It makes sense to be forward-looking at the beginning of the year. Some of what I learned in researching-up for this topic was a surprise to me, and some of it, luckily, actually made sense:

1. Where Online Media is Going
It’s always discussed with a mixture of abject reverence and mysteriousness due to its sheer complexity, fragmentation and speed of change. It’s just another medium, albeit a very important one. It’s the fastest growing aggregate medium, now ranking #2 in Canada, at 20% of total 2010 dollars, behind television and ahead of newspapers in spending for the first time. [1] By 2013, it will be 25% of all media spending, matching TV. What surprised me is:

  • Two thirds of Internet ad spending is currently text-based – search and classified. Search, the biggest component, is strictly a search engine algorithm. Not much room there for the kind of creativity that brand marketing needs. There are predictions [2] that search is about to become more graphic, meaning your search result will expand into a rich media display ad. For a price.
  • Newspapers are relying more and more on online reading of their content, although the ability to get readers to pay for that is still (and may always be) elusive. It’s also true that the majority of content on the Internet (outside of pornography and the user-generated segment) comes from the traditional news media. So the Internet won’t kill traditional newspapers anytime soon, rather, their symbiotic relationship will continue to evolve.
  • Mobile is the new darling segment of Internet media. I think it’s most useful to think of mobile as another access point to Internet media. Apps (at least those beyond the single-function ones) are currently very expensive programs running on smart phones that replicate the web and interact with the Internet. Smart marketers will utilize mobile versions of their websites, and evolve technologies from that platform.

2. Canada Compared to the World
Media spending follows economic trends, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that Canada and Australia will see more growth in media investment this year than other developed countries. What surprised me is:

  • Developing media markets are what is driving global media growth: Brazil, Russia, India and China< [1]—the same countries that economists now have an acronym for.
  • Mobile media is relatively bigger and growing faster in developing media markets than developed ones. As always, there’s a practical reason for this—Internet access is expensive in developing markets. Since mobile phone networks are cheaper to build than land line networks, almost everyone has a mobile handset, and phones are a cheaper access point to the Internet, followed next by Internet cafes.

3. Television
It’s still the most important medium. TV’s sight & sound technology keeps getting better, program selection is greater and PVR & other recording technologies have increased total viewing, even with the commercials. A :30 second spot in the 2011 Super Bowl is going for a record high $1.7 million. All this despite increased Internet use. What surprised me is:

  • TV is also very big in developing markets where programming is not completely government-controlled—meaning every BRIC country other than China. Owning a TV in India is the same kind of status symbol as owning a car. In Brazil, TVs are even being bought by people living in villages without distributed electrical service.

4. Social Media
Only part of spending in this media segment is captured by media research – the paid (display) advertising part. The owned part is not—consumer interaction with and on brand websites and blogs, etc. Neither is the earned part—consumer conversations. What surprised me is:

  •  I don’t think many consumers understand (or want to understand) that there are small armies of paid brand endorsers out there in the social media world. The mommy-blogger phenomenon is real, but there’s a catch. Payment can be cash or free product & services. Either way, it still creates a bias that isn’t in (reputable) traditional media.

Yes, 2011 looks interesting. There will be growth and opportunity, and I can still learn by being surprised.

Notes and references:
  1. Zenith Optimedia, Advertising Spending Forecast, Dec 6, 2010.
  2. Contagious, 11 Digital Predictions for 2011, Jan 4, 2011.