club newsletter.
Outdoor advertising (billboards) are used for national campaigns but
can also be used by advertisers to target consumers in a particular area.
A billboard company in USA put a picture of Miss America, Sharlene
Wells on billboards in a town. The purpose of this was to show the
effectiveness of billboard advertising. Surveys were completed before
and after the one month of Sharlene’s presence on the town’s billboards.
Before the project, less than two percent of those surveyed could recall
her name compared with twelve percent afterwards (McDaniel, 2010).
Television can also go regional. In the United Kingdom the three
main commercial channels are ITV, Channel 4 and Five. Each of these
stations has regional television options. ITV leads with fourteen different
regions to choose from followed by Channel 4 with six regional options.
Lastly, Five has four regional options (Thinkbox, 2010c). This can allow
smaller clients and budgets to use the most proven, powerful medium
but on a more accessible scale.
This is positive for local advertising but not as useful for niche
advertising. Apart from national press publications, ATL advertising
lacks reach in niche areas. How might traditional mass marketing
advertise to a national historical re-enactment group? One possibility
might be if the group produced their own newsletter and allowed space
for advertisers. Another possibility would be utilising their website or
forum community if they have one. This would enable a highly targeted
audience to be accessed easily and cheaply.
21
The online world is now available in our pockets wherever we are.
Digital advertising now has mobile advertising as one of its tools. Mobile
is generally just Internet browsing on the go and applications using
the Internet but mobile advertising gets very useful when it comes to
regional advertising. Using sophisticated geo-targeting on the mobile,
advertisers can have the power to help consumers find what they need
and then deliver the consumer to the client (Elkin, 2010). This tactic was
used in the Starbucks campaign discussed earlier.
Digital advertising can tell where consumers are, what they like and
what they have been searching for recently. Regardless of whether this is a
violation of consumers’ privacy, such precise targeting is more difficult for
an ATL campaign to achieve than a digital campaign. Is the majority of
digital advertising choosing functionality over entertainment? Why bother
charming the target audience when the advertiser can deliver them to their
client before the potential audience has realised what has happened?
Search is the most popular method in online advertising, accounting
for forty-seven percent of all online advertising (IAB, 2010). One of
the reasons for its success is that it is a targeted method. Basic targeted
advertisements rely on keywords but how much of search advertising is
going one step further? There are two main forms of this highly targeted
advertising, behavioral and contextual solutions. Behavioral solutions
are when advertising networks follow users across the Internet gathering
useful information and preferences about them (Gonshorovitz, 2010).
22
Some examples of the types of information gathered are: Figure 9 Does
an article about
two parents
• Search history – analyzing search keywords grilling their
dead two-year-
• Browse history – analyzing content of visited pages old boy inspire
• Purchase history you to learn
how to grill
• Social networks like an expert
• Geography with Kingsford
Briquets?

Contextual solutions are when advertising networks scan the

keywords on a webpage. For example, when a user is browsing a
sporting website, they would likely see banner or pop up advertisements
for sports equipment. This has produced inappropriate results in the
past. Figures 9-10 are examples of contextual advertisements placed
inappropriately by a digital system rather than a person.

Figure 10 An article reporting on the violence in Greece on the Guardian

website was accompanied by a Greek tourism advertisement.

23 24
 The consumer is being delivered to the advertisement in behavioral or
contextual digital solutions. It is worth noting that while search accounts
for forty-seven percent of online advertising that does not mean that
only forty-seven percent of online advertisements are targeted. A
survey conducted by the IAB states that more than eighty percent of
online advertising campaigns in 2009 involved tracking of some sort
(Kessler, 2010). Do consumers know they are being tracked? A survey
asked participants to imagine an advertising agency selecting which
advertisements to show them based on their Internet history. Just over
half of those surveyed recognised this was something that ‘happens a
lot right now’ (Kessler, 2010). This suggests consumers do not know
the extent of tracking. Christopher Soghoian studies data security and
privacy as a Ph.D. candidate at Indiana University:

People type the most intimate things into search engines and other
websites primarily because they think they’re anonymous. They
type in things on the web that sometimes they wouldn’t even ask
their own doctors… in fact, we are not anonymous, these sites are
tracking us (Soghoian, 2010, cited in Kessler, 2010).
Figure 11 An Internet user on search engine website Google.
Users’ searches could be tracked.

