Several brands advertise online but few shift the bulk of their offline advertising budget to their online marketing strategy. Southern Comfort, however, has done just this, taking its $8 million budget to the online market. Why? Because SoCo’s target demographic is the 21-29 year-olds, who happen to spend a lot of time online and less time watching television.

The on-demand nature of online television content and the avid use of social networking means that SoCo needs to shift its strategy in order to follow its target demographic. More specifically, SoCo plans on launching ads on sites like Hulu and Facebook, as well as NCB, CBs, Fox and FX, among others. The question on everyone’s mind is whether or not this is a good move.

As GigaOm points out, spirits companies aren’t allowed to run commercials during prime time television, advertising online is a viable alternative. And with printed media such as newspapers and magazines continue to decline in readership, there are multiple reasons why a spirits company in particular is looking to put so much of its budget into online advertising.

But even though the online market is looking like the solution to SoCo’s increasing offline advertising needs, there are still a few things this spirits company will need to keep in mind as it makes this big shift for its marketing campaign. Ensuring that ads are being displayed to its core demographic is a necessary barrier for online advertising, but a barrier nonetheless. Limiting or controlling access to its ad campaigns, some of which could theoretically be in the format of engaging applications on various social networks is a concern all alcoholic beverage companies must operate around.

And converting online ads into offline sales is going to be a major aspect of SoCo’s brand. Further managing that brand online is also going to be a focal point for SoCo even more now that the company is shifting so much money to its online campaign. Not only will other spirits companies be watching SoCo’s next steps closely, but the advertising industry as a whole will be taking notes to see how effective SoCo can be.

What we’re finding based on studies conducted in the past few months is that decreased or modified spending on online ads have forced brands and web publishers to change their strategies when it comes to online marketing. The result has been an increased focus on engagement, from an operational and data-collecting standpoint. Whether or not SoCo will be incorporating engagement tactics that are quickly becoming standards for online marketing capaigns has not been revealed, and doesn’t appear to be one of the main courses considering the sites on which SoCo will be advertising. But SoCo’s actions will affect engagement studies and surveys nonetheless, so we’ll be keeping a watch to see how SoCo handles its next moves.

By Marissa Louie

The Advertising 2.0 Party at ad:tech SF

Take a handful of fun Skittles, mashup a little Web 2.0, and invite celeb co-hosts from ad:tech SF — sounds like a party jam!

This is the official ad:tech afterparty for Tuesday April 21.

At 8:30p, hop on over 1/2 a block to Hotel W *after* the evening’s events at Moscone Center West:

• ad:tech/SF BIG (6:30-8:30p)
• Affiliate Marketing Networking Party (5:30-7:30p)

Join Co-hosts and VIPs:

• Marissa Louie – CEO of AD-Village
• Aaron Sahagun – CEO of Alumwire
• Amanda Coolong – CEO of Beta PR
• Efren Toscano – CEO of Techzulu
• Julian Brass – CEO of Notable.TV
• Kamal Ravikant – Angel Investor
• Khris Loux – CEO of JS-Kit
• Kym McNicholas – Reporter, Forbes TV
• Shawn Collins – Founder of Affiliate Summit
• Steve Hall – Founder of Adrants and Adgabber
• Tom Bedecarre – CEO of AKQA
• Tom Foremski – SiliconValleyWatcher, ZDNet, and former Financial Times columnist

Platinum Sponsor:

• Sun Startup Essentials: Jumpstart your startup

Gold Sponsors:

• AD-Village: Access to high-paying ads across top ad networks
• JS-Kit: Rich, interactive features for your website
• Skittles: Transplant the Rainbow (Skittles, anyone??)

Media Sponsors:

• ad:tech (Official ad:tech blog writeup by Steve Hall from Adrants is here)
• Adrants
• Affiliate Marketing Summit
• Bub.blicio.us
• Techzulu

Badged ad:tech SF attendees only, please. Non-attendees, please add yourself to the waitlist.

**RSVP AT: http://ad-village.com/AD20**

See who’s coming on the Facebook event page.

Even in this Recession, we are helping Web 2.0 companies monetize with advertising revenue. We invite you to come celebrate the good times at The Advertising 2.0 Party.

Previously:

Launch Party 2.0 at Web 2.0 Expo on April 1 at Club Six (500 guests, plus TechCrunch, BusinessWeek, Lalawag, LA Weekly, SF Weekly) — we’ve barely recovered since..

Marissa is the CEO and Co-founder of AD-Village. It helps website publishers make more revenue from online advertising by recommending top ads in a simple ad recommendations interface.

She is a frequent conference speaker and has presented about online advertising most recently at O’Reilly ETech, REBarCamp, and the Microsoft Blogger Roundtable.

Marissa blogs at marissalouie.com, BusinessWeek blogs, and here at Bub.blicio.us.

