It is hardly breaking news to hear that there has been a massive shift in advertising spending in the last decade. Many traditional media outlets, especially directories, newspapers and magazines were affected early by the rise of online. Others, such as free-to-air TV, subscription TV and radio have seen more gradual erosion of their bases, but erosion nonetheless.

The problem for most traditional media is that the shift is far from over. In fact, its still only early days and the social networks are just getting warmed up in the advertising market.

The following chart is compiled by Borrell Associates and displays the ongoing migration to online advertising in the USA at the expense of many traditional media. There are some sizable falls in ad spend for some media here…and that’s just from last year to this year.

The initial growth of online advertising was in the areas of display (basically replicating magazine and press advertising) and the early online classifieds.

The launch of Google’s Adwords service saw search engines become major players in the advertising market. And they were different, a lot different. Suddenly advertising could be more contextual, more relevant, more cost-effective and much more measurable. And they were self-serve. Anyone could suddenly build and launch their own online advertising campaign in minutes. As a result, Google now owns 44% of the global online adverting market.

But now the social networks are ready to stake their claims.

Last year Facebook had 3.1% of the global online advertising market, despite never having been in a hurry to build their advertising business. Now they’re starting to take it seriously. Anyone who has used the Facebook Ads Manager tool will know it is very easy and intuitive compared to Google Adwords. Facebook’s Promoted Posts feature is even easier and can deliver great micro campaigns in the click of a button. Their new Graph Search feature is a clear signal that Facebook is about to step up even more in the advertising market.

Then there is Linkedin, quietly bubbling along with another easy-to-use advertising product aimed squarely at the employment market. Last year advertising on Linkedin accounted for 25% of their revenue, and that’s before they opened their API to marketers at the end of 2012. That will grow substantially in the next few years.

Now Twitter is muscling in on the action. The new Twitter Advertising API is a way for companies to automate more of their ad spending. The initial list of advertising partners isn’t very long, but is expected to grow quickly. The API, combined with Twitter’s self-serve ad platform, will allow advertisers to promote tweets based on what is trending and where the activity is.

In effect Twitter is heading in a very similar direction to Facebook. Google+ is presumably not far behind.

For social networks, in which the content generated by users is almost indistinguishable from the advertising offering tools that let advertisers automate their spending based on hard data will be far more lucrative than another generic banner ad.

The rapid rise of mobile usage is also another reason the social networks will grab even greater slices of the advertising pie. Their “integrated” advertising solutions are well suited to mobile display, whereas the display advertising of other media are not.

The shift away from traditional to online advertising will only continue to grow in the next few years as the social networks refine their offerings and mobile becomes our main screen.

Usain Bolt. Image via telegraph.co.uk

When the Olympics start in London on Friday, 27 July they will be forever known as the social media Olympics. At the last Olympics in Beijing in 2008 any news from there may have found its way onto the Internet via blog posts and the occasional video being posted and re-posted on YouTube.

Since then the explosive growth of Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest has changed the media landscape dramatically and this time around the impact of social media on the Olympics will be huge. In the past people may have sent text messages, e-mails or commented on forums and chat rooms about the most interesting aspects of the Olympics. Can you imagine the volume of traffic that will be going through all the social media sites as soon as an event has taken place?

As soon as Usain Bolt crosses the finishing line there will be thousands if not millions of posts on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. People will be posting on Facebook to get interaction from their friends about the race. Twitter will be buzzing with all sorts of comments, jokes and anecdotes about what just took place. Pinterest will be awash with folk pinning a whole variety of photos that have been lifted from news sites all around the world.

What kind of impact do you think that the social media Olympics will have on newspapers? By the time a journalist has written their piece, the editor has chosen the relevant photos and the rest of the newspaper printed and delivered, there will be very little in the newspaper that has not already been seen, discussed and dissected by the vast majority of the civilised world. The impact of social media on the Olympics could render newspaper coverage superfluous.

