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"Postmodernism is a change-or-be-changed world. The word is out: Reinvent
yourself for the 21st century or die! Some would rather die than change."
Leonard Sweet, cultural historian.

06/30/2005 Entry: "It's all about the money"

The headline in today's Media Daily News makes a powerful statement: Local Broadcast Ad Markets Decline. The article points out that the decline began last year, when General Motors pulled "a lot" of its advertising from local broadcasting.

Retailers and movie companies have moved money out of local broadcast, said Gallant (Mike Gallant, securities analyst for CIBC World Markets). Those advertisers made similar moves in buying national television. National upfront ad dollars look to be somewhat flat across broadcast, cable, and syndication, collectively. Those numbers, say analysts, are an indicator of what is to come in the ad marketplace.
Harry Hayes sent me a link yesterday to a new service by Northwest Airlines -- fare promotions and other items delivered via RSS. This is significant, because RSS makes it easy for retailers to talk directly to customers without spam issues. In the future, it's very possible that big, big advertisers won't be doing much advertising, because people interested in their wares will be able to subscribe to their RSS feeds -- by-passing the media companies altogether. One day you'll see local retail aggregator companies that deliver nothing but ads for clients -- sort of the "sale paper" of tomorrow.

This is a fundamental change in the way business is done, and it's why the argument about the Web versus broadcast (for example) shouldn't be deemed one of content or eyeballs. It's all about the money, folks. It always is.

Replies: 6 comments

I recently found out this is the exact same advertising model a coffee shop in my town is using: Aldo Coffee

Posted by Matt C. Wilson @ 06/30/2005 10:16 AM CST

Wait, I thought it was all about audience. No?

Posted by Dan @ 06/30/2005 10:53 AM CST

Matt,
We'd love to say we're living life out on the leading edge, but the truth isn't that glamorous.

The blog platform we use as our primary web site gives us a lot of flexibility and doesn't confine us to static content... keeps things interesting.

But on the RSS side, less than 1% of our customers are subscribing to feeds at this point. We still need to do "old fashioned" emails to our opt-ins and in-store promotion to drive traffic to special events.

We think it'll catch on, eventually. But for now, when people ask about daily specials, it's a lot easier for staff to say, "just visit our web site", than to say, "you can subscribe to our Atom feed. What's that? Let me explain...".

Anyway, thanks for the mention and we look forward to seeing you in the store.

Posted by Rich Westerfield @ 06/30/2005 11:45 AM CST

Rich,

Thanks for chiming in here. I sat in on the Microsoft presentation about IE7, Longhorn and RSS, and I believe the day is coming when technology will eliminate the need for everyday folks to use or even know the term RSS. It's being built into browser and portal technology, and I think the day isn't far off when a person in your town will find your feed offered as part of a search for coffee shops, coffee or whatever. The feed will then be automatically loaded into/onto their device(s), and you'll communicate with them that way.

Unlike spam, unsubscribing is as easy as the click of a button.

Congratulations on your forward-thinking service.

Terry

Posted by Terry @ 06/30/2005 12:08 PM CST

Cute, Dan. :)

Posted by Terry @ 06/30/2005 01:58 PM CST

This is great news. Let me know when local TV advertising gets cheap enough that our store (http://www.platostn.com) can afford it. We have been using RSS for a while partially because we can't afford network TV advertising.

We will increase our use of RSS to further devalue TV advertising.

;)
-Jackson

Posted by Jackson @ 06/30/2005 03:15 PM CST


"The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create."
Leonard Sweet