Look at any prediction of the future and other than some of what’s contained in Jules Verne’s novels, it’s all mostly been proven nonsense.
Same today as it ever was. There’s the assorted new media prophets, such as Jeff Jarvis and Seth Godin, who hardly recognize the history that came before them. Everything, apparently, just happened yesterday.
Welcome to the new age.
According to the Guardian, internet ad spending will overtake television in 2010 in the UK. The rush to the internet will be led by video advertising, which ‘experts’ say can cost more than ordinary TV, if it’s run around quality programming.
Of course, the largest share will continue to go to search advertising, with Google expected to make a couple of billion. In a controversial move, Google is attempting to rake in even more by allowing UK companies to bid for competitor trademark names.
In the U.S., an Adweek survey says that TV spending is down 25% compared to last year. Although print is taking the hardest hit with 65% of agency respondents saying they’d be less focused on the medium – while 75% said they are shifting their focus to the internet. Perhaps that’s why the once mighty Reader’s Digest has filed for bankruptcy.
In the meantime and quite contrarily, for the year ending August 31, 2008, the combined incomes for companies in television, radio, cable and home satellite services were up $900 million, or 7.3% from the year before, according to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s second annual Communications Monitoring Report.
At the same time, commercial broadcast TV viewing in the UK had a record first six months in 2009, according to new figures from the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board, with commercial viewing up 9.9 minutes a week year on year. The results have impacted on the number of ads being watched, with figures up 2% year on year and 16% over the past five years, with the average viewer watching 43 ads a day.
Even some of the biggest online brands are switching much of their advertising spend to TV, print and outdoor. Kayak, Zappos and Amazon, more than likely convinced by the successful traditional advertising debut of Hulu.com, are looking to traditional agencies to do the same for them.
And in Adweek Media and Harris Interactive’s latest poll, more than one-third of Americans (37%) say that TV ads are most helpful to them in making a purchase decision, while nearly half say they ignore internet banner ads.
So, how is one to process this conflicting information? Don’t. It’s a sucker’s game.
The thing that’s rarely understood amongst all of these facts, figures and predictions is that people give attention to what’s interesting to them. They don’t really care whether it’s delivered on TV, the internet, or the side of a cow for that matter. All of the space between a brand and its audience is in fact, media. There’s no such thing as old and new. Just more.
The message is the reason people spend time and get involved with a brand in the first place. The media, however specialized, simply delivers it.
