Media Has Changed — But Its Problems Are The Same
To butcher the eloquence of Mark Twain for a second, reports of the death of traditional media have been greatly exaggerated.
But the issues forcing so many outlets out of business are real and serious.
Don’t for a second think digital is having it much easier though — I recently came across this article in the Wall Street Journal and it served as a stark reminder of the significant challenges facing all parts of the media industry.
Digital publishers continue in vain to try to recreate conditions of traditional media, but online, whereby you pay for real estate for a set amount of time — a web banner to run for one month on a site, a 30-second ad to run five times on a podcast, an ‘MRec’ on an email.
The problem is, digital media is infinitely more trackable and measurable than its traditional counterpart.
Where traditional media could for many years glibly hide behind the ‘difficulty of calculating return on investment’, digital enjoys no such ambiguity. Just log in to Google Analytics (for free) and it’s there for all to see.
But the problem doesn’t just lie in the transparency of digital advertising. If anything the transparency has only served to shine a light on a major issue that was there long before we all moved our lives online.
The real problem is this:
Nobody wants a goddamn advert
And the world is now such that if people don’t want it, someone will find a way to monetize getting rid of it.
So there, rubbing salt into the media’s exposed and puss-dripping wounds, is a new multi-billion dollar industry set up in direct opposition to its main revenue sources; Downcast, mentioned in the WSJ article, makes it much easier to skip advertisements on podcasts, ad-blockers are now commonplace on desktop and mobile, email providers come with automated sorting systems and trigger-happy spam filters.
This is where we pause for a moment to feel a little sorry for a media industry that produces amazing content we all know and love.
Okay? Okay. Moment over.
Because here’s the rub… I’m not saying anything the media industry hasn’t known for years. Decades even.
Publishers and media outlets have happily taken money from advertisers knowing two things all too well:
- Despite their sales pitch, there was no guarantee of any discernible success.
- They would be making the experience worse for their audience.
Well, that gravy train appears to be slowing, people.
With Google and Facebook winning precious ad dollars by offering at least some degree of success (i.e. a click rather than an impression), it’s hard to see how struggling media outlets can bounce back without a completely new business model.
The rules have changed. No… the game has changed. It’s time to put value for the advertiser above short term gain.
It’s the only way to survive.
But what’s your take? Does media, both digital and traditional, have to change to survive? Or am I being an alarmist? I’d love to read what you think and what your experiences on this subject are. Let me know by leaving a comment below or hitting the heart. Cheers!
