Funds being moved from Digital & Online Budgets into DPb Media.

A new survey of strategic media planners conducted by the Digital Place-based Advertising Association (DPAA) reveals a dramatic increase in the percentage of digital place-based media spending that is coming out of digital and online budgets.

Just over 40% of planners said that they will fund their digital place-based (DPb) media plans through digital and online budgets, an increase of 75% over the 22.9% who said in the DPAA’s 2011 survey that they would tap digital and online budgets to fund DPb.

Outdoor budgets remained the most popular source for DPb funding, with just over 64% citing this category versus 54% in 2011.

Planners were asked: “When considering digital place-based networks for inclusion in your media plan(s), from which existing media would you fund the ad dollars?” The top five most frequently cited in the 2012 survey were:

Outdoor: 64.2% (2011: 54.2%)

Television: 40.7% (2011: 43.8%)

Digital/Online: 40.1% (2011: 22.9%)

Experimental/Test 19.8% (2011: 18.8%)

Zero-Based Planning 15.4% (2011: 19.8%)

When asked to project spending for 2013, 94.2% of this year’s survey respondents said they would include DPb media in their plans, compared to 86.3 % in the 2011 research, a gain of 9%.

Awareness of research tools and services that include data on digital place-based media is increasing among strategic media planners. Among the research services including DPb at the time the survey was fielded, overall awareness grew significantly year-to-year.

Planners’ Knowledge of DPb Research Availability:

Nielsen: 54.0% (2011: 46.4%)

GfK MRI: 41.9% (2011: 38.5%)

IMS: 32.0% (2011: 26.0%)

Experian Simmons: 31.6% (2011: 23.4%)

Arbitron: 20.2% (2011: 20.4%)

“Digital place-based media is a sector on the rise,” said Susan Danaher, president and CEO of the DPAA. “The trend lines are all positive, the most notable being a steadily increasing intent to incorporate DPb in media plans and a greater awareness of the availability of research to aid in the planning process. These two trends obviously go hand-in-hand, and their solid upward tracking bode well for our sector’s continued revenue growth in the years ahead.”

The survey was conducted online from May 1-May 29, 2012 by the DPAA among 1,761 media professionals employed at full-service and media service agencies around the country. Response rate was 11.9%

For more information at http://www.dp-aa.org>