25 26
 If consumers fight against targeting, online advertising could suffer.
The online advertising industry says it would self regulate, this could lead
to an opt-out rather than an opt-in system. Users would have to opt-out
of each website’s targeted advertising. Users may not notice this and
targeted advertising could stay the same. If this system were replaced,
whereby users had to opt-in to allow targeted adverts, it would surely kill
the online advertising industry overnight. This seems unlikely as users
like free content and the Internet would get expensive without those
targeted advertisements paying for users’ favourite sites (Kessler, 2010). Whispers in corridors,
Targeted search advertising is the staple of digital advertising today.
Recently I interviewed Larry File, head of communications for loud opinions in the pub
Ginsters. Ginsters are a large manufacturer of baked goods, most
famously Cornish pasties. Larry worked with BBH, a very successful and anonymous
advertising agency for over ten years on Ginsters’ campaigns. Recently
Ginsters have moved their business to Grey, another large advertising comments online.
agency. When I asked Larry about digital advertising he said he believes
it to be important but he is not sure how to use it yet. He added that
he has told their new advertising agency Grey that Ginsters are open to
Is digital or ATL the best
using any media as long as it is the best for the campaign. Interestingly,
the new Ginsters campaign will be made up of mostly television
area to work in?
advertisements and posters, both ATL mediums (File to Rowing-Parker,
2010).
Digital advertising looks best equipped to deal with local and niche
advertising due to the intelligent data used by online advertising systems.
Search advertising is powerful and this shows in the near half majority
share of online advertising.

27 28
Creative advertising is subjective. This means the industry is full of
personal opinions. This last section aims to replicate that by interviewing
creatives from different areas of advertising. Thank you to the wonderful
contributors, whom have had this dissertation sent back to them so they
can verify they have been paraphrased correctly. How this report has
interpreted and compared the interviewees’ comments are this author’s
own conclusions.
Advertising is about the future, what is happening next? What is
exciting and different? Digital is new and undiscovered whereas television
and print are heavily trodden paths. David Lubars told Felix Gillette that
rather than scaring senior advertising men, the technology revolution has
increased their interest in advertising. Everyday there are not only new
ideas but new technologies to use (Gillette, 2010). There is no denying
how exciting digital can be, advertising creatives have the opportunity
to do things no one has ever done before. Answers to a brief could be
anything from a new piece of technology to a social community. This
has made it more difficult to examine which creative areas of digital
are growing as radical uses of digital are in the minority when looking
at overall digital advertising revenue. Digital video accounted for three
percent of digital advertising revenue in 2008, up from two percent in
2007 (IAB, 2008). This might shock some who believe digital advertising
to be mostly videos hoping to achieve viral status.
Search and classifieds made up fifty-nine percent of full year revenues
in 2008 (IAB, 2008). These mediums are not ideal for creative advertising
that hopes to tell a story or make a viewer connect on an emotive level.
Kieron Roe, a creative at digital agency Lean Mean Fighting Machine Figure 12 Craigslist is a successful online classified website.
stated that he had hardly ever worked on search or classified briefs in his
career (Roe to Rowing-Parker, 2010). This said, they must work or else
they would not make up the majority of digital advertising. I asked some
of my interviewees if they thought there was any room for creativity in
search and classifieds.

