Warren Thayer

BrainTrust Query: What Happens to Traditional Media When it Goes Digital?

June 30, 2010

FROM RETAILWIRE:
At the ARF Audience Measurement conference last week, some speakers brought up compelling points about what happens when all media becomes digital. What obvious and less obvious changes do you see occurring as traditional media increasingly shifts to digital?      [more...]

There's a fascinating piece in the June issue of The Atlantic (that's a "print" magazine--you can read about such antiquarian and odd things online) about how Google is trying to save the news business, in its own self-interest. There are so many subtleties in all this, and I get annoyed at "research" that tells us just what the bright and glowing future will be. I so distinctly recall the dot.com hype, which I ridiculed from the start and wasn't surprised to see come crashing down.

Right now I see further media fragmentation, more difficult decisions on media spend, and, most likely, not a huge gain, at least over the next few years, on advertising ROI until we get a shakeout. The promises and the hype coming out of everywhere on what all this is going to do to revolutionize everything overnight is, at least to me, very reminiscent of the dot.com dot.con.