Good article from Poynter Online about how companies are spending money to create unique content for their websites to try and attract readers. The author refers to this as “below the line” spending.

Here’s an example he cited:
“PepsiCo, which spends many millions of dollars on marketing every year, is just one example. During Internet Week in New York, I helped lead a project for which we hired nine “social communicators” (some of whom were traditional journalists) and built out a suite of blogs and social media tools, including a Twitter feed, a YouTube channel and a proprietary app, to cover the week’s events and, PepsiCo hoped, reach an audience of influential people in digital media and marketing. PepsiCo has done similar projects for the SXSW festival and said it is planning more in the future.”

The representative from Pepsi went on to say, “we are going to shift the mix of dollars from what might be a hundred percent paid advertising to something less traditional.”

The author gives a couple of other examples, and there is no doubt that he has spotted a growing trend. While he sees this trend as a threat to traditional media, I see it as an opportunity.

Later in the article he says, “I believe the trend will extend to local merchants, too. What happens, for example, when a local business that might have spent a few thousand dollars a month to attract customers via local circulars or news blogs instead decides to spend some or all of that money on its own digital media, attract its own audience, and glean all that data for itself?”

The problem with this is most small business owners we talk to have neither the expertise nor the time to pull this off. If they decide to go down this road they are going to need help from credible marketing services companies that can develop and optimize websites, create copy, provide social networking services, etc. That’s where we come in. We are doing these things for scores of customers as we speak and our client list continues to grow. And from a business model perspective, it gives our company access to “below the line” marketing dollars that we have never been able to vie for in the past.

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=174032