Strata

Appy Holidays: Digital Supplants Radio As Seasonal Medium, Spot TV Remains No. 1

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Originally appearing in MediaPost on Nov. 15th, 2011 by Joe Mandese

It’s beginning to look a lot like digital, almost everywhere Madison Avenue goes this holiday season. That’s the finding of a special “flash survey” STRATA Systems conducted among its agency clients to gauge how recent economic trends are impacting their seasonal media planning and buying.

While spot broadcast and cable TV remains the No. 1 among for holiday-oriented advertisers, Internet/digital ranks No. 2, displacing spot radio, which falls to the No. 3 option, followed by network cable TV, print, broadcast network TV, and out-of-home media.

That said, most respondents indicated the media planning process isn’t as much as an either/or option as it used to be, and that more of their clients are merging analogue and digital media into integrated holiday campaign strategies.

Only 27% of agency respondents said that 25% or fewer of their clients’ media plans were being impacted by digital strategies. By comparison, 31.7% said 50% or more of their clients now integrate analogue and digital media in their holiday season plans.

On a macro-economic note, two-thirds of respondents said their client’s holiday season advertising budgets were either the same (40%) or had increased (26%) vs. last year.

In terms of advertising costs, nearly a third (30%) said media prices have increased, while 59% said they were the same as last year.

STRATA, which is owned by Comcast Corp., processes more than $50 billion in advertising buys annually.