Crossing Offline and Online Media

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper presents findings of a study comparing the advertising on the web sites supported by offline media and on the dot.com media that only have online presence. The study analyzes the advertising strategies of leading U.S. TV networks’ web sites and online portals, which respectively represent web sites with strong offline media support and web sites with no offline media counterparts respectively. TV networks’ advertising strategies were identified based on a spectrum of brand extension and brand integration strategies. The results show that even with the strong offline support of the TV networks, TV web sites are much more moderate in their display of advertising than online portals and use primarily brand integration as their convergence strategy in advertising recruitment. Forced exposure advertising is not common in TV web sites, which is contrary to the captive audience characteristic of the TV medium. Portal sites have a much stronger presence of advertising support. Their advertisers are also more diversified than those of TV web sites. Many TV web sites are still used as a marketing and promotional tool for TV networks rather than as a stand-alone advertising medium for advertisers. Portal sites have emerged as a full-fledged advertising medium completely capable of carrying different forms of online advertising to deliver advertising messages to target audiences for advertisers. Implications of the findings to advertisers, TV networks, and other online media are discussed.