Television being the centre pillar of ‘old school’ marketing, the question of whether TV is dying arises. When I say TV, I also think newspapers, radio and magazines. So, is it all going to be extinguished by the ‘new’ thing called Internet?
Well the answer in my opinion is yes and no. TV uses advertising in a commercial form, however in the world where more and more people are using DVR’s that is not such a viable form of advertising if you are the advertiser. Also, those ads have less effect on people than they did decades ago as we have all gone ADHD and we constantly get distracted – we want to be destructed by our iPhones, iPads and alike.
So as there are plenty of eye balls following the content on television, there are more and more ways to fast forward and skip the commercials on TV and we get increasingly destructed by all the gadgets that we like.
Having said all this, we know that people are watching television because of it’s content – be it, we complain about poor quality of television, yet we are still watching it. So, if there are still watching it, old media outlets and television stations would have to change the way they make money.
How’s that? They would need to use other means of advertising such as product placement, videos and digital experiences. Perfect example of that was Ten television reality TV show Master Chef where everything contestants and their judges used in this show was paid for product placements with one of the major supermarket chains Coles being the premium sponsor.
Still, for branding purposes, if executed correctly, social media is the future. Increasing number of us spends increased amount of time watching videos and interacting with our friends on Facebook and YouTube.
We are given ways to voice our opinion, like or dislike the content and also share anything and everything with our friends. TV in it’s current form is a one way affair and will appeal to less and less of audiences unless they change their ways – fast!
TV commercials in 2013 world are just not that good any more but I believe that they will get fixed and we’ll have a much better product for consumers and more money for content producers.
The same goes for newspaper and magazine advertising – their move toward online and digital subscription model is a good one. We will still be reading news and articles, except the delivery mechanism is going to be e-readers where we’ll be able to watch videos, post comments and share it all with our friends.
So, are TV, radio, newspapers and magazines dead? Not, providing they make the switch to online content delivery and social media. What do you think?
