Practitioners’ perceptions

of advertising strategies
for digital media
Yann Truong and Rod McColl
ESC Rennes Business School
Philip Kitchen
Brock University, ESC Rennes Business School

Digital advertising is set to become a serious challenger within the rapidly changing
media landscape. Today there are concerns that advertising strategies based on models
and experiences developed with traditional media may need to be reviewed in the digital
market. To provide insights into how online advertising strategies might need modifica-
tion, 21 in-depth interviews were conducted across organisations representing key stake-
holders in the digital advertising market. Findings identified five key trends relevant to
advertisers including: a move towards permission-based advertising; higher levels of per-
sonalised advertisements; more three screen advertising campaigns; increased levels of
interactivity and the development of performance-based metrics. In the context of these
trends, nine propositions are posited concerning the effective formulation and manage-
ment of digital advertising strategies.

Introduction
In 2008, global business directly or indirectly connected to digital media
was worth €2,740 billion including sales of 1.25 billion mobile phones
(+6% from 2007), 302 million PCs (+11%) and 94 million LCD screens
(+30%) according to Idate (2009). Future growth in the broadband mar-
ket is assured given current PC penetration rates of below 20% (Idate
2009). In terms of usage, many consumers now spend more time navigat-
ing online than viewing television (Berman et al. 2007a). Mobile phone
usage among younger consumers is also increasing at an exponential rate
(Rappaport 2007). Despite the fact that the amount of digital data already
produced is estimated to be three million times the combined information

International Journal of Advertising, 29(5), pp. 709–725

© 2010 Advertising Association
Published by Warc, www.warc.com
DOI: 10.2501/S0265048710201439 709
International Journal of Advertising, 2010, 29(5)

contained within all books, the digital explosion is expected to continue in

the foreseeable future (Gantz 2008).
The growth in digital advertising correlates with this increase in digital
media consumption. PricewaterhouseCoopers (2009) estimates that the
digital media advertising market approximately reached $60 billion in
2009 and will surpass $90 billion in 2013. These content and consump-
tion trends make digital media the most promising format for advertising
growth over the next decade as advertisers’ attention shifts from tradi-
tional media (Okazaki 2006). Advertising practitioners acknowledge this
trend, with 76% believing that digital media and advertising could even
dominate within the next 10 years (Coghlan 2007). Irrespective of the
impact of the global economic downturn on advertising budgets, growth
in digital advertising expenditure is likely to continue to account for an
increasing proportion.
For advertisers these developments represent unchartered waters.
Various papers allude to these trends, however to date there has been a
paucity of research into how traditional advertising strategies might need
to be modified when the content is digital and diffused through interac-
tive media and this is in accordance with data that shows TV advertising is
not dead, and currently can still get reach not standard yet in digital (Sharp
& Wind 2009). According to Berman et al. (2007a), today’s mainstream
advertisers seem to lack insight on many related issues such as how to
respond to shifts in consumer behaviour, or what synergies exist for using
traditional and new media. The authors also warn of significant risks in
applying current thinking to the new digital era.
To address this important knowledge lacuna, the extant literature sur-
rounding digital advertising was reviewed and 21 in-depth interviews
were conducted across organisations representing key stakeholders in the
digital advertising market in France. Important trends within the digital
advertising market were identified which generated nine propositions
concerning how these might impact on digital advertising strategies. The
paper begins with a review of the empirical research on digital media and
advertising. It is followed by an outline of the research methodology and
discussion of the findings. The paper concludes with a presentation of the
study’s limitations and directions for future research.