29 30
 Adam Collins is an Art Director at JWT, an ATL agency founded in
1864. He stated that classifieds are not his favourite place to advertise
as the work is often done by those not in a creative agency. However,
he believes you can still be creative in search and classified advertising,
it depends on the brief and your effort and creative vision (Collins to
Rowing-Parker, 2010).
Jon Sayers, a senior Copywriter and Creative Director suggested
that online classifieds are good, despite being old fashioned they seem
to be working. The room for creativity in classifieds would be a well-
written advertisement but no one wants to make it their career (Sayers to
Rowing-Parker, 2010).
Agencies that use a new piece of technology in a campaign
successfully can gain notoriety and awards for their innovation. Do
digital creatives focus on the medium they use more than ATL creatives?
If this is true does that mean digital creatives spend more time focusing
on where to put their communication rather than focusing on the
communication itself ?
Ben Kay said on his blog that one of his dislikes is when agencies
recommend media channels to clients because they are new rather than
effective (Kay, 2010).
Roe stated that at Lean Mean Fighting Machine (digital) the medium
is hardly ever mentioned, it is a footnote to the idea (Roe to Rowing-
Parker, 2010). Collins also suggested that digital did not necessarily focus
on the medium. Sometimes agencies and creatives can get wrapped up in
a particular technology or placement rather than what is best for the idea
but this can happen in both digital and ATL agencies (Collins to Rowing-
Parker, 2010). Sayers pointed out that whether digital teams focus on the
medium more than traditional teams, choosing the right medium is half
the battle. The location is as important as the idea. You need an element
of surprise or else it becomes wallpaper (Sayers to Rowing-Parker, 2010).
31
Industries need new talent entering the market constantly. Which area
is more likely to attract the best young advertising creatives? Does one
area provide more opportunities than another? Do both pay equally?
Collins believes creatives need to decide what they want as soon as
they can and aim for it. There is not an obvious route to top jobs in
advertising, if you are good at what you do and make sensible moves you
should do well (Collins to Rowing-Parker, 2010).
Roe stated a creative’s career is affected by many factors such as
agency management, client bravery, budgets and quality of production.
The pay is only as good as the creative’s work, negotiation skills and
business acumen (Roe to Rowing-Parker, 2010).
Rachel Gott is Managing Director of recruitment agency Apple &
Ink. She stated that ATL pays more at a senior level whereas digital pays
best in the early years. What are Creative Directors asking for most when
looking for creatives? Experience in which areas? Can a television team
still become stars? She stated that it depends which agency the Creative
Director is at but they all will be asking for good ideas with a thorough
understanding of digital media. Gott believes that a television team can
become stars, more so than a digital team (Gott to Rowing-Parker, 2010).
How does day-to-day agency life compare? Is it true that digital
agencies can be a bit dull?
Roe pointed out that there are both dull and fun agencies in ATL and
digital agencies. Interestingly, agencies that win awards are usually not as
fun in the day-to-day. Digital agencies are more likely to treat you with
respect. In ATL agencies you can be treated badly and generally like you
do not matter (Roe to Rowing-Parker, 2010).
Sayers stated that agency life is the same for both digital and ATL.
Agencies can put you on individual accounts, hard accounts or under pay
you. How much you enjoy yourself depends on yourself, you can liven
up a dull place (Sayers to Rowing-Parker, 2010).
32
 Jon Bond co-founder of Kirshenbaum & Bond told Melanie Wells
that when you go into any ATL agencies it feels like death warmed over
but if you go to social media and digital tech agencies there is energy
(Wells, 2010).
Ben Beale is a creative at Grey, a large ATL advertising agency. Ben
stated that in a digital agency you would have to spend over half of your
time taking television adverts and fitting them into an online banner.
Not because it is the best creative answer but because it is what the client
wants (Beale to Rowing-Parker, 2010).
In 2007 Mad Men, a television series set in glamorous 1960s Madison
Avenue was released. In this same year Google made $16.5 billion
in revenue. A large portion of the profit generated was via online
advertising, but these advertisements were made without Creative
Directors like Mad Men’s leading man; Don Draper (Gillette, 2010).
Are ATL agencies afraid of digital? Sayers stated that as the next big
thing digital is doing what any new thing does, the wheel, motorcar and
impressionism were all feared at first. Some frightened advertising people Figure 13 Don Draper is a Creative Director in 1960’s
Madison Avenue in television series Mad Men.
scared of losing their jobs will make noise about digital hoping it will not
eat them up (Sayers to Rowing-Parker, 2010).

Figure 14 Google made $16.5 billion in revenue, a large part of this

revenue was generated by online advertisements made without Creative
Directors like Mad Men’s Don Draper.

