Most of us will heard or know of Philip Kotler as one of the well-knowns in the marketing field. He has produced numerous books and articles and is the author of ‘Marketing Management’ which is one of the most widely used marketing textbooks. Most of us will agree that he is truly one of the experts when its comes to marketing. However, while he is really good in most forms of marketing mix but I think he has been lagging behind in terms of newer forms of marketing mix such as the Internet. This is highlight from the excerpt of his new book ‘According to Kotler’ where he was asked this question:

Question: Will the Internet become an effective advertising medium?

Kotler: A few years ago, the CEO of Procter & Gamble said that he would happily switch a large portion of P&G’s huge advertising budget to the Internet if he could find effective ways to do Internet advertising. So far, the Internet has not become a full-blown advertising medium like television, radio, newspapers, or magazines. It is true that the Internet carries banner ads, but they are being opened less than 1% of the time. Advertisers are pressuring popular Web sites to carry skyscraper or pop-up ads, but the Web sites see this as risky. Also, consumers can choose to block pop-up ads. Google has developed a system to align paid-for ads next to topics being searched by consumers. For example, if I type “BMW” on Google, the right side of Google’s page will show a BMW ad. BMW will quickly learn whether its ad is leading to sales. All said, it is too early to tell how widespread or effective Internet advertising will become.

The above excerpt shows that Kotler has perhaps not caught up with all the new forms of internet marketing as internet advertising such as paid advertisements and search engine optimisation are one of the most measurable and most effective form of direct marketing or advertising. What I can assume is that Kotler has not really consider the Internet as an important marketing tool alongside other marketing communication mix. He was saying that less and less people are being exposed to traditional marketing tools such as television. So where have all these people been heading? The answer is the Internet. More and more people are using the internet for their everyday use – Clickz has just recently released in July the online population stats. This means that marketers have to consider internet marketing as an important marketing tool now if they haven’t done so. Of course, I do not mean that internet marketing is more important. It should be consider seriously together with all the other intergrated marketing communication mix. My assumption on Kotler is only based on the short excerpt and it might not be true on Kotler himself.

A link to the excerpts can be found here.