• by Masha Geller , February 15, 2002

The AAAA Media Conference is adjourned and as far as the majority of the attendees are concerned, it was three days well spent.

The conference concluded with a panel led by CNBC Anchor Ron Insana, who led Solomon Smith Barney’s Lanny Baker, Veronis Suhler’s Jack Clarke and SunTrust Robison Humphrey’s Jonathan Jacoby, in forecasting the future.

First off, all three agreed that an economic recovery is inevitable and will come sometime in the next 6-12 months, naturally, but in the interim the industry should get ready for some changes. The Internet, they said, is already in position to fundamentally change two sectors of advertising – classifieds and the yellow pages.

For one, at a time when newspaper classified sections are bemoaning revenue decreases, online classifieds are boasting increases of up to 50%. And, once Internet penetration and usage issues are resolved, people will probably turn away from bulky telephone books to easy-to-use online yellow pages, Baker said, citing the success of Overture – the online search engine solution provider he likened to an online yellow pages service – which he thinks will probably outpace Yahoo! in revenues in the next year.

As far as the post-Olympic future of other media is concerned, it will be largely influenced by broadband penetration, the panelists agreed, but according to Baker it’s too early to predict the specifics. He said that broadband will really make a difference when penetration reaches 35%, but that’s a least a year away.

Finally, the panelists agreed that by no means should the industry succumb to gloom. As Baker said, “Consumer distaste of advertising is not as rampant as Wall Street would have us believe.”