33 34
 Lubars, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of BBDO North Comparisons were made between ATL and digital agencies’ staff
America, an 82-year-old agency said in an interview with Felix Gillette numbers and declared profits. This comparison should be analysed with
that BBDO was kicking all of these companies with fun names’ (digital a pinch of salt as declared profits can be somewhat of an illusion, some
agencies) butts. His agency BBDO won the 2010 Webby award for best agencies can choose to look more profitable for prospective clients or
advertising agency of the year. Interestingly they also won the best spot unsuccessful for tax purposes. A comparison was made between ATL
for the Super Bowl, an ATL medium. Lubars believes that the small agency AMV BBDO with a staff of three hundred and twenty four
digital agencies that are declaring the end of mass marketing and the and a declared profit of £42.7 million with digital agency AKQA, who
death of the big ATL agency do so as a business posture. It is an attitude employed three hundred and fifteen staff and a declared profit of £23
for journalists and a sales pitch to clients. ‘They don’t believe a word of million. ATL agency AMV BBDO made nearly double the profit of
it,’ says Lubars (Gillette, 2010). digital agency AKQA with roughly the same number of staff. Similarly,
If ATL agencies are not as worried by digital as we might have ATL agency BMB, whose staff of sixty-nine declared profit of £14
thought maybe it is because they have already poached the best digital million while digital agency Profero, who employed seventy-five staff,
talent. Mathias Appelblad, ex Interactive Creative Director of Swedish had a declared profit of £7.6 million. In both comparisons the ATL
agency Forsman & Bodenfords left to become Director of Innovation agency made nearly double the profit of the digital agency with the
at BBDO. Lubars of BBDO stated that digital creatives come to BBDO nearly the same number of staff. (Campaign Top 100 Agencies 2008,
to paint on a larger canvas, to do work that is part of the culture rather 2008).
than as he put it ‘side dribble’ (Gillette, 2010). Sayers commented that
ATL agencies want digital experts out of fear but once they bring them
in they look down on them. The ATL creatives realise the digital experts
do things they cannot but they think digital experts cannot do what they
do as ATL creatives (Sayers to Rowing-Parker, 2010).
Digital is nimble, start-ups are easy to get going with few staff and
Figure 15 AMV BBDO logo. Figure 16 AKQA logo.
resources needed. This nimbleness could become a negative for digital
agencies if larger, more established ATL agencies buy up their talent
and copy their innovations. Ben Beale stated that the problem for digital
agencies is they never have the budgets or power that ATL have. They
are not given the opportunity to set the baseline strategy or direction of
the brand. This makes it easier for ATL agencies to steal business from
digital agencies (Beale to Rowing-Parker, 2010).
Figure 17 BMB logo. Figure 18 Profero logo.

35 36
 Sayers believes this nimbleness carries through to the work. Sayers Despite any negatives of digital discussed in this section those
stated that digital advertisements are not famous whereas when a interviewed would all acknowledge the importance of digital in the
consumer views a piece of mass marketing there is a power and glamour future of advertising. Digital keeps creatives excited about advertising
in them knowing thousands of other people are viewing the same thing and gives them opportunities to do things they have never done. New
(Sayers to Rowing-Parker, 2010). creative talent will be drawn to each area based on their personal
Those interviewed were asked the main question this dissertation preference, as agency lifestyle depends on each individual agency not the
hopes to answer: Some billed digital advertising as a television killer. Do advertising area. One of the criticisms of digital advertising is how being
you think digital advertising was over-hyped? small can negatively impact on an agencies’ opportunities. This said, not
Collins stated that digital advertising probably was over-hyped a little. all digital advertising agencies are small. ATL agencies are learning from
He thinks this is down to people not getting digital and like many things digital and increasing their own digital capacity by hiring digital experts.
it became a buzzword. Large ATL agencies are investing heavily in digital None of those asked believe digital will kill television.
because it is a valuable part of the future of advertising (Collins to
Rowing-Parker, 2010).
Sayers believes digital advertising will not kill television advertising.
Clients who never dreamt of advertising on television now can thanks
to the vast number of television channels. This increase in channels has
made reaching a target audience more achievable. Video was supposed
to kill cinema but instead it increased the viewers’ appetites for films. It
turned the cinema into a special treat that the home could not replicate
(Sayers to Rowing-Parker, 2010).
Roe noted that people making outrageous claims do so because they
are trying to be the Nostradamus of journalism and those claiming to be
all knowing gurus have often never made an advertisement in their lives.
The truth is that the Internet is the most popular thing in the world.
Facebook is huge, online gaming has billions of users and lots of money
is spent on online shopping sites such as Amazon. Digital will not kill
anything, even the word ‘digital’ is already considered out of date (Roe to
Rowing-Parker, 2010).

