Keeping Media Trends In Perspective

The 2007 media advertising forecasts are out from a number of different sources, and they all point to continuing challenges for traditional media (NY Times story here).

Depending on the source of the information, advertising in the paper version of newspapers is predicted to range from a decline of 2 percent to an increase of 2 percent. Neither prediction is good.

Advertising on the major television networks is predicted to grow only 3 percent, and traditional radio is looking at lackluster growth of 1.5 percent.

Magazines face a similar stagnation.

The one bright spot is online advertising which is growing at seven times the rate of offline media (MarketingVOX), and is predicted to increase 29 percent in 2007.

Fitch Ratings analyzes industries for risk and the picture isn’t rosy for the old stalwarts of media (free registration may be required):

Newspaper and TV report
Radio report
Media & Entertainment

While old media may face substantial business model challenges and stagnant audience growth, that may also equate to substantial bargains for advertisers in the year ahead. Old media is still big media, and in spite of the challenges, the size of offline audiences carries a lot of clout.

There are a number of things to keep in mind when you’re trying to put all these changes in media in perspective.

1) You have to find a way to reach the relevant audience. The best idea in the world is wasted if the right people don’t see or hear it.
2) Once you find your audience, you need a powerful idea to engage them. People spend 95 percent of their day being bombarded by crap and, consequently, you are now facing an audience that has developed “new & improved” crap filters.
3) You have to affect your audience. Awareness is not enough. Increasing brand equity is as important as ever, but you have to make something happen. If you can’t demonstrate what happened as a result of astute media buys or brilliant creative execution, the future marketing budget will decline at the expense of other departments that can demonstrate results.
4) Even if you get good results someone is still going to look at the cost/benefit ratio of your efforts. The more the benefit side exceeds the cost side, the better.