Television in Australia is suffering from too much clutter - originally uploaded by arnisto

Is television advertising under threat in Australia?

Earlier this week Robert Morgan, executive chairman of the Clemenger advertising group, wrote an excellent piece for The Australian. He argued that TV in Australia is suffering due to advertising clutter.

Morgan observed that in the early days of TV advertising

Each show had three breaks of one minute each plus an opening and closing billboard, and between programs there would be one 20-second commercial and one 10-second — roughly half of the bombardment we get today. The thought of a competitor being within half an hour of your commercial was absolutely out of the question.”

Today its much, much worse. TV is extremely cluttered and its competing with a plethora of entertainment options.

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Source: briansolis.com

This past weekend the Twitterverse spoke-out in exasperation and opposition against traditional media networks (CNN specifically) and the absence of instantaneous coverage of the Iranian election and the resulting fallout. “We the people” wanted real-time information regarding the violent protests that erupted on the streets of Iran and the stories probing potential foul play in the results. We took to Twitter to express discontent and to also uncover the real story as it was unfolding live through citizen journalism. Read more

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This post originally appeared on MarketingMag.com.au in January 2009

The dawning of the digital age has created much hand-wringing among traditional media providers and the advertisers who feed them. A plethora of new options has seen rapid erosion of the once mighty traditional media power base.

The press is under grave threat as consumers can quickly and freely access specialist news content online at any time. ‘The death of press’ was perhaps viewed as a hysterical prediction by digital enthusiasts only 12 months ago, but is now actually looking like reality given the financial failure of many print media groups in the US recently.

Radio and television are also facing serious challenges as new generations of consumers decide to seek entertainment elsewhere, at their leisure

But probably the biggest threat to the traditional media and the advertising industry which supports it, is the fact that modern consumers are bypassing the ads altogether thanks to digital technology.

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Web technology continues to encroach on traditional media at a rapid pace. While many US newspapers give way to online, television is also being transformed by new technology.

Here are some examples coming out of the US:

TiVo, the ad-skipping, time shifting digital television recording device, is now delivering web video to televisions. Rather than download and watch longer format video on small screens, TiVo allows video to be viewed easily through your television.

TiVo have begun working with YouTube, Amazon, Netflix and over 50 other sources to deliver web video to television. So far TiVo have had over 30 million downloads by 60% of their broadband-connected customers.

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Austin, Texas

Tony Hsieh is CEO of Zappos.com the world’s largest online shoe retailer.

Approx half the room has purchased from Zappos. 2-1 Female/male buyer ratio.

(I’m sitting near Darryl Orht from Plaid.)

Tony originally co-founded another dot com that was sold to Microsoft. Left when lost desire to turn up to work.

Zappos was a company he invested in (one of several) then decided to work in.

Zappos is about the brand and excellent customer service. Doesn’t see it staying as a shoe retailer only. Could be an airline in the future.

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Next week I fly out to the US for a series of conferences, meetings and deal-making. The trip includes the South By South West Interactive (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas and the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.

I’ll be using this blog to report back on the latest news, announcements and activities in the world of media and marketing and advertising observations in the USA. I will also be including a big dose of the latest relevant tech news.

I will try to update as frequently as possible with photos, interviews and coverage of the main events. Of course, I will be on Twitter with plenty of chatter, but the blog will have the broader stories and details.

There might be some cool surprises too as a few big names are lined up for a chat.

Some of the coverage will be online at Marketing Magazine as Kate and the team at Niche have asked me to send some reports back for them too.

The entire trip has been arranged online using a multitude of sites and technologies, so I will try to detail how technology and social media played a part in each aspect of the trip.

So please subscribe to the RSS feed in the top right hand corner to stay in touch. And send me a Tweet or comment if you’d like to know anything in particular or have a question for anyone I happen to talk to.

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February was a terrible month for the media, especially the traditional media. As the economic crisis worsened last month the tales of media woe increased. I have maintained for a while that we are at a turning point in media and marketing history. Some claimed that 2009 could see the death of press, and at the time it seemed a slightly alarmist call.

Today its seeming more realistic.

Last week a paper that I have read many times when living in Colorado, the Rocky Mountain News shut down. It’s owners had been looking for a buyer for some time but with no success. The broadsheet had been losing money for years, including another US$16 million in 2008. So after 150 years of publishing The Rocky was gone.

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Media trade publications are reporting consistently bad news for traditional media properties at the moment.

The current B&T highlights the drop in weekly magazine sales.

• New Weekly (NW) is down 16.4%

• New Idea, OK & Woman’s Day are all down around 12%

• Zoo Weekly down 8.1%

B&T is also running a story on the drop in men’s monthlies:

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Following are links to 101 media and marketing stories and posts from around the world that I Tweeted about in January 2009. They may be of interest to you. Just scanning the headlines gives you an overview of the industry.

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A few weeks ago I posted Why My Kids Will be the Death of Traditional Media. Only today we were explaining why to a few clients so they could understand our enthusiasm for new media options and alternative marketing thinking.

Seems that the funeral march may have already started with Gen Y consumers according to uber Gen Y blogger and media observer Zac Martin.

This week Zac has rather eloquently posted his Gen Y media  consumption habits. Media producers and advertisers take note.

Zac’s post has generated plenty of comments and discussion. Not all agree with him. Nor do I advocate abandoning traditional media channels when trying to reach Gen Y or their kid sisters and brothers. But the point is, where there’s smoke there’s fire. A massive transition has commenced from the dominance of Boomer media to the imminent predominance of Gen Y (and beyond) media.

Your marketing mix must start including alternatives to the traditional media channels because they are loosing relevance.

16 Jan: Follow-up

I asked Zac how we advertisers and marketers should reach Gen Y consumers who don’t use traditional media. He didn’t have an immediate answer to this obviously crucial dilemna but he did point me to a light-hearted set of potential online business models to consider. Zac also said he has some more suggestions coming. Stay tuned.

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