37 38
 Has the digital advertising revolution been over-hyped? Yes. Digital
advertising has not killed television advertising and it has not overtaken
television in terms of medium popularity. This conclusion is backed by
data analysed in the first chapter and opinions from advertising industry
interviews in the last chapter. Despite the growth of technology it is
hard to imagine a media landscape without the traditional television
advertising model at its heart.
The Internet has innovated how consumers can view entertainment.
Google TV is an accessible and user-friendly television/Internet
hybrid but it still plays advertisements between programming. Internet
advertising does not look capable of taking over from the television
advertising at present. If in the future the Internet becomes our
main entertainment vehicle this report believes consumers will still
be watching what we currently recognise as television advertisements

CONCLUSION between shows, but the shows and advertisements will be streamed
online as opposed to being viewed on traditional broadcast television.
Digital keeps things interesting for old hands as well as attracting new
talent. Digital can reach local and niche target audiences better than ATL
can. Search advertising within digital is growing more sophisticated and
will no doubt continue to appear as great value to prospective clients. A
negative effect of this increase could be a stunt in the growth of creative
online advertising as budgets are spent on targeted search methods over
more creative solutions.
Digital is a useful tool for advertisers but it is still only a tool, not a
game changer. Integrated advertising agencies (those agencies that do
everything) will be the most old-fashioned an agency model can be and
still survive in the future. No agency can ignore digital advertising. The
big agencies with the big clients will be perfecting the art of television
and digital advertising working together in harmony. Each medium being
used to its full potential rather than having a great idea for one medium
and making it fit badly into another. Digital can wow us with its cleverness,
functionality and social skills. Television can create persuasive, emotive and
famous stories. Using each correctly while keeping the campaign message
clear will be the ongoing challenge as technology advances.

39 40
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 Figure 1 Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent, 11 April 2009. Over 150
million people viewed her performance online worldwide. Available from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk

Figure 2 Blentec: Will it Blend? This episode shows an Apple iPad being
successfully blended by a Blendtec blender. Available from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAl28d6tbko

Figure 3 Facebook logo. Available from:

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/brandnewday/archives/
blog%20facebook%20logo.jpg

Figure 4 Twitter logo. Available from:

http://christopher-lucas.co.uk/images/
ILLUSTRATIONS LOGO_SQUARE_TWITTER_jpg.jpg

Figure 5 YouTube logo. Available from:

http://www.textually.org/tv/archives/2010/07/30/youtube-logo(2).jpeg

Figure 6 Cross Media Advertising Market share in the U.S Advertising

Market – 2008. Taken from Internet Advertising Bureau Internet Ad
Revenue Report. Available from:
http://www.iab.net/insights_research/947883/adrevenuereport

Figure 7 Nick Clegg during the first televised UK general election debate.
Available from: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/assets/library/
100416clegg--127139965544565400.jpg

Figure 8 Saltash Journal is a local newspaper in the town of Saltash in

Cornwall, UK. Author’s own photograph of publication, Saltash Journal.
15 April, p.01.

Figure 9 Does an article about two parents grilling their dead two-year-
old boy inspire you to learn how to grill like an expert with Kingsford
Briquets? Available from: http://www.urlesque.com/2009/
08/28/10-awesome-contextual-ad-fails-photos/

47 48
Figure 10 An article reporting on the violence in Greece on the Guardian
website was accompanied by a Greek tourism advertisement. Available
from: http://www.urlesque.com/2009/08/28/
10-awesome-contextual-ad-fails-photos/

Figure 11 An Internet user on search engine website Google. Users’

searches could be tracked. Available from: http://www.mangaworld.net16.
net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/googling.jpg

Figure 12 Craigslist is a successful online classified website. Available from:

http://london.craigslist.co.uk/

Figure 13 Don Draper is a Creative Director in 1960’s Madison Avenue in

television series Mad Men. Available from:
http://www.observer.com/2009/movies/
how-jon-hamm-might-hurt-don-draper

Figure 14 Google made $16.5 billion in revenue, a large part of this revenue
was generated by online advertisements made without creative directors
like Mad Men’s Don Draper. Available from: http://cdn.benzinga.com/
files/google_logo_hires.jpg

Figure 15 AMV BBDO logo. Available from:

http://www.nexussm.com/images/logos/logo_amv.gif

Figure 16 AKQA logo. Available from: http://www.officesnapshots.com/

wp-content/uploads/2010/06/akqa-logo.gif

Figure 17 BMB logo. Available from:

http://www.fusion-interior-design.org.uk/images/bmb.jpg?950

Figure 18 Profero logo. Available from:

http://www.localsocialsummit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/
profero_logo_2009-300x147.jpg

49