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Advertising on digital media

In the mid-1990s, some authors predicted that new (interactive)
media would have fundamental strategic implications for all businesses
(Benjamin & Wigand 1995; Cronin 1994; Deighton 1996). The term
‘new interactive media’ was, and still is, associated mainly with the
Internet since it revolutionised how companies and their customers were
interacting (Sahay et al. 1998). Digital media broadly includes any media
that publish or diffuse information in digital formats (Shapiro & Varian
1999). In this definition, a distinction is made between digital content
delivered through traditional channels – television, radio, and digital
media diffused through the internet or mobile where interaction is per-
mitted and encouraged.
Consumer adoption of digital media has accelerated due mainly to
wider broadband access, enriched contents, and increasing adoption of
third-generation mobile phones across the USA, Europe and Northern
Asia (Berman et al. 2007a; Ferris 2007; Light & Lancefield 2007).
Online advertising has been defined as ‘deliberate messages placed on
third-party websites including search engines and directories available
through Internet access’ (Ha 2008, p. 31). Today online attracts around
12% of advertising budgets in many developed economies and is fore-
cast to grow at between 20 to 40% per year over the foreseeable future
(Berman et al. 2007b). The growth of new media options supplementing
traditional ones has led to a fragmentation of audiences whose atten-
tion has become far more difficult to capture (Ranchhod 2007; Scherf
& Wang 2005). Further compounding the challenges for advertisers in
this sector, recent studies suggest that consumer perceptions of online
advertising and advertising in general have become increasingly nega-
tive (McCoy et al. 2007; Rotfeld 2006; Shavitt et al. 2004).
The rapid acceleration of new media usage will provide both oppor-
tunities and challenges for advertisers. New media’s interactive tech-
nologies permit advertisers to deliver an enhanced brand experience
to consumers by offering online games, instant feedback and content
exchange, resulting in improved impacts on consumer behaviour (Taylor
2009).

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Methodology
The research questions addressed in this paper concern identifying key
trends in the digital advertising market and to understand how advertisers
should respond to these changes. They were addressed using qualitative
research techniques. The choice of research methodology was justified
based on the link between the four basic elements of the research process:
epistemology, theoretical perspective, research methodology and research
method and their relationship to the research questions (Carson et al. 2001;
Crotty 1998).
The study follows a realism paradigm, which considers that there is
a ‘real’ world to discover even though it may not be immediately com-
prehensible (Godfrey & Hill 1995). Realism is a relevant paradigm for
qualitative researchers in marketing (Healy & Perry 2000; Marshall &
Rossman 2006), particularly when researchers require a novel slant on a
phenomenon or where the intricate details of phenomena are difficult to
convey or access via quantitative methods (Carson et al. 2001; Strauss &
Corbin 1990).
The research methodology consisted of in-depth, personal interviews
across 21 different organisations within the digital advertising industry.
Major stakeholders in the field of digital advertising were selected from
a pool of companies based in France but who operate internationally.
Organisations were targeted using snowball sampling and were selected
based on their leadership position within the industry. Table 1 outlines the
function for each participant with most operating at director level and the
location of each firm within the advertising value chain.
Interviews were conducted until a convergence of views was obtained,
as recommended by Miles and Huberman (1994). That is, until no new
themes were emerging from additional interviews. Respondents were
selected using the key informant approach suggested by Robson and
Foster (1989) and each participant held a senior management and/or
director position. The interviews followed the guidelines recommended
by Minichiello et al. (1995), based on the recursive model of interviewing.
This consisted of a more conversational interaction based on the funnelling
approach, whereby the flow and the type of questions moved from the
broad to the specific (Patton 1990; Thietart 2001). A list of general topics
placed in a logical order was adopted rather than a structured question-

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Table 1: Study participants

Participant Role Sector Company role

Participant A Communication and marketing director Soft beverage Advertiser

Participant B Internet and mobile marketing director Bank Advertiser

Participant C Internet and CRM director Cosmetics Advertiser

Participant D Internet director Beverage Advertiser

Participant E Marketing director Transport Advertiser

Participant F Marketing director Food Advertiser

Participant G Vice-president Advertising Advertising agency

Participant H Director Advertising Advertising agency

Participant I Marketing director Internet Advertising agency

Participant J Mobile marketing director Mobile Advertising agency

Participant K Consultant Press Advertising agency

Participant L Director Media planning Media planning

Participant M Director Media planning Media planning

Participant N Market research director Media buying Media buying

Participant O Project manager Adserving Technology enabler

Participant P Research director Networks Technology enabler

Participant Q Consultant Software Technology enabler

Participant R Research director Telco Telco

Participant S CEO Mobile Mobile marketing

Participant T CEO Mobile Mobile marketing

Participant W Director Mobile Mobile marketing

naire as answers to open questions are more likely to reflect a respondent’s

own thinking, thereby improving the validity of the results (Dey 1993).
Interviews lasted between 60 and 90 minutes with each being audio tape
recorded and transcribed verbatim for analysis.
Data analysis followed the sequence of steps described by Miles and
Huberman (1994) who suggested that the analysis should consist of three
concurrent flows of activity: data reduction, data display, and conclusion

