OFF-SITE PROMOTIONS
Offline advertising in print and broadcast media is probably the most expensive way to build name recognition and drive traffic to an e-commerce Web site. The online job recruitment site Monster.com spent about $45 million on branding in 1999, with about 65 percent of the budget going to television advertising. The company's ads ran more than 500,000 times during 1999, including its first Super Bowl ad. Immediately after the Super Bowl ad appeared, traffic at Monster.com increased by 450 percent. The results encouraged the company to spend more on TV advertising and brand building. Monster.com spent an estimated $250 million around the world to build the company's brand in 2001.
Online brokerages spent heavily on print and television advertising to gain brand recognition. In 1997 Ameritrade launched a $20 million national advertising campaign that focused on Ameritrade's online trading fee of $8. Heavy advertising expenditures helped increase the number of new accounts at Ameritrade and boosted revenue, but they also resulted in much higher quarterly losses. Ameritrade justified its strategy of pursuing market share by noting that online accounts were relatively cheap to acquire through advertising and marketing.
Priceline.com adopted an aggressive radio and newspaper advertising strategy that later expanded to include television. It featured the actor William Shatner as a spokesperson and resulted in the company having name recognition among at least a quarter of the U.S. adult population, or some 50 million people, according to a study by Opinion Research Corp.
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