Many people will be watching the Olympics not on TV but on iPads and various other mobile devices. Every single bit of news that comes out of the Olympics will spread through the social media like wildfire. It is going to be very difficult for the media to compete against the more popular social media sites. It will be interesting to see the increase in the volume of traffic that is generated by the social media Olympics.

A lot of the athletes themselves will be posting comments on Facebook and Twitter and it is here that most people will go, rather than tune into TV to see any interviews. People now expect news to be delivered immediately and are impatient. If you want to see results, comments, quotes or photos of any of the events it is most likely you will go to one of the social media sites for instant gratification.

2012 will be the first true social media Olympics. The data that emerges over the next few weeks will be telling. Take your mark, get set…..Tweet!

by Craig Wilson

In October 2011 the executives at News Ltd announced that “the ten year free trial is over” and they were launching digital subscriptions for some of their publications beginning with The Australian.

Naturally, they were plenty of cynics prepared to predict the pay wall gambit would fail, and I certainly had my doubts. Its still only very early days and long term success is far from assured but News Ltd have just released their first round of figures for digital subscription. They appear to be very encouraging.

Here’s the announcement:

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originally uploaded by http://www.intersectionofonlineandoffline.com

Ok, I’ll admit it….I’m a little bit addicted to social networks. Using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ is an important part of my work, but it probably fair to say that over the course of a day I am exceeding what is needed to effectively get the job done. When you add the many different blogs and websites I check daily for great content and industry news, I am beginning to consume an amazing amount of media.

And then it becomes a default habit, something that can easily fill the day and lead you down endless clickable rabbit holes.

I’m sure I’m not alone. These days we’re consuming more media than anytime in history. Its accessible 24/7 and sometimes it seems that we are too. The lines between work and play have become so blurred that we tend to suffer an inevitable burnout.

This year I am totally rethinking how I consume media with the aim to improve my productivity and put some more space between work and play. The approach I am adopting is based on dedicated devices and apps for different functions:

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Almost six out of ten consumers (59 per cent) have stopped engaging with four or more brands as a result of poorly targeted communications, according to research released today by Experian. The report, titled ‘The future of multichannel marketing: marketer and consumer perspectives,’ shines a spotlight on disconnects that exist between marketers and consumers and highlights the opportunities available to marketers to minimise the impact of poorly targeted communications.

The Experian figures show that, as a result of poorly-targeted communications, eight per cent of consumers have stopped engaging with 20 or more brands. A further 27 per cent of Australians have gone as far as creating a separate email address to receive this information to avoid other email accounts from being inundated.

However, marketers are also making strides to change traditional marketing practices demonstrated by a significant 89 per cent of marketers now using a customer segmentation strategy.  In addition, 69 per cent are becoming more selective about the channels they use to engage with customers.  A key challenge identified by half (50 per cent) of Australian marketers lies in cutting through the white-noise to get messages through to the consumer.

It’s clear that many marketers are investing in tools to get the right message to the right audiences at the right time, yet the findings suggest that they may not be applying this strategic segmentation across all marketing disciplines, particularly among newer channels such as social media.

The evolution of social media

The findings show that consumers are least trusting of newer marketing channels such as social media, SMS and LinkedIn for direct communication with brands.  Almost three in 10 (29 per cent) consumers ranked social media as among the three marketing channels they trusted least when receiving information about a brand.  While just four per cent said it was the channel they trusted most.

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Tomorrow I am speaking at the Digital Culture Public Sphere consultation run by Senator Kate Lundy and Minister Simon Crean in order to form a collaborative submission on digital culture in Australia to the National Cultural Policy consultation.

I NEED YOUR HELP.

I’m covering “The future of media culture creation in a digital world” but the Public Sphere wiki hasn’t had many contributions. Here’s you chance to contribute to a 10 year strategy for Australian digital culture, and the broader national cultural agenda.

