BOSTON (AP) — Internet companies were supposed to put old-fashioned media companies out of business. But these days, dot-com startups are increasingly taking their advertising to the radio airwaves, much to the broadcast industry’s delight.
Advertising insiders say the current ad-buying blitz is the best — and perhaps the most unexpected — boost to hit the industry in years.
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”Here you’ve got this brand new medium everyone was saying is going to put you out of business,” John Wolfe, senior vice president of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, told the Boston Herald. “Yet where are they turning? The irony is they’re using traditional media to do it.”
Kiss 108 (WXKS-FM) General Sales Manager Jack Foley says the wave started to grow at the end of July, but the dot-coms began a blizzard of ad buying in September.
”It’s like selling plywood before a hurricane,” said Foley, who says Kiss could have sold just about all its ad time to dot-com companies if it had wanted.
Kiss listeners can currently hear ads from companies like Barnesandnoble.com, Lycos.com, Realnames.com, Cool-savings.com, More.com, Textbook.com and Pets.com, among others.
The demand is driving up the cost of radio ad time, and it’s leaving advertising slots in short supply for both Internet companies and more traditional advertisers.
Some of the traditional advertisers are struggling to buy ad time because “the dot-coms will pay anything to get on the air,” said Karen Agresti, a senior vice president with the Boston ad agency Hill Holliday Connors Cosmopulos.
”One radio station told us that 40 percent of their revenue was coming from the dot-com business,” she said. “That’s fairly common. Another station had 120 orders for the week from dot-coms.”
But stations are wary of relying too heavily on such young companies that don’t have proven track records, and in many cases, are still trying to get themselves established financially.
”Stations are making them pay cash up front,” Agresti said. “A lot book one day, their stock goes down, and they cancel the next.”
Foley said Internet companies’ radio ad campaigns are busiest in areas like Boston, San Francisco, and New York, where Internet usage rates are high.
And the same trend that has blown through the radio world is now moving toward television.
