Many marketers are interested in integrating online and offline marketing channels today: integrating TV and the Internet. One form of the integration is to place TV advertisements online and also to place online advertisements on TV. A study of the Internet Advertising Bureau and Thinkbox.tv states that 66% of people are more likely to recognize an online advertisement if they have been exposed to it on TV (Lawn, 2008). The study also remarks that 55% of people are more likely to recognize a TV advertisement if they have been exposed to it online (2008). Those data clearly indicates that the form of integration is effective.
Another form of the integration is to place TV programs online and place advertisements on those online TV programs. There are various online video websites that allow viewers to watch TV programs such as YouTube, Joost, Veoh, and the websites owned by Yahoo, MSN, and Fox (Stelter, 2008). This form of integration has a great potential because the online TV and video market has been growing and is expected to keep growing in the future. One of the examples of the growing online TV provider is Hulu. Hulu has a library of over 1,000 TV series and 400 feature-length films, and it has over 100 sponsors including General Motors and Old Spice (Stelter, 2008). Hulu has grown steadily, and it has become the sixth most popular online video brand in the United States (2008). The website provides 142 million streams to 6.3 million unique viewers in September 2008 (2008). In addition, according to New Media Knowledge, in the United States, online TV and video market was worth more than $1 billion in 2007, and that is expected to be nearly five times in this year (2008). Also, United States’ spending on downloaded content will be increased from $1.38 billion in 2007 to $5.31 billion in 2012 (2008). Thus, online TV and video market has been growing.
Therefore, Integrating TV and online marketing channels has been getting more popular, and it is effective and has a great potential.