There’s plenty of ways you can get involved via the Wiki, but for expediency and to help me easily deliver your ideas could you please either write a comment here or via Twitter using the hashtag #publicspheremedia so I can collate.

This is fairly urgent. I will be presenting the collated ideas at about 12.30pm tomorrow (6 Oct 2011).

Ideas to address include:

• How do you imagine the sector could look in the future? How could Australia excel? What would a 10 year plan look like?

• What are some tangible ways we could measure progress in this area?

• Ideas to achieve the vision for Australia.

• Add your thoughts and references for where this sector is going, emerging business models, opportunities for commercialisation

• Any additional information you think might be useful, including case studies, success stories, research papers.

• Leading case studies from the sector to help contextualise Australian innovation in this area

GO FOR IT.

For the last 20 years I have been glued to SBS during July watching their coverage of my favourite sporting event, le Tour de France.

In recent years our multicultural broadcaster has upped the ante by introducing live coverage of the race, initially on key stages and now every night.

This year they’ve taken it a significant step further again. Not only can you watch the Tour live every night from 10.30pm (AEST), or 10pm if you want some recaps and Gabriel Gate’s food segment, but now you can follow the race via the SBS Tour de France website, Tour Tracker or iPad (update: plus Android and LG connected TV) apps with latest stats and high resolution streaming video. It is wonderful.

But wait there’s more…..

You can also follow the SBS Tour coverage via Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.

Rather than detract from the audience’s attention to the TV screen these various options enhance the overall experience. We can watch the SBS coverage anywhere (no audio), get some real-time insight from various experts and commentators and have bit of fun comparing your stage picks versus the experts.

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via media release

Will Australians cut the cable?

Research released today by Free TV Australia revealed that one in four pay TV subscribers are likely to cancel or downgrade their pay TV subscription because of the increased choice offered by the new free-to-air channels.

The national survey, conducted by Jigsaw Strategic Research last month, was part of a broader quantitative study of more than 1,500 digital TV viewers that explored consumers’ attitudes towards the recently launched free-to-air channels (ie. 7TWO, GO!, ONE, 7MATE and GEM as well as ABC2, ABC3, ABC News 24, SBSHD, SBSTwo).

The study found that:

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There is a lot of conjecture about Internet Television, how we will consume it and how it will affect us. This entertaining presentation was given at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco in November 2010 to debunk some of the myths (sorry, I have somehow forgotten who did this presentation).

Internet TV will change viewing habits forever

You know you’re old if…

• You think you’ll need a box to watch Internet TV
• You think you’ll need apps to watch Internet TV
• If you want to watch TV on your TV
• If you want to watch TV with other people
• If you watch more than 36 hours of TV per week (in which case it’s ambient, running in the background most of the time rather than being content that you elect to view when you wish)
• You think that Internet TV is “amateur hour” and that no web originals are professional

Viewing habits have changed remarkably in recent generations. Internet TV will result in an even more dramatic shift in media consumption.

Generation Z are true digital natives

Two years ago I explained “Why my kids will be the death of traditional media” whilst I watched my sons effortlessly move between their armoury of digital playthings.

Two years later and they are even more web savvy and connected. My eight year-old now blogs from his Posterous site, displaying the latest videos he shot on a Flip Camera, edited himself on iMovie and posted to YouTube. He creates his own video games using Sploder and embeds them into his blog, which in less than a month has attracted thousands of views.

His friends are also digital natives who all chat online after school and rarely watch free-to-air TV. They download music and apps to their iPods and never turn on the radio.

Which brings me to a new study by Habbo Hotel, the world’s largest virtual community for teens, into Generation Z and their expectations for the future digital economy. The survey of more than 49,000 Australian children aged 11-18 found that the majority (55%) of respondents believe that the digital world will make traditional printed books, newspapers and magazines extinct, whilst, only 38% disagree.

Here are the major findings:

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