Is Old-Media influence really declining?

A recent survey by ICOM, an advertising agency network, found that marketers worldwide see newspapers waning in influence. ICOM asked its member agencies whether any traditional media choices were on the decline with no chance of recovery as a result of new ways of reaching audiences. Of the responding agencies around the world, 42% said that newspapers were in decline, more than twice as many that named any other media type.

Asked which media types were growing most quickly, respondents put blogs, Internet ads and search engine marketing all in the top 10.

None of this is especially surprising, since newspapers, radio and TV are increasingly perceived as old (read: dead or dying) media. However, taking these survey results at face value is shortsighted. The idea that old media is a collection of monolithic business models doomed to death by static inaction misses the fact that these formats are changing to keep with the times.

For one, all the alarmist claims that digital video recorders and video-on-demand will cause the death of TV and the loss of billions of dollars worth of advertising are just plain wrong. More people will watch more TV and video content in the future, not less. They will just be doing it in different ways via the Internet, the PC and portable devices.

Moreover, the idea that the Internet is pushing old media to the side is an odd throwback, in a Wild West “This town ain’t big enough for the two of us” sense. In fact, campaigns which integrate multiple media forms, both new and old, are closer to reality than the “this or that” scenario depicted by the ICOM study. A November study by the American Advertising Federation (AAF) found enthusiasm for such integrated campaigns. That study found that US advertising executives rank newspapers, magazines and TV highly for innovation in integrating online media, and for efficacy in driving traffic to advertiser Web sites.

The AAF study results suggest a healthy future for old media in tandem with new media’s up-and-coming influence.