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drawing/verification. Data reduction was undertaken for each of the 21

interviews using in vivo codes (Strauss & Corbin 1990). The computer-
based analysis software QSR NVivo2 (QSR International Pty. Ltd. 2002)
was utilised to arrange the codes in the form of a matrix which were syn-
thesised into fewer cross-cases capturing the attitudes of the participants.

Findings
The literature review and interviews revealed five main trends around
which advertisers will need to be sensitive when formulating digital adver-
tising strategies. Each of these trends is discussed in turn and include: per-
mission-based advertising; higher levels of personalised advertisements;
three screen advertising campaigns; increased levels of interactivity; and a
move towards performance-based metrics.

Permission-based advertising strategies

The first trend which emerged was defined as the need to engage in
permission-based advertising. Respondents agreed that online advertising
will need to be less intrusive than traditional advertising, particularly for
advertising diffused through mobile phones. This view is characterised in
the following participant observation.
People don’t use their mobile phone the same way they use internet or watch
TV. Their mobile phone is becoming a personal assistant which accompanies
them everywhere and keeps them in touch with others (Participant N).

Consumer acceptance of interactive advertising is therefore likely to be

more effective if it is permission-based. The scope of permission-based
advertising includes pull strategies which can be formulated to arouse
consumers’ interest and attract attention resulting in requests for further
information with regard to advertised products or services. Unsolicited
advertisements are more likely to be received as irrelevant and intrusive.
A typical comment follows:

In our adserving research and development projects, we fully integrate the

idea that consumers may want to skip or just tell the system that this product

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or service is not suitable to them either permanently or for a defined period of

time (Participant O).

To reduce consumer tune-out, participants suggested limiting the

number of daily ads per consumer or the systematic use of online opt-in
and opt-out programs. This would allow consumers to choose to self-select
advertisements that are relevant to their needs and interests. In such cir-
cumstances, there may be a need for sophisticated customer databases for
profiling customer interests to assist in this process. Based on this discus-
sion we propose that:

P1: Permission-based advertising will be more effective than unre-

quested advertising.

P2: Diffusing unrequested ads over time may jeopardise a brand’s

value.

Higher levels of personalised advertisements

Linked to the first area, the second area to emerge concerns the need for
digital advertising messages to be more personalised and contextualised.
Advanced adserving technologies used in conjunction with profiling data-
bases identify who is using a particular device and allow advertisers to
target consumers with more relevant and localised messages.
We have been providing geolocalisation services to corporate clients for a few
years now. Firms use this service mostly for surveillance and control purposes
(Participant T).

If timely, relevant and personalised to fit individual needs, this type

of message could even be perceived by consumers as providing a value
added service. The following comments reflect this point.

We believe that advertising should be as relevant as possible, which means that

it should be local but also deliver value to consumers (Participant F).

Proximity leads to more relevant ads which should make them more interesting
and therefore effective (Participant K).

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Many respondents used the term ‘personalisation’ when describing dig-

ital advertising. Personalisation refers to custom-fitting ads to individuals
within a specific context. Optimised relevance would improve consumer
awareness, trial and purchase. This insight is characterised by the follow-
ing respondent.
The development of real time tracking and profiling technologies seems to
make this reality not so far away (Participant J).

The technology for geolocalisation of individuals has been available

for several years, allowing online advertisers to localise ads by identifying
the geographical position of an IP address without identifying the user.
However, the accumulation of personal data from user generated content
(UGC) websites has set off alarm bells for legislators seeking to prevent
the abuse of consumer data and constrain the future of personalisation as
envisaged by some of our respondents. For example, making further use
of personal data in France would require changes to privacy legislation.
However, despite these current limitations, we posit that:

P3: When advertisements are contextualised and personalised, they

provide more perceived value to consumers who are more willing
to accept them.

