B2B advertisers are more aggressive than B2C marketers

A joint study from the Association of National Advertisers and BtoB indicates marketers focusing on business to business (B2B) sales are more aggressive in using new media than advertisers focusing on business to consumer (B2C) sales.

by Kristina Knight

Researchers studied the use of blogs, podcasts, search and several user-generated content platforms. They found that almost one-third of B2B advertisers spent 20% or more of their ad dollars on new media while only about 5% of their B2C competitors did so. They also found that about half of the B2B respondents planned to allocate at least 10% of future ad budgets to new media.

"The bulk of the budget dollars allocated to new platforms will go to the entrenched forms—the company's own Web site and e-mail marketing," said Frank Dudley, VP of marketing at Guideline, the company that performed the study.

However there are changes afoot. The study went on to find that more than 70% of B2C marketers said they would shift money from traditional forms of advertising into new media in the future. Only about 50% of B2B marketers said the same thing. That discrepancy could be because B2B marketers are already heavily invested in new media, but it is interested nonetheless.