Biased reporting by Digital Media Evanjournalists

My RSS feeds contain mainly digital media news and blogs. It’s a good way to keep up with what’s happening and to spot new ideas early on.

But what bothers me about Digital Media bloggers, journalists and evangelists is the biased reporting on developments in the online or mobile domain. And it especially bothers me when it’s done in a “old versus new media” style.

This week I came across this post on TechCrunch which looks at some statistics gathered by AdAge. The title of the blog is already totally biased: Top 100 AdvertisersShifted $ 1 Billion to the Web Last Year At The Expense Of  TV And Newspapers.

…overall media spending in “measured” categories (TV, print, radio, Web) by the top 100 advertisers was flat in 2007, with 0.3 percent growth to $61.3 billion. But spending on Web display ads rose 33 percent to $4.2 billion. This is yet one more piece of evidence that dollars are flowing from traditional media to the Web.

If you (1) take a look at the original article on AdAge and (2) look at the numbers below, you will see that there is no evidence whatsoever that the ad budget shifts are from old to new media. What’s happening is that certain media have lost budgets and since there is slight growth in the overall budget, this money has gone to other media that has grown. It is even more likely that for instance part of the TV ad spend has been shifted from Network TV and Spot TV to syndicated and cable TV. Same for loss in newspapers, which might have gone to magazines for a great part.

  These kind of messages by TechCrunch and other digital media evangelists frightens people at so-called old media companies since they only hear doomsday scenarios while, when you look at the facts, old media still rules (take a look at the numbers below) and even grows; be it not at the pace of digital media.

 

Good news for Old Media…for a change

Deloitte & Touche U.S.A  put out some good news for us “old media” companies:

Favorite and promising new television shows beat the Web as the most frequent media conversation topics for all generations

• Extensive amplification with the Millennials as they tell the most people about what they like
• 52 percent of Xers are visiting television show Internet sites

Printed magazines are an integral part of every generation’s life

• 72 percent enjoy reading magazines over finding the same information online
• 58 percent of Millennials agree magazines help them learn about what’s “in”

Compared with online activities like surfing the Web and downloading music, all generations aspire to reading a book in the coming year

Advertising Insights

64 percent  tend to pay greater attention to print ads in magazines or newspapers than advertising on the Internet

More than one-in-four would pay for online content vs. being exposed to ads

Search engines and word of mouth are the most effective means for driving Web site traffic — 85 percent of Xers are influenced by someone’s recommendation

87 percent of respondents continually visit the same Web sites

Generation Xers are a little more responsive to advertising”

“Millenials” is age group 13-24, “X-ers” is age group 25-41.

Let’s hope it’s not just to please D&T’s big old media clients

Who will guide us in the Infinite Choice of User Generated Content?

Will it be Google again? 

Today I read an interesting report by Bear Stearns on User Generated Video. Three of their main findings:

Social Networking Sites: Winners Take All

In Social Networking the winners take it all. Even in a huge country like the US with its many local communities, MySpace and Facebook take 91.17% of all traffic, with MySpace leading with almost 80%. These are important statistics for (media) companies out there who want “do something with social networking”: