Is advertising dead?

We are newspaper writers, so it isn't a surprise that the focal point on this board is the death of newspapers.

But with television and radio facing struggles similar to those of the newspaper industry, and with the struggles of all three industries to turn the Internet into a legit advertising vehicle, here's a question that has recently crossed my mind:

Is advertising, in general, dead?

Between the remote control and mp3 players and ad-blocking software, is it possible for any type of ad-supported information source to survive?

 

Daemon, you have posed the question which keeps everyone in advertising and media right up to Rupert Murdoch awake at night with the cold sweats.
The evidence is growing that one effect of the recession will be a permanent reduction in advertising spending by many corporations. This is already affecting many other businesses besides newspapers. Radio is actually considered to be on thinner ice than papers by many analysts.
My answer to your question is, I think advertising will shrink as a revenue source but not disappear altogether. And by 2020, all media content will be on some sort of fee-for-service basis, either hidden in larger bills from cable and Internet service providers or straight-up charges from the media itself.

 

All I can tell you is I opened my Sunday Boston Globe this morning and the auto section, once three large sections filled with dozens of ads, is down to one dinky section. Sadly, the Globe discontinued its tradition of fine auto writing some time ago and runs one bland syndicated story.

 

It's not dead any more than books were dead when the printing press was invented.

It's just irrevocably cheaper now that the market is flooded with providers.

 

Advertising has a very "keeping up with the Joneses" hook to it. A business needs to advertise about equally with the guy next door. If he's not doing much, you don't need to either. So it seems like it will always go in cycles. Right now, we're in a downward cycle.

 

no.

 

No.

 

Our advertising is doing great. In this two-newspaper town, we are bleeding the other paper dry and getting more and more full-page color ads. We had an 88-page paper two weeks ago with somewhere between 25 and 30 full-page ads, most of them color, most of those car dealership ads.

We were also just told that a car dealership plans to spend $2M in advertising this year and that they're going to spend most of that money with our paper only. So that's a major coup.

 

So you're hiring, right?

 

I've always wondered about cable television. You'd think since there are maybe a dozen media companies that own 90 percent of the cable and broadcast channels why they don't just "shrink" the cable landscape which would give the audience fewer choices and create larger audiences for advertisers.

 

Dan -

I have no idea how various cable companies are doing financially. But it would seem that the goal for most advertisers is not to reach the broadest audience possible, but the most specific audience possible. An advertiser knows with pretty good certainty that if a viewer is watching the Food Channel, he or she is going to be interested in all things food: cooking, dining, etc. Same thing with the Travel Channel. So I don't know how much sense it would make to shrink the number of available cable channels.

Maybe it is because of this that the outlets who reach the broadest audiences -- newspapers and network television -- are struggling.

 

Most the people I know who watch the Food Channel can barely operate the timer on their microwave.