This week will be a conference-heavy one for me with plenty of focus on the future.

I’ll be attending the Australasian Media and Broadcasting Congress in Sydney and sitting on two panels.

Panel 1 is to discuss Where is advertising heading? We’ll be looking at what the emergence of new platforms and players means for advertising spends on traditional media, questioning whether brands will continue to advertise en masse and even looking at whether technology such as 3D TV is the future for advertising.

Panel 2 probably has a lot of similar themes for me as we look at Strategies for successfully transitioning to a broadband economy. We’ll discuss what media companies need to do to survive in the changing technological environment, using the online channel to develop content and advertising products that cater to the on-demand media consumer and how media companies will generate revenue online.

The rest of the conference topics focus heavily on the digital age so its going to be fascinating to see what the rest of the industry is thinking.

The Australasian Media and Broadcasting Congress is on 20-22 July 2010 at the Swissotel, Sydney.

In the past five years social media has snowballed to become a dominant force in media and marketing. Here in Australia we now spend more time online,  17.6 hours per week , than with any other media. Astoundingly, Australia leads the world in social media consumption averaging 6 hrs 52mins per person per month.

advertising must adapt to the new social media environment

So it is fair to say that social media is now having a significant impact on how people receive information and how they consume marketing.

Social media finally brings “people” into the marketing equation. Its possible to actually develop real relationships with consumers rather than just broadcast messages to them.

Bob MacDonald, CEO of Procter & Gamble, one of the world’s leading advertisers recently said,

What I would like to have is a one-on-one relationship with seven billion people in the world and be able to customize offerings for those seven billion people. Digital allows that relationship.

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Next month I am going to be a panelist at the 5th Annual Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress in Sydney as media leaders discuss the industry and its future directions and I really need your help.

Is 3D the future of advertising?

One panel I am really looking forward to is titled The Future of Advertising. I’ll be discussing the big issues with Adam Good from Clemenger, Paddy Douneen from BMF, Marty O’Halloran from DDB Australia & New Zealand, John Sintras from Starcom Worldwide, Matt Whittingham from SingTel Optus and Paul Fisher from IAB Australia.

The initial question coming my way is based on a statement by Oscar-winning producer Jon Landau at the Cannes International Advertising Festival:

“3D is going to be the future of advertising”

Now I have been rather unexcited by the whole 3D thing and have my own opinions about it, but maybe I am way off base. So I’d really like to know what you think. Is 3D going to be the future of advertising? Is it just a fad, hyped by a desperate industry or is it groundbreaking technology that is going to make us love TV all over again and lap up the exciting advertisements that will be leaping off the screen?

I’d love to hear from people within the media and advertising industries. I’d also appreciate feedback from people who have invested in 3D televisions to understand their experiences so far.

All feedback is very welcome. I will compile the answers as part of my response to what I hope becomes a very lively debate at the Media & Broadcasting Congress.

Internet advertising has overtaken press in USA

A PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report issued yesterday in the USA claims that the internet is poised to overtake newspapers as the second largest U.S. advertising medium by revenue behind television.

This is a significant moment in advertising as traditional media have steadily been overtaken by the Internet in less than 20 years. How long until Internet advertising rolls past Television? And here in Australia, how long until the Internet becomes the number two advertising medium?

Here is the story in full from The Australian….

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Is traditional media and advertising reaching the end of the creative line? In an increasingly cluttered media landscape it seems that nostalgia is being seen as the way to cut through and grasp our remaining collective attention.

Radio has long used the “formative years” approach to appeal to different demographics. This means playing music that was new during the teenage years of the desired audience. The result has been a plethora of classic hits and golden oldies formats. Read the rest of this entry »

How many marketers and advertising experts actually practice what they preach?

Until recently it probably wasn’t a very viable option.

How many times has your media rep, who happily suggests where to spend your hard-earned advertising budget, actually “invested” his or her own funds in an ad campaign?

How often has your agency account manager had to feel the anxiety of committing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on a campaign that could make or break their business?

For that matter, when was the last time you saw an advertising agency run their own highly-creative, cutting-edge 30 second television spot during prime time?

You haven’t, have you. Agencies enter awards and then drum up column inches in trade press. Its called PR.

Truth is that most of the marketing and advertising experts who businesses rely on don’t actually practice what they preach. And, to be fair, in many cases its not very practical to expect them to.

But the emergence of social media and inbound marketing means that a new generation of marketers has emerged who do have skin in the game, who do actually live, breathe and experience the highs and lows of the strategies they extol.

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source: Sydney Morning Herald 12 March, 2010

There’s been a decided shift in television viewing numbers already in 2010 and it seems to be a nationwide trend. Here in Newcastle we have been intrigued by the difference in audience numbers this year compared to the same time last year.

So far there seems to be an average of 20,000 less viewers per top 10 program than for the corresponding week in 2009. For example the #1 program in Newcastle for week 10, 2010 was The Mentalist with 84,000 viewers. The #5 program was NBN  Saturday News with 67,000 viewers and the #10 program was Talkin’ Bout Your Generation on SC TEN with 55,000 viewers.

IN 2009 for the week ending 3 March (corresponding week) here are the numbers: #1 Underbelly on NBN with 124,000 viewers, #5 RSPCA Animal Rescue on Prime with 86,000 viewers and #10 CSI on NBN with 75,000 viewers. Of course, Underbelly is a standout ratings winner but the #1 program last week had less viewers than the #5 program last year.

As you can see there are about 20,000 less viewers for the main Free-to-Air channels. And this is happening every week.

Now the national media are picking up on the trend. The rest of this post is taken from today’s Sydney Morning Herald.

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Is now the time for new kind of communications business that connects marketing specialists with corporate marketers?

Its been obvious for a while now that the generalist media era is coming to an end. No longer do a handful of large media outlets determine our news and entertainment the way they did during the last century. Increasingly we are turning to a multitude of specialist media providers to satisfy our many needs. Media consumption is splintering so rapidly that it’s difficult to keep track of the vast array of options available to us.

Marketing "connectors" assemble teams of specialists

One hangover from the generalist media era is the full-service agency. Whilst “everything under one roof” may have been feasible when there were only a handful of media options, in 2010, with a ridiculous number of feasible marketing options available….Free to Air TV, Subscription TV, Radio, Digital radio, Press, online press, outdoor, SEO, SEM, social media, inbound marketing, micro sites etc…. its seems ludicrous to believe that one shop can do it all.

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Telstra’s directories unit is up against a formidable foe online, and it doesn’t look good, writes Dominic White from the Australian Financial Review.

Who bothers to dig out the Yellow Pages if they want to find a plumber or order a pizza when they can Google it in seconds on their laptop or iPhone?
It’s a question Telstra shareholders may be asking after the company revealed this monthly the first-half print revenues at the Yellow Pages tumbled by some 8.7 per cent.

Even after adjusting for growth in China, online, currency movements and the loss of Trading Post, revenues at Sensis, the Telstra unit that looks after Yellow Pages, fell 0.1 per cent – the first revenue fall in Sensis’s history.

Until now Sensis have proved remarkably immune to the headwinds that have battered other Yellow Pages businesses across the planet, including rise of Google. Unlike its rivals, which are largely owned by private equity, it doesn’t have debt problems.

But now experts wonder whether the move into negative growth marks a worrying turning point for Sensis, a business that generates almost 10 per cent of Telstra’s total sales.

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Is this a sign that Google feels the need to compete with the Bing advertising budget? Is it a bit of cheeky post-modern irony? I don’t know. But it sure was interesting to see that Google just ran an ad in the Superbowl coverage. Here it is…