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A Light at the End of the Tunnel for Media Companies
May 18, 2010 | Neal | 1 commentAnd for once, it isn’t a train rushing toward them at full speed. This article from the AP indicates that there are some hopeful signs for print, TV, and online advertising in early 2010. Now, whether this is just a correction after the economic disaster that was last year isn’t clear from the article. When you read facts like…
April 22: The New York Times Co. says advertising revenue fell 6.1 percent from a year ago, the smallest decline since the third quarter of 2007. Company says print advertising trends in current quarter look even better.
…you could interpret them in two ways.
- Things are picking up or at the very least not declining as rapidly as before – we’re out of the death spiral and things are looking up! OR
- Things were SO bad between being in a declining industry and the economy sucking wind that there was nowhere to go but up with the economy in recovery BUT we’re still trending in the wrong direction even when we give good news so the outlook still isn’t great.
I’m personally of the opinion that while advertising can be a secondary element of the revenue mix for media companies, there is no model that makes it the dominant element in that mix going forward. If you ask me – and people do from time-to-time since I do this for a living – there is a huge opportunity that not many people are talking about at the confluence of companies that aren’t traditionally media companies having to become more savvy about what it means to be a media company by creating on-going conversations based around high value add content and media companies that are struggling for revenue models and in possession of excess capacity and know-how in exactly that arena.
If you’ll permit me to digress for a moment, I’d like you to image the following scenario…
If you were a consumer electronics brand manager looking to create a constant conversation with a marketplace that you know is trending heavily towards Apple products in one category where they are spending a lot of money (portable media players like iPod/iPad) and towards a wide variety of vendors like LG, samsung, etc. in the other market likely to drive lots of revenue in the next few years (internet connected and 3D TVs). As you think about your strategy, obviously the first thing you need is compelling products but with those in place, the next question is who is in the best position to engage your market in that constant conversation that can start to get your brand back heavily into the consideration set for those looking to make a purchase? There is certainly a place for the big advertising firms when it comes to specific tasks like creating ads and the like but if the goal is now to engage an audience on a regular basis, shouldn’t you be tapping into the expertise of the industry that has been creating such conversations for years and years instead of looking at places like PR firms who are still learning this craft while adapting from a world of press releases and campaigns? If a publication like Maxim is a great channel in which to place an ad, doesn’t it stand to reason that they would be an even better partner in creating and delivering your message? After all, their job is to create content so compelling that people are willing to pay for it on the newsstand. When was the last time that your agency created anything that consumers were willing to pay for?
At Black Turtle Media, we believe in this premise. Everyone on our leadership team has experience creating a value proposition directly for an audience be that audience interested in Sports, Entertainment, Cooking, Politics, or Diplomacy and World Affairs. Our acquisition of MediaSphere in Pune, India further represents our belief in this philosophy. MediaSphere was founded by a team that came directly from the editorial side of the largest media companies in India like The Times of India and Yahoo! India. They own a number of their own publications as well as working directly for a wide variety of high profile clients. The common theme in both our US and India operations is that our teams understand what it takes to build a credible narrative with an audience to get their attention. From there, all that remains is to understand the actions that our clients want from having that attention and driving toward that action. This has always been something of an invisible barrier between media companies and their sponsors but this barrier will need to fall if the statistics that we started this article off with are ever to be reversed.
Tags: advertising revenue, Business Models, Digital, Gannett, media, MediaSphere, new york times
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