This has been a tough two years for media across the globe!  According to Advertising Age, the current recession has caused the worst advertising slump since World War II, and although the overall economy has picked up in fits and starts this year, the slump is by no means over.

So what does this mean for gay and lesbian media?  After all, it’s almost a golden rule in advertising that when times get tough, advertisers pull back to what they know is safe, and niche-oriented media such as those targeting the gay and lesbian consumer is one of the first advertising budgets cut.

But this time around, it seems a different path has been taken.

There has already been a fundamental shift in how companies approach marketing and ad placements in the past few years.  The concept of “Permission Marketing” described by Seth Godin in his book of the same name three years ago touched on a practice that was gaining momentum even before this recent economic downturn.

The idea and fundamental shift is true “One on One Marketing” – i.e., to speak directly to a consumer and deliver a message that is specifically relevant to him or her.  One on One Marketing is not a new concept… it’s how people have done business for hundreds of years, but during the 20^th century, there was an increasing shift to mass production and mass consumption, and advertising followed along, reaching consumers by the millions. Television became the medium of choice.

While “mass media” was the correct path for many advertisers, the alternative to reach individual consumers was Direct Mail marketing, which is really the predecessor to today’s One on One Marketing on the Internet.  Advertisers were able to purchase mailing lists from magazines and mail-order retailers and, based on key zip codes, select demographics that were otherwise reachable only by a door-to-door sales person. 

Today, the Internet, combined with the growing strength of cable and satellite television, makes direct One on One Marketing a reality.  Advertisers no longer need to spend millions of dollars trying to send a generic message to millions of consumers at one time. Now, they can tailor their message to a specific demographic, spending less and ensuring a higher return rate on their advertising investment.

This shift was already underway, but it took the recent advertising downturn to help bring One on One Marketing to the forefront.  As advertisers around the world scaled back and became smarter about how they spent available funds, it opened the possibility of testing new opportunities in Internet marketing.  Many discovered one of the gems hidden in the recent Dot.com rise and fall… marketing to a specific niche market or affinity group online.

Although we know of the Dot.com failures, what we don’t hear as much about are the true Dot.com success stories.  In the gay and lesbian marketplace, there are a wide variety of Internet sites that have a very strong sense of online community.  These “community sites” speak to the gay and lesbian consumer as never before.  Since gays and lesbians are a diverse group with widely varying interests, these sites have successfully reached out to them and created a loyal following that can range from 1,000 to tens of thousands of members online.

The demographics these sites pursue are quite varied: Some sites are focused geographically, bringing together gays and lesbians in the same neighborhood who might never have met had it not been for membership in an online community.  Other sites are focused on interests, such as sports, travel, entertainment and more. Sites such as ProudParenting.com help to bring parents of similar interests and backgrounds together for the first time.  In addition, this site offers quality news, content and resources that are specific to the gay and lesbian parenting community.  It may not be a large community in comparison to the millions watching “Friends” on a Thursday night, but it becomes an effective media buy because it reaches specific demographics.  There is no waste.

Working with the site owner or utilizing a media placement site such as GayMediaExpress.com (http://www.gaymediaexpress.com), an advertiser is now able to reach gay and lesbian consumers with banner advertising, site sponsorship and direct e-mail.  The privacy of the site’s members is never compromised, as the site owner himself, not the advertiser, delivers this message to his membership.

So if the advertiser is a travel company organizing a white water rafting trip in California, this advertiser is now able to reach potential adventure travelers living in the west coast, male or female, within a specific age range.  Working with the right sites, the advertiser can even custom-target adventure travelers instead of just all vacation travelers as a whole.  If the advertiser is a gay hotel in Miami, this advertiser can now reach potential hotel guests by advertising directly on the sites that a gay and lesbian consumer would use to locate his or her hotel room.  The examples and opportunities are endless, especially considering that every month new consumers gain Internet access (currently estimated at two million per month and increasing).

As Internet communities continue to grow, advertisers are educating themselves about how to better position their companies to reach the key demographics of online communities and more effectively advertise with smaller budgets.     Advertisers who can reach a higher percentage of their key consumer demographic at the lowest cost will have a distinct advantage over those who are still spending large sums and hoping to catch a few potential new customers.  Which advertiser do you want to be?