The Guardian Unlimited looks at the state of UK ad spending:
“Consumption of traditional media such as newspapers is on the wane and TV audiences are increasingly fragmented by the wealth of choice on digital. The internet and new media channels are taking traffic from TV and print, but advertising spending on new platforms is not keeping pace. In the past Sir Martin has accused the British business community of being too cautious when it comes to marketing and experimenting with new channels.”
So it seems that ad revenue may be declining on traditional media such as print and tv, but not being balanced quickly enough online. This leaves media companies scrambling in the middle – seeing declining, but real, revenue in their bread and butter, and fruitless opportunity in their online offerings.
This can be seen in Conde Nast’s latest surge towards a cohesive web stategy:
“…but the company must still fight the theory–as do other major magazine publishers–that it runs the risk of letting smaller, more niche-focused Net publications run away with the market… “Magazines have a real threat from the Web,” said Barry Parr, a media analyst with Jupiter Research. “So coming up with a good Web strategy for a magazine publisher is not an easy thing.”
“Parr said many big magazine publishers, Conde Nast among them, are still trying to figure out what they want to use the Web for, “and none of them have come up with good solutions.”