Three screen advertising campaigns

All respondents highlighted the importance for stakeholders to understand
the specificities of each of the three screens (TV, internet and mobile).
Television is perceived by respondents to be the most powerful advertis-
ing medium and is most suitable for brand awareness-related objectives.
The Internet is also considered as a quasi-mass medium but the develop-
ment of behavioural targeting technologies can help advertisers segment
their audiences using relevant behavioural criteria such as fields of interest
according to keyword search, browsing interests or even email contents.
The mobile phone is the most personal medium since each device is
associated with one particular individual, and therefore allows very per-
sonalised targeting campaigns. One respondent added that the difference
in the screen sizes between the three media should be compelling enough
to justify that advertising contents be specific to each medium. Contrary to

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traditional advertising campaigns which communicate the same message

across all analogue and printed media, the three screens should be seen as
complementary rather than as just an addition of three channels for diffus-
ing the same message.
It is critical to us that our advertising agency is able to offer end-to-end solu-
tions to our clients for their marketing needs, and this means that we must be
able to market their products on three screens. … However, marketing on three
screens requires very specific competences as they are very different from each
other in their functions … Showing the same content on three screens produces
different impacts that could be positive on a screen but negative on another,
hence the need for adapting or even changing the content…(Participant R).

Participant N, employed by a global media planning firm, revealed

that they have commissioned studies to assess the effectiveness of each
medium for a series of recent campaigns. Two relevant quotes which char-
acterise this theme of integrated three-screen technology follow:
Television, internet and mobile should not be seen as competitors but comple-
mentary in their roles. The Internet is currently the best medium for audience
targeting, customer interactions, and format possibilities, but fails to reach mass
audiences and the fragmentation of online audiences is creating diminishing
ROI.
Television is great for reaching the mass, and mobile phones in contrary are
suitable only for very personalised messages (Participant N).

As a result of these discussions concerning the impact of the three-screen

campaigns, we propose that:

P4: Three-screen advertising campaigns will yield higher return-

on-investment (increased reach and response) when the three
screens are used complementarily rather than independently, and
when the contents and messages are specific to each screen.

Increased levels of interactivity

This theme addresses the increased levels of interactivity between adver-
tisers and consumers. As traditional media switch toward digital broad-
casting, there will be feedback channels to allow interactivity between
users and advertisers. Traditional media such as television and radio are
broadcast using one-way diffusion. Digital television and radio offer the

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possibility for advertisers to interact with consumers via a two-way chan-

nel, which means that a product’s brand experience can be individualised
and enhanced. With two-way channels, consumers can send feedback,
play online games, request information, opt-in for promotional news, and
sign-up for branded events. These technologies deliver more power to
consumers who can choose where, when and how they want to interact
with a brand rather than the reverse. The discussions highlighted some
recent campaigns which have illustrated this point. One company made
available for download a mobile phone game which offers consumers
the opportunity to save money on their energy bill every time they win
the game. Set-up boxes allow viewers to receive increased information
about the advertised product, and IPTV (internet protocol television)
can connect viewers to the Internet for online orders. Advantages for
consumers are increased involvement, enhanced brand experience, and
simplified purchase­ processes. For advertising service providers, interac-
tive campaigns represent significant business opportunities but they tend
to be more expensive given their complex requirements for advanced
technologies and specialised marketing competencies. One of the mobile
marketing agencies provided several arguments in favour of interactive
campaigns:

Interactive campaigns require consumers to become active and to play a role in

the campaign. There are several examples of advertising campaigns which use
UGC as contents for their messages. Interactive campaigns are focused on users
rather than advertisers (Participant W).

Based upon the above discussion, we propose that:

P5: Interactivity will enhance the brand experience and contribute

towards increased sales.

P6: Consumers will be willing to participate in digital ads which are

highly interactive.

