We’ve all heard that “traditional advertising is dead” and we all know it isn’t. It’s still alive even though it doesn’t work very well, is increasingly ignored, irritates people and isn’t really measureable. So when will it really die?
The incontrovertible axiom of the post-advertising age is that traditional, interruptive commercials will disappear completely (i.e., die) when there are no more traditional media to interrupt with ads. That explains why a recent obsessive focus of postadvertising.com is the lethal illness now afflicting traditional media — an illness that combines the virus of global economic collapse, the ongoing fragmentation of TV and the viral growth of digital.
This week, it’s the newspapers’ turn to take a leading role in the traditional media deathwatch. But it’s also magazines’ moment, and local TV (followed by national TV). It’s always the book business’s turn. And who knows whose turn it’ll be after that? No traditional medium is safe these days.
The first of the recent media casualties was the bankruptcy of The Tribune Company, with its dozen newspapers, nearly two dozen local TV stations and various other media assets. Then, The Wall Street Journal reported that The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News will stop printing newspapers on some days of the week. The New York Times next weighed in with a piece about Dean Singleton’s struggles with the once proud San Jose Mercury News, among other troubled print properties.
All is less than well, meanwhile, in magazineland, where industry newsletter and database keeper Wooden Horse Publishing has been carrying regular reports on magazine staffers being laid off and publications being killed or curtailed by virtually every major publisher, from Condé Nast to Hachette to Time, Inc.
All these reports of fear and firings in print are compounded by a recent spate of reports on the problems with TV. The authoritative research firm eMarketer, for example, just issued a white paper titled, “Television's New Picture: Seismic Shifts in the Digital Age.” If you’ve got $695 to spare, buy it. It predicts sharply lower TV spending in 2009 and details how the shift to web-based video programming means huge problems for broadcasters. Among the problems: most people won’t put up with more than two “ads” per hour online, says BizReport.com reporting on a Dynamic Logic long-term survey. That compares with 18-20 minutes of advertising—up to 40 commercials—per hour on broadcast.
These stories have jolted us into confessing a serious personal failing. Maniacally focused on the imminent demise of traditional advertising, we at postadvertising h.q. have failed to note the ongoing death of the traditional media, most of which depend on ads for survival. The truth is that in the race to the postadvertising apocalypse, traditional media are now in the lead with traditional advertising following close behind. Ultimately, of course, they are both headed to the same destination.
It would be worthwhile to think about the REAL disaster this could create. The world can survive without advertising. But it can’t live long without information and entertainment. So the business model supporting a lot of our daily information and entertainment has got to change. Soon.
But setting the serious questions aside for the moment (Who’s going to report the news when the last newspaper lays off the last reporter?), here’s one that ought to be occupying the world’s CMOs: Where are brands going to put their budgets when the last traditional medium goes online where people won’t tolerate much advertising at all?
The inevitable answer in the post-advertising age is that budgets should be devoted increasingly to creating content and experiences that embody brands and engage the brands’ audiences. It would be a really good idea for brands to start preparing for the inevitable right now.
(Photo by Jasoon)