The Yin and Yang of the Local Advertising Market

22 Mar by admin

The Yin and Yang of the Local Advertising Market

Two reports about the changing landscape of advertising media recently caught our attention.  Both articles came from our friends over at Mediapost, these headlines are evidence of just how quickly things are evolving in this post-great recession turned tidal wave of disintermediation, as we consume more screen based content than ever before.

The first is a report by Kantar Media detailing U.S. Advertising Economy and breaking it down by sector.  The full article can be found here but the gist is that in 2010, the total U.S. ad spend grew modestly as whole but traditional sectors such as locally  focused print media are seeing a rapid decline in both volume and spend. Here are a few more details.

…locally focused print media like newspapers, which have seen an ongoing exodus of advertising budgets following the migration of consumer usage to digital alternatives. The recession only seems to have exacerbated that trend, and print is the only major medium that is not benefiting directly from the recovery.

In fact, Swallen noted that local newspaper ad spending has declined for “21 consecutive quarters.” And the downward demand isn’t just affecting the volume of local newspaper advertising, but its value as well. Swallen noted that while there was actually a “small uptick” if the volume of local newspaper space sold last year, total ad dollars fell 4.6%, meaning advertisers paid a lower price on average to place ads in local newspapers.

The flipside of the coin is that a new report by BIA/Kelsey,  a local markets research group says that the local digital advertising market is set to explode, growing to $42.5 billion market by 2015.

BIA/Kelsey says that means a 14.4% compounded growth rate every year until 2015. At the end of 2010, the media research company said local media was at $21.7 billion.

Also, consumer marketing “deal-of-the-day” deals through social sites — Facebook and Twitter — will contribute to a rapid digital advertising rise, climbing to some $3.9 billion by 2015.

Tom Buono, chief executive officer, BIA/Kelsey, said: “Our analysis indicates that as advertisers move to online, mobile and particularly, the variants of social media, we are fast approaching a tipping point where digital media will soon become a dominant segment of the local advertising marketplace.”

Certainly this information is indicative that the media landscape is a state of flux.  At Clip we see this as being an extremely exciting period and we find ourselves and our technology platform directly in the center of this sea-change.   As we grow our network and meet with new partners and players, it is apparent that some people and organizations “Get It” and  others just don’t.  We’re excited to work with the those who are committed to evolving their business and are accepting that no one has all the answers in this new world order.  There is a whole lot of learning still to be done.  Those who just don’t get it, remaining cloistered in their ivory towers reflecting on the good ol’ days of big media, I guess we’ll just have to check back to see how things are going for them in 2015…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *