Fashion Magazine Advertising is Dramatically Down, Online Steadily Rising

Seed Corn Advertising Grows with Online PresenceInternet advertising increasingly outdoes traditional media at a kernel of the cost.Studio City, Calif., Oct. 29, 2009—Seed Corn Advertising, an online marketing firm that focuses on sending qualified clicks to consumer Web sites, is poised to capitalize on the current less-is-more trend in global advertising spending.Named for the second year in a row as one of Inc. Magazine’s 5,000 Fastest Growing Companies, Seed Corn Advertising has watched its client base grow from more than 300 a year ago to over 500 today. The reason: a growing business trend to maximize advertising dollars in a tough economy by focusing on Internet over traditional media.“The cost of online advertising compared to traditional media is about 10 percent,” says Seed Corn Founder and President Andrew Stern. “You can rent a billboard on Sunset for $50,000, or you can reach millions of active and targeted users on the Net — with the ability to specifically reach demographics such as location, age, gender and household income, and know your exact ROI.”That roadside billboard, for instance, along with radio and television ads, reach thousands—maybe millions—of people. But overwhelmingly, it’s an irrelevant audience. Even magazines and newspapers, whose readerships and consequently, ad revenues have famously plummeted in the last couple of years, are hitting too-broad a demographic.This is reflected in the recent demise of once-stalwart titles, including Gourmet and Modern Bride, as well as recent mass layoffs in newspapers, including the New York Times and the LA Times. All indicators point toward a rise in advertisers’ putting their money toward—and readers’ getting their information from—Web sites and online social media outlets.Seed Corn Advertising, on the cutting edge of Internet marketing technology, is reaching a highly targeted audience—especially in the coveted and technologically sophisticated 13-to-24 age group—with media that include online TV commercials, interactive rich media ads, online sponsorships and product placement opportunities.“These online TV ads,” Stern says, “can go a step further than traditional media, like recent campaigns we ran for a cleaning product that appeared to squeeze out fake contents from product canisters and a scavenger hunt clue hidden within Seed Corn Advertising’s virtual Web site RipLounge.com.“There’s a lot more flexibility with online advertisements than TV ads with a non-captive audience that might just be Tivo-ing through the commercials,” Stern says. “These online commercials are typicallyunskippable so the audience is captive. It’s more effective than a television commercial, at a fraction of the cost.”Seed Corn Advertising can take Internet-ready art and TV ad spots or design the clients’ creative itself. Once it gets their products online, the next step is to target it—another attractive feature beyond the scope and means of traditional advertising. Cookies produce the data needed to “re-target,” or recognize and market to people shopping or searching for particular items.The interactive nature of the online advertising itself provides the quantifiable results: Who saw the ad? Did they click on it? Did they buy anything? Did they fill out a form?“It’s more transparent in terms of who you’re targeting and what you’re getting for your dollar,” says Stern. “At the end of the day, your ROI is measurably higher than traditional media and you can take those figures to your client to back up your work.”That’s why, he says, only five to 10 years ago, the typical online ad budget was about 3 percent of traditional advertising campaigns. In the last year, however, online advertising exceeded that of TV and radio for the first time ever.”To Stern and Seed Corn Advertising, it’s no surprise.“All industry trends indicate Internet advertising spending is going to grow,” he says. Even in the last year with the U.S. economy’s taking the worst hit since the Great Depression, online advertising was fairly recession proof – often at the expensive of offline advertising. And it will continue to grow!”Seed Corn Advertising is an online marketing firm that provides strategic online marketing and advertising for hundreds of clients. Based in Studio City Calif., it has been named one of Inc. Magazine’s 5000 Fastest Growing Companies two years in a row. More information can be found at www.seedcornadv.com.