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.