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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS
Media Industry Predictions 2010: The Digital CutFriday, December 18, 2009 It is that time of year again when executives and companies can’t prevent themselves from forecasting the key developments for 2010 and  beyond. It must have something to do with that end-of-year budget process. Or worse, it has more to do with helping worn-out journalists fill that dead zone of holiday news with easy cut-and-paste articles. We will spare you the pain of countdowns and empty reiterations of the obvious. Here is a handful of predictions and some advice that seemed to us noteworthy, a little different and, in some cases, intriguing. Advertising in Permanent Decline: Stop looking for an ad “rebound” because the meta-trend is working against you. “The amount spent on traditional advertising may be in perpetual decline,” says Borrell Associates. As some of the more evolved media companies already know (and the rest will find out soon) the money is going to a broad and highly fragmented array of marketing, from social networks to search engines, custom promotions and rebates. Follow the marketing money, not the ad pages. Privacy Will Bite You: Time to get our heads out of the sand about the privacy issue. The FTC under its new chairman is very serious about crafting and enforcing regulations on all data collectors online. eMarketer warned publishers that they will need to get in front of the privacy concerns from government and consumers. Publishers, not just ad networks, need to become more transparent about the data they collect and offer better opt-out options. Unfortunately for the digital economy, this transparency could well undermine the ad models that depend on data gathering. Publishers will have to take it upon themselves to explain to readers what data users are exposing and why they need to trade it to keep the free content flowing. On the mobile side, Jumptap CMO Paran Johar predicts that the FCC will take a stand on mobile data collection and sharing as well. Moible is going to be the third rail in the digital privacy equation. When the FCC and the FTC hit that one, look for sparks to fly throughout the digital advertising value chain. Mobile – Big, Yes, But Mostly Varied: In addition to Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker’s pronouncement that mobile will be the next evolution of digital, all the usual mobile suspects are ready to agree. Mobile ad network Millennial Media predicts that mobile Web reach will hit 100 million unique users in the U.S. by year’s end, a critical mass by any measure. Jumptap’s Johar adds that Microsoft, Oracle, Yahoo and Apple (yes Apple) will follow Google’s purchase of AdMob and buy their own mobile ad network. While the rise of mobile itself is not too earth-shattering a prediction, the more interesting views relate to how mobile video and m-commerce are going to accelerate faster than expected. Mobile is actually a series of platforms, each of which opens up unique opportunities for specific brands. "Going mobile" is not going to be as clear cut for media brands as was getting a presence on the Web. Mapping a sensible and affordable mobile strategy against brand needs and audiences will be one of the key challenges for magazines next year. An Unrealized Paid Content Dream: eMarketer predicts that after all of the experimentation with fee-based models is over, “there will be islands of paid content (The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times) and hybrids of paid and ad-supported models, but on the whole, the digital media landscape will be predominantly ad-based.” Consumers will resist paid models in a universe of too many free alternatives. But worse, publishers will waste mountains of time, money and resources on models that will deliver some revenue in return but not enough to justify this diversion from more profitable ventures like marketing services. Finally, we have to pass along one batch of predictions that comes to us courtesy of a comScore 10th anniversary celebration. The likes of Wenda Harris Millard, John Battelle and Mark Cuban offer their recollections of the early years and spend a few minutes discussing the changes they anticipate in the next few years. (Try to overlook the unabashed self-promotion of comScore.) There are nuggets of insight throughout, and a typically fresh sign-off from “maverick” Cuban. If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com
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