Over the years we have heard how digital media is going to eat traditional media’s lunch. That the industry is being disrupted. However according to many recent posting by experts, perhaps that prediction is entirely false.
Anthony Young, CEO of Mindshare, wrote two recent blog posts about the matter. In one posting he declares “That despite all the bravado of the new media world that was going to disrupt and disintermediate the traditional media model, all it’s done is reinforce it.“ In another post he states that “traditional media too have been too ‘traditional’ in how they pitch themselves“, otherwise they would be the “hot” media of the time.
I especially liked how he called Radio … “a unique mobile, hyper-local, multi-platform channel that delivers scalable brand marketing campaigns for advertiser.” In a response, Mary Beth Gerber, obviously a radio professional from California, points out that “you did forget one of the key assets of radio — our personalities. They have a strong, emotion-based connection to the listeners, and they can be accessed not just over the air, but through facebook, twitter and the station’s website. Advertisers benefit from that connection. It’s better than a ‘like’.”
But I like to get to the numbers. Recently Borrell Associates released their 2012 Local Advertising Forcast. While it is good to note that they are projecting 18% growth in the local ad buying marketing. It is astonishing, considering that last year they said pure-play Internet companies were winning, that they said “Legacy local media companies still control 92% of all advertising, including half of all locally spent online advertising. And their share is of online is starting to grow, at the expense of local pureplay Internet companies.”
It’s funny though. CMO’s haven’t really heard that news. In its latest detailed study — “Localize to Optimize Sales Channel Effectiveness,” the CMO Council reveals 86 percent of national marketers surveyed intend to look for ways to better modify, adapt and localize their marketing content, messaging and prospect engagement practices. Findings from the online survey of 300-plus members across all leading industry sectors indicate traditional print and broadcast/cable media are losing ground to more targeted, personalized, interactive and measurable forms of local engagement across diverse audiences and communities.
So perception versus reality. I think you should be planning for both worlds. At some point, after-all, digital media is just going to be another traditional media platform.
