• by Debbie Durben , December 29, 2003

Media buyers must think they've fallen down the rabbit hole in Alice In Wonderland as the advertising landscape becomes curiouser and curiouser.

Never before in history have audiences been more fragmented with new media formats sprouting each day; from Wal-Mart's in-store video network to Asphalt Media's GPS-tagged 53' long mobile ad panels. The proliferation of new ad supported media platforms and audience fragmentation is putting traditional media under enormous pressure to improve its ROI.

Media advertising does the worst job of any marketing discipline in proving return on investment according to a recently released Advertising Age survey of leading advertisers. The top media offender was network TV. Despite inventory sellouts and spiraling rates during the recent upfront, it was chosen by 32% of respondents as the worst medium for proving ROI. Larger spenders are more likely to blast network TV; 44% of advertisers with budgets over $100 million ranked it as the worst medium. And the straw that breaks this camel's back is Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's new findings that only 17% of consumers surveyed said TV ads influenced their car-buying decisions. The findings are significant because, as a group, automotive marketers are the largest purchasers of advertising and skew heavily toward TV advertising.

Ratings for the fall television season were dismal with men between 18 and 24 apparently deserting television in droves. So far this year nearly 20 percent fewer men in that advertiser-friendly demographic are watching television during prime time than during the same period last year reports the New York Times. This coming after advertisers spent a record $9.2 billion in the upfront market. Those who do watch broadcast TV are increasing zipping through commercials - with an average production cost of about $385,000 -- when watching prerecorded programs.

A new survey on simultaneous media usage finds that a majority of multi-tasking viewers tune out TV commercials. The Simultaneous Media Usage Survey (SIMM), released recently by BIGresearch, showed that of those who say they go online while watching television, 94% regularly or occasionally tune out mentally when a commercial comes on. Similarly, 95% of those who read the newspaper while watching television mentally tune out commercials.

Citing everything from the growth of broadband to the expected boom in DVRs, Wired co-founder John Battelle aligns himself with the Yankee Group, concluding that the 30-second TV ad will soon lose top billing as our most valuable marketing vehicle in favor of web-based video advertising.

Things aren't much better in the print world. Newsstand sales of magazines, a key indicator of consumer interest, have plunged to where most magazines are lucky to sell more than one out of every three copies that are put on newsstands. In order to maintain rates base audience guarantees, many magazines are offered to potential subscribers for under $10 a year.

Wonder why newspapers are launching all those special (often free) editions aimed at teens and young adults? Could it be that the highest percentage of newspaper readers are in the 65 and over age group?

Direct marketers have had the worst year in their history. This is the year of Consumer and governmental backlash. The federal DNC coupled with the anti-spam legislation suggests that the public just plain tired of direct marketing in almost any format in which they can't opt out.

Not all traditional media have been slammed. Radio, for example, with the exception of the recessionary 2001 when sales dipped 7.5%, has shown consistent growth every year. This from a medium that has been around for nearly a hundred years. Veronis & Suhler's 14th Annual Communications Industry Forecast reports that radio and the Internet are the only two media expected to show increased usage over the next 3 years.

Ninety-four percent of all Americans listen to radio every week. They listen at home, at work, and in the car. And it helps advertisers fill in for the shortfall delivered by other traditional media. For example, radio reaches 92.2% of the 27.4% of readers who usually read newspaper Sports section, and reaches 87.9% of the 72.6% who don't usually read the Sports section. Moreover, radio reaches 90.1% of the 60.3% of adults who watch primetime TV, and reaches 87.5% of the 37.7% of adults who don't watch primetime TV.

But, to me the truly interesting thing about radio is how it works in concert with the fastest growing medium, the Internet. Nearly half the people in the United States TODAY listen to the radio while they are online. By 2004, on average, consumers will spend almost 3 hours a day with radio, compared to 2.3 hours for broadcast television, and substantially less on print media.

Old traditional media radio and young up and comer Internet work especially well when the target audience is at work insolated from any other broadcast (and often, print) medium. Cleary most people are online for much of the workday when, get this, 65% of consumers listen to the radio. A few keystrokes and radio listeners at work are on marketers' websites getting a longer form message, registering for a sweepstakes or perhaps even placing an order.

Among traditional media, radio seems to have fared the best in this new Wonderland of media and audience fragmentation. No other medium syncs up better with Internet users than radio.

Perhaps there is a way out of the rabbit hole after all.