Monday, March 24th, 2008...4:03 am
GM to Shift $1.5b to Online Advertising
General Motors may be singularly unwilling to tell its shareholders and stakeholders when the company will return to profitability (or exactly how they’re going to get there), but they’re happy to announce a three-year plan for their annual ad spend. And the winner is.. online media. GM says it will allocate fully $1.5b of its $3b annual advertising budget to the Internet. The revelation keeps the death knell pealing for newspapers. According to followthemedia, GM’s 2007 online display ad spend clocked-in at somewhere between $193m to $208m. At the same time, America’s most profligate auto advertiser trimmed newspaper advertising by 32 percent, to $149.3m. The new Internet-heavy target will also eat into TV advertising. And where GM leads– in ad spending anyway– other automakers follow. “You know it’s getting dangerous for traditional media,” scribe Steven Stone wars. “When the likes of Joel Ewanick, Marketing VP for Hyundai Motor America, says, ‘Online is getting to the point where it may be more important than the 30-second spot.’” So look for GM advertising on TTAC soon. In other news, Hell is getting chilly.
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