Find her on Twitter: @malouie

Contact her at (510) 375-1941 or Email her at marissa@ad-village.com.

Post and video by Miiko Mentz

At Web 2.0 Expo last week, Bubblicious Reporter Jolie O’Dell spoke with Topix CEO Chris Tolles. Topix is a leading Internet news community that connects people on a local level to the news and events in their towns and cities, and it provides a place for people to discuss the news that matters most to them. With newspaper advertising shrinking and becoming less effective, local businesses are turning to other sources, such as Topix, to connect with customers.

Topix is becoming a great avenue for businesses that are dependent on local customers, such as restaurants, salons and spas, car dealerships, attorneys, doctors and other neighborhood-type businesses. However, many of these small business owners aren’t well versed in SEO practices or search advertising, but need to advertise online to drive customers into their stores, restaurants and local offices.

At Web 2.0 Expo last week, Tolles talked about Topix’s newly released services that are helping these types of businesses connect to a local audience in a local context. Check out our interview with Tolles:

In addition to Topix, the Bubblicious team talked with a few other companies offering social computing applications and services. If you missed our highlight reel or other interviews, check them out: ooVoo and MindTouch. Stay tuned all week for the full interviews with each company. Tomorrow’s video interview is with chi.mp.

What’s in store for PR’s future, and how does it relate to Digital Advertising?

At the AdRevenue08 Conference on Friday November 14, I was able to catch up with PR executives from Horn Group. The following is my interview with Ben Billingsley, Managing Director (New York), and Martha Feingold, Vice President and Media Director (San Francisco).

Corbis

Marissa Louie: At the first conference panel, I asked the leading ad network executives what they thought was in store over the next 5-10 years for the online advertising industry. The consensus was that there would be a trend towards media becoming more addressable and efficient. In that light, what do you think is the future of PR as it relates to digital advertising?

Martha Feingold: If you look at it from a micro perspective, the PR landscape changes every 6 to 12 months. Over the next 5-10 years, we’ll tackle how to blend into the conversation. We’ll tackle how to help companies communicate.

Ben Billingsley: As all media becomes social, we’re going to have to change from being information gatekeepers to becoming information brokers. As more media becomes digital, media becomes more quantifiable.

ML: How have you seen PR change recently?

BB: PR no longer stands for Public Relations. It now stands for Public Relationships. Still, the objective is the influence opinions and engage in conversations.

ML: How do you capitalize on the Web 3.0 (Semantic Web / Intelligent Web), and tie it into your PR efforts? As PR is so much about communication.

BB: This is a question we’ll tackle and stay on top of as the new technology is rolled out.

MF: Everything has evolved so much over the past 2 years that we’re really just keeping up with that.

ML: At the conference, I pointed out that data collection and management is essential for digital advertising strategies. How do you take advantage of data collection and management in PR?

MF: PR 2.0 is about managing customer relationships and data trends. PR is continuing to find ways to manage those two modalities. I agree that data collection and management is becoming increasingly important.

ML: Why are data collection and management important to you?

BB: It gives you a share of voice. In a digital world, the ability to think analytically is very important.

ML: Which tools do you use for data tracking?

BB: We use Omniture and Google Analytics as our basic tools to measure influence, plus a few other additional niche tools for data collection. We’re also using various different tools to manage.

ML: Which metrics do you use? What matters most?

MF: It’s much easier to figure out the reach of traditional media than the reach of social media. Essentially, the formula for calculating reach is:
Reach = (how many times you were mentioned) * (audience reach of the media, i.e. subscription base)

BB: It’s about thinking about your business strategy and mapping it back to your PR strategy. Develop communications to map between them.

ML: What do you think of the AdRevenue08 conference today? What objectives did it accomplish?

BB: It helped create thought leadership, incorporated the ad optimization category, and helped define the current online advertising ecosystem.

MF: I think there was a lot of concern in the economy with online advertising and what’s going to happen in the first half of next year. It clarified the difference between different players in the online ad industry. Overall, I think the industry is going to continue to head in a positive direction after a few bumps in the road.

ML: Thanks, guys!

NOTE: For more on the future of PR and communications, I also recommend reading PR 2.0 by Brian Solis of FutureWorks PR. Check out his innovative formula that calculates the allocation of resources (time, personnel, budget) to conversations in The Essential Guide to Social Media. He also defines action items for leading companies into future of integrated communications in The Social Media Manifesto.

Marissa Louie is the Founder and CEO of AD Village (http://ad-village.com) which helps bloggers monetize and advertisers optimize. Her previous entries include The Wheels of Viral Marketing, 10 Types of Ad Targeting, and 10+ Funniest Angel and VC Blog Posts. She also announces Entrepreneur 2 Entrepreneur office hours via Twitter.