- A new survey of strategic media planners conducted by the Digital Place-based Advertising Association (DPAA) shows a large increase in the percentage of digital place-based media spending that is coming out of digital and online budgets.
- Just over 40% of planners said that they will fund their digital place-based (DPb) media plans through digital and online budgets, an increase of 75% over the 22.9% who said in the DPAA’s 2011 survey that they would tap digital and online budgets to fund DPb.
- Outdoor budgets remained the most popular source for DPb funding, with just over 64% citing this category versus 54% in 2011.
- Planners were asked: “When considering digital place-based networks for inclusion in your media plan(s), from which existing media would you fund the ad dollars?” The top five most frequently cited in the 2012 survey were:
- Outdoor: 64.2% (2011: 54.2%)
- Television: 40.7% (2011: 43.8%)
- Digital/Online: 40.1% (2011: 22.9%)
- Experimental/Test: 19.8% (2011: 18.8%)
- Zero-Based Planning: 15.4% (2011: 19.8%)
- When asked to project spending for 2013, 94.2% of this year’s survey respondents said they would include DPb media in their plans, compared to 86.3 % in the 2011 research, a gain of 9%.
- Awareness of research tools and services that include data on digital place-based media is increasing among strategic media planners. Among the research services including DPb at the time the survey was fielded, overall awareness grew significantly year-to-year.
- Planners’ Knowledge of DPb Research Availability:
- Nielsen: 54.0% (2011: 46.4%)
- GfK MRI: 41.9% (2011: 38.5%)
- IMS: 32.0% (2011: 26.0%)
- Experian Simmons: 31.6% (2011: 23.4%)
- Arbitron: 20.2% (2011: 20.4%)
- “Digital place-based media is a sector on the rise,” said Susan Danaher, president and CEO of the DPAA. “The trend lines are all positive, the most notable being a steadily increasing intent to incorporate DPb in media plans and a greater awareness of the availability of research to aid in the planning process. These two trends go hand-in-hand, and their solid upward tracking bode well for our sector’s continued revenue growth in the years ahead.”
- The survey was conducted online from May 1-May 29, 2012 by the DPAA among 1,761 media professionals employed at full-service and media service agencies around the country. Response rate was 11.9%.
- Danaher said planning strategies and case studies will be featured prominently in the DPAA’s 5th annual Digital Media Summit, to be held Oct. 16 at the New York Hilton.
