While traditional media, such as television, newspapers, and magazines, fight to maintain their advertising clients, marketing dollars are shifting to the world of online media, namely search engine marketing. Many offline advertisements are finding that CMOs are redistributing marketing budgets in favor of search engine optimization and paid search. The reasoning behind this shift is simple, the Internet is quickly becoming the most used and trusted source of consumer information, according to ComScore research. Consumers trust in the anonymous nature of organic search, ranking results based on content and relevance rather than advertising spend. With their customers running to the computer prior to purchasing, numerous companies have decided to follow their lead, and invest advertising costs into search engine optimization. This will allow them to rank within the top placements of the search engines and capitalize on the limitless traffic and customers that the Internet can bring.

This is supported by statistics from bigResearch that reports that 47% of magazine advertisements are actually directing consumers online. These offline advertisements prompt consumer’s curiosity to learn more about the product/service, and so they search online. Marketing officers may have started to realize that if they are not ranking within the search engine results, then their offline ads may actually drive their consumer to a competitor’s web site.