Moving towards performance-based metrics

The final theme which emerged concerned measuring effectiveness in
the digital advertising market. Digital technologies and adservers allow

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for real-time metrics to provide new and additional measures of ad effec-

tiveness. Technically speaking, all actions performed by a consumer are
recorded into the adserver. For example, ad impressions, links clicked,
or keywords searched are systematically recorded and potentially avail-
able to advertisers. In concrete terms, impression-based metrics such as
potential audiences for television and cost per mille (CPM) for online
ads will likely become performance-based. Actual viewership will most
likely replace potential audiences measured by panels, and click-through
rates combined with actual purchase or registration will replace CPM.
One respondent noted that they already provide metrics that approach
real-time return-on-investment (ROI) data. Many other performance
metrics can be derived from online advertising: cost per click (CPC), cost
per action (CPA), cost per mille (CPM), or number of unique visitors.
Advanced technologies allow ad-effectiveness metrics to shift to these
types of measures as reflected by this interviewee:

IPTV allows us to know if an ad is being viewed and how long it has been
viewed. We can also count the exact number of viewers of an ad. … Mobile
phones are even more sophisticated since we can target specific individuals,
send him/her a text message and know if the text message has been read
(Participant R).

Participants representing advertising agencies highlighted that adver-

tisers are now interested in performance-based metrics in order to better
estimate their ROI. The development of performance metrics is critical
to industry development since better metrics will provide efficiency gains
and encourage further expenditure. New entrants in this market may well
come from internet service providers who are currently investing heavily
in advanced targeting tools and measurement tools. We therefore posit
that:

P7: Performance metrics will replace impression-based metrics on

digital media.

P8: Population-based data will replace panel-based data in audience

measurement on digital data.

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Figure 1: Summary of findings

Three-screen advertising Consumers Practitioners

Aggregate metrics
Permission-based

Personalisation ROI

Interactivity

P9: Providing performance-based measurement services will become

the most powerful value driver for advertising agencies and tech-
nology enablers and should become a management priority.

The findings may be summarised in Figure 1. The participants agree

that digital advertising will mostly be three-screen based (television, PC
and mobile phone), as these devices are complementary in their roles.
Three determinant factors can improve consumer acceptance of digital
advertising: permission-based, personalised and interactive advertise-
ments will likely reduce reluctance to exposure and increase implication
from consumers. Therefore, all three factors can contribute toward bet-
ter returns on investment for advertisers in terms of consumer response
to their marketing activities. Finally, return on investment will be more
accurately measured as digital technologies allow real-time aggregate
data collection to estimate the exact audience or actions that are directly
imputable­ to an advertisement, which lead to performance-based rather
than impression-based metrics.

Discussion and implications

The objective of this study was to explore stakeholder views within
the digital advertising industry as to what issues they saw facing digital
advertisers. The findings indicate that advertising practices for digital
advertising will need to be modified in a significant way compared with

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approaches taken with traditional media. For academics, this paper

provides valuable insights into how stakeholders perceive and manage
consumer behaviour on digital media. The extant literature has alluded
to these various trends in the digital advertising market but has largely
ignored how these might impact on advertisers. For example, several stud-
ies have suggested that consumer acceptance can be improved if advertis-
ing campaigns are permission-based and personalised (Barwise & Strong
2002; Carroll et al. 2007; Maneesoonthorn & Fortin 2006; Nasco & Bruner
II 2008). The results of this study suggest that stakeholders are conscious
of the need for opt-in/opt-out features that would allow consumers to self-
select the advertisements­ that they wish to receive. Nevertheless, there
seems to be technological, legal, and privacy obstacles preventing further
development. First, stakeholders across the value chain will have to con-
solidate their customer databases in order to avoid a multiplication of data-
bases that may lead to ineffective cross-media campaigns and incoherent
delivery of advertisements. Second, legal and personal issues still mean
questions with regard to the limits of how far and to what extent content
publishers and aggregators such as social networks websites and telcos
can use personal data for commercial purposes. Besides, although the
issue of intrusiveness has been well developed in the literature (Edwards
et al. 2002; Ferris 2007; Li & Lee 2002; Maneesoonthorn & Fortin 2006;
Merisavo et al. 2007), little is known on how practitioners actually intend
to cope with it. Our participants claimed that their major concern is to find
effective ways to reach their advertising objectives and attempt to com-
ply with consumers’ desire for non-intrusive advertisements. Although
none of the participants had a proven solution for this, there seems to be
a common agreement that personalised and interactive advertisements
can greatly improve consumer acceptance and involvement. Finally, little
has been said about the growing need of advertisers for performance-
based metrics. Yet, the advertisers in our study have strongly insisted on
their need for ROI-based metrics that help them assess the cost of each
customer acquisition. Given that current technologies in digital media
allow real-time measurements, performance-based metrics are likely to
replace impression-based metrics in the near future. The respondents
who worked for technology enablers suggested that the problem of pro-
ducing better metrics was not the technologies, but the lack of regulation

