Decline in adspend, what does it mean?

Goldman Sachs, the US investment bank has reported a return to profit for the first quarter of 2009. JPMorgan, Chase and Citigroup have all followed suit. Indications are that although not over the banking crisis is settling.

This is in stark contrast to the marketing sector, where all indications are that recession continues to bite. The Bellwether report from earlier this year suggested that 45% of companies were reducing their marketing budgets for 2009. The report also suggested that online adspend had already dropped 7% and was set to drop further.

Before we panic, it is important to put this decline into context.

In previous downturns marketing money was always drawn back to TV. Brand Directors felt safe and secure with the old idiom ‘no-one was ever fired by investing marketing money on telly’.

The present climate is different; TV was in terminal decline before we entered the recession. Some TV companies have at times successfully sought to find alternative income streams. However, those like ITV that still rely purely on advertising are being hit very hard, you need only to look at their share price.

As we move through 2009, what is interesting is the decline in online ad spend. Predictions from 2008 were for digital to increase and at worse stagnate. This has not happened and we are seeing a real drop in spending.

A recent headline for Volvo on NMA.co.uk 30/10 indicated that Volvo was restructuring its marketing department to focus on digital. In itself there is nothing of great interest in this as many brands have made the very same statement.

What is interesting is that Volvo is focusing on ‘Natural Search’ and ‘Social Media’. Natural Search was seen as part of the dark art of SEO. However, today anyone with access to a ‘Google Analytics’ account can get insights into how to optimise their website easily, simply and for free.

Social Media has created opportunities for brands to open direct dialogue with their consumers for little or no cost. 2008 saw an explosion in social media sites and brands that are clever have been able to harness this power.

I suspect that Volvo is one of a growing number of brands that are directing their marketing focus to these areas; they are investing more time, effort and giving it more focus. What they are not doing is investing more money; in fact they are investing less.

The nature of these techniques, if done well provide opportunities for brands to have the same if not greater impact for far less investment.

Looking back at the headlines, spend on digital is down. However, rather than indicating a deeper downturn, this may well be due to clients being bright and investing more time and less money to achieve a better result.

Introducing TwitCal

A few weeks ago, myself and James were out at lunch after a morning of web app brainstorming. We'd hit a brick wall on our idea and started thinking that maybe we were trying to be a little too ambitious.

Why not start with something simpler we thought? Maybe work off the back of an already available API? And that lunchtime Twitcal was born.

"Great!" I hear you shout, "What's TwitCal?". Well, I'm glad you asked. It's a very simple offering. TwitCal allows you to post entries to a calendar via a Twitter account. When you post a tweet, include the desired date in one of the supported formats, write your calendar entry and hit 'update'. Done. Then just visit Twitcal.com to view your calendar, or anyone's for that matter.

So that's what it is, how did it come into being?

Well, I don't tend to use a calendar, I know I should (my wife would love it if I did), but it's another piece of software I don't have the attention span or inclination to manage and organise. But something I 'do' tend to do is Twitter a lot. Probably too much in fact. If only I could bring the two things together, surely my life would be complete?

Our first port of call was a little research to check a similar service didn't already exist, and after some Googling it seemed we were in luck. Even luckier in my opinion was that our preferred URL 'twitcal.com' wasn't already snapped up (not bad in this day and age). It was at this point that I sensed world domination just around the corner (I can get a little over excited about available domain names) but on a serious note, getting the right name means a lot. If someone else wanted to replicate our idea I really think we'd have the strongest identity and therefore the upper hand.

James then began delving into the world of Twitter API's. I'll let him tell you more about that side of things in another post, but it became quickly apparent that our idea was pretty easy to implement. I knocked up a simple site and logo design and three weeks on we're sat here with the finished article. There really isn't much to explain that happened in between, it seemed to sail along smoothly. Probably the toughest part was tackling the 'Terms of service' and getting the ad spaces filled and even these weren't too taxing.

Next up is planning for phase 2 additions and amendments to the service. We already have thoughts on including event reminders and also plans to break each date down into hours for more detailed organising, but for now we're just happy to get it up and out there and gauge people's reactions.

Overall it's been a really interesting few weeks and we're looking forward to spreading the word on TwitCal. Check out the site www.twitcal.com for more info and drop us a line if you have any questions or feedback at hello@brightsparkdigital.com. You can also find me on Twitter under the username @brightspark_mc.