There is a lot of talk about a media recession. The major agencies are projecting media growth ranging from .3% to a few percentage points. Yet there are a lot of parts of the media business that
are growing just fine.
Is it possible that those measuring the media are not measuring the right thing? After all, if all you look at is dying media, you are bound to come up with the
result that things don't look so good.
This is true in many parts of the economy. The retailers say that they did not have a good Christmas. Yet when you include the $100 million or
so gift cards-plus ecommerce, the retail Christmas was probably just fine.
Most of the media prognosticators are from the major agencies. Their perspective is inevitably one of looking
at the media that have always been their mainstays: TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, outdoor. Web is starting to be included in the projections but for many, search is not included, as it is not
measured by TNS or Nielsen. If we limit ourselves to the media that are "measured," we won't pick up the part of the economy that is vital and growing. And, just like retail, which does
not measure the impact of gift cards, we'll understate the market, including most of the growth.
Piper Jaffray's Aaron Kessler and Gene Munster were quoted in MediaPost last week
noting that "the proven high ROI of online advertising today will make online advertising resilient even with a recession in the United States." That's if one even happens. The people
who measure the recession probably only use old measures, too.
As an example, take a look at the eMarketer spending projections for 2008 in the hot growth areas:
Medium
2007
2008 % Growth
eMail
$412MM $518MM
25.7%
Local Online
$2,900MM $4,600MM
58.6%
Online &nbs
p; $21,400MM $27,500MM 28.5%
General Mobile
$878MM $1,547MM 76.2%
Multimedia Mobile
$26MM $55MM
111.5%
Online Social Networks
$920MM $1,560MM 69.6%
Online Video
$775MM $1,350MM 74.2%
Search Online*
23.5%
*Specific numbers not available but generally regarded as 40% of online.
*Specific numbers not available but generally regarded as 40% of online.
Clearly, there are areas of significant growth. Most of these are not being measured by the
prognosticators. Nor are they being reported in the advertising trade articles or by the AAAAs in their projections.
I believe that it is time for the industry to change its basis for
mapping out predictions of the future. It does us no good whatsoever to report doom and gloom. And, it does the industry no good not to take into account and report the best parts of what is happening
in the media environment today.
As eMarketer seems to be the only company reporting on all of the new media, it seems to make sense for the AAAAs, trade magazines and the others to use
and report on this third-party data. The old methods of having the buyers report out their projections is outdated. It's time to adopt a new model of using data from a third-party analyst.
As always, comments are welcome.