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International Journal of Advertising, 2010, 29(5)

and agreement between stakeholders, especially the telecommunications

operators.
For advertising practitioners, the implications suggested by this paper
are manifest. Although the rise of digital media has contributed toward
audience fragmentation, all participants in this study seemed to agree that
advertising campaigns could still increase audience reach and consumer
involvement by combining traditional and new media. For example, tra-
ditional mass media are still seen as more effective in building general
awareness whereas new media are better at attracting smaller but more
‘reactive’ audiences with similar behaviour and interests. Furthermore,
advertisers should prioritise when arbitrating between media. As a rule of
thumb, performance-based media should prevail over less traceable media
in terms of metrics provided. Better metrics allow for an improved assess-
ment of the potential ROI for each campaign.
Finally, this study found that interactivity has become essential in
advertising on digital media. When using their digital devices, consumers­
expect advertisements to be interactive and likeable (entertaining or
informative). One reason is that digital devices offer many advanced func-
tions that are shaping consumer expectations on interactive and enter-
taining contents, whether it be advertisements or syndicated contents.
Therefore, static advertising campaigns will be less effective in capturing
attention and involving audiences, if in fact they ever did the latter.
Future research may seek to investigate how industry stakehold-
ers perceive and address consumer trends. Even though the literature
strongly advocates permission-based and non-intrusive advertisements, it
is not clear how these recommendations will affect stakeholders in their
strategies. There is an opportunity to complement the consumer-based
approach with a practitioner one. The limitations of our research concern
the nature of the methodology. As with all exploratory qualitative research,
care should be taken in generalising the findings beyond the research
setting of France and the participants involved. However, because of the
seniority of our respondents and the global nature of their companies’
operations, we expect that the themes and conclusions presented here will
be relevant in other developed countries.

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About the authors

Yann Truong is Associate Professor of Marketing and Technology
Management at ESC Rennes School of Business. He is also Head of
the Center for Technology and Innovation Management (C-Tim) of the
school. His areas of research are digital marketing with a focus on the
Internet and mobile phones, management and marketing of innovations,
social media marketing and luxury marketing. He also works in several
funded research and development projects with large and small compa-
nies within the telecommunications and broadcast industries. His work
has been published in European Journal of Marketing, International Journal
of Advertising and International Journal of Market Research.
Rod McColl is a Professor of Marketing and Associate Dean for Research
at ESC Rennes School of Business. His research interests include market-
ing services, online marketing and luxury branding.
Philip Kitchen is Dean at Faculty of Business, and Professor of
Marketing (2010). Previously was Director of the Research Centre
for Marketing, Communications, and International Strategy (CMCIS)
and Chair of Strategic Marketing at Hull University Business School
(2001–2010). He is currently Affiliated Research Professor of Marketing
at the ESC Rennes School of Business. He also is a Visiting Professor at
the University of Malaya, Malaysia. Dr Kitchen is the Editor of Journal
of Marketing Communications. He has published 13 books and over 100
papers in leading journals around the world and was listed as one of the
‘the top 50 gurus who have influenced the future of marketing’ (Marketing
Business, December 2003, pp. 12–16). He is a fellow of CIM, RSA, HEA
and Member of the ALCS and Institute of Marketing Science (USA).
Address correspondence to: Yann Truong, ESC Rennes School of
Business, 2 rue Robert d’Arbrissel, 35065 Rennes Cedex, France.
Email: [email protected]

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