It’s Impossible To Surf On The Back Of A Wave

Advertising Age had an interesting story recently on the effectiveness of blogs, podcasting, RSS, social networks and other new media. The conclusion of the article was that most people still get their content the old-fashioned way with traditional media. Steve Rubin had some interesting comments on that story the other day on his blog, and he makes a great point that those on the front edge of the adoption curve for new media are the ones with an inordinate share of the buzz. In addition, even if this new media market is still relatively small compared to the mainstream, it is nonetheless where most of the growth seems to be headed.

Marketers looking for new momentum for their communications efforts will rarely find an exciting ride on the back of the wave. Traditional media has had a long run and it is still a great place to buy reach and to defend a well-entrenched, share-of-market position, but new media’s advantage of replacing reach with relevancy is a profound benefit. Most consumers have less and less time to devote to messages (ads, articles, sales pitches) that are immaterial to their lifestyle. The huge growth of online search engines is fueled by the basic human desire to quickly sift through the extraneous and get to information of significance—that which is relevant. Sometimes what’s relevant is a search engine query. Other times relevancy is found in thoughts shared with friends on MySpace.

New media is the face of the breaking wave and where the raw power of a developing new communication paradigm can be experienced. For the advertiser, there is also a monetary advantage in buying relevancy over reach: it is less expensive to do so. That can translate into better marketing efficiency and improved ROI.

Of course, there are times people aren’t searching for relevancy—they just want to be entertained or informed. They want Seinfeld to make them laugh or Oprah to make them cry. Traditional media built empires on this notion, and it is still a good one if you can afford it and make it pay.

Astute advertising and PR people will continue to use traditional media’s huge base as a fundamental element in marketing efforts, but as we are already witnessing, more dollars are rapidly being diverted to online marketing efforts. If traditional media adjusts its costs to reflect the changes in audience size and engagement, it will continue to be an important part of most media buys. However, if offline advertising costs continue to escalate while audiences stagnate or shrink, the shift from old to new media could more resemble an exodus.