Agency Survey Puts Digital and Local TV in a Close Race

One in five ad agencies surveyed by Strata predict their digital spend will outweigh traditional within three years. The media buying software firm released Q3 data yesterday aggregating marketing behaviors from 89 of its ad agency clients.

Thirty-four percent of the agencies said digital was their No. 1 medium, while 35 percent cited local TV. The finding represents the closest outcome in the three years Strata has been asking the digital vs. local TV survey question. Not surprisingly, 85 percent of the respondents said they have been more focused on digital in 2011 than they were last year.

Facebook was the respondents’ social media platform of choice; 89 percent of the agencies said they will use the platform with either earned or paid media in campaigns. That stat also means that 11 percent don’t use the popular service – with its 150 million U.S. users – at all.

“I actually would expect it to be higher than 11 percent,” J.D. Miller, director of marketing for the Chicago-based Strata, told ClickZ News. “Agencies don’t always handle the social end of an advertising campaign with many of their clients handling social in-house and utilizing agencies more for purchasing advertising.”

Meanwhile, his company’s survey found that YouTube is more popular than Twitter in the social category. Thirty-nine percent of surveyed agencies use the Google-owned video site and 37 percent employed tweets. Twenty-two percent said they use LinkedIn in their campaigns, while Google+ trailed at 14 percent.

Some agencies threw cold water on the notion that digital could dominate advertising by 2014. Thirty-six percent stated digital would never overrun traditional.

Strata helps clients purchase placements in a range of media types, including national and local cable and broadcast TV, digital, radio, outdoor, and newspaper.