Take Digital Advertising and Multiple Platforms – Two Success Keys That Shoot Out From Accenture’s Media Survey -- Add NBC Saying TV Survival Depends On Other Platforms And The Media Landscape Is Changing Faster Than You May Think

Philip Stone May 6, 2008

Here’s the short of it – 52% of respondents in Accenture’s respected annual survey of Global Media Content believe that by 2012 digital advertising will eclipse traditional advertising. And 66% said that the largest driver of additional revenue in the next five years will come from new ways of delivering content. Having said that, there is still a cloud over how long it will take for mobile to shine.

Add to that statements like the one by Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment, that within 15 years television’s main purpose will be to show high profile live events like the Oscars and major sporting events and that other shows must be available on multiple platforms to be a success, and it’s pretty obvious that the traditional media landscape revolution is well underway.

The Accenture survey interviewed more than 100 senior media and entertainment industry leaders in the US and Europe. Those surveyed acknowledged that today most of them derive less than 10% of their revenue from alternate forms of their particular media, but they believe that’s all going to change with almost every media company now working hard to adapt to digital advertising as a major source of revenue with more than half (52%) saying that within five years digital advertising will be a bigger player than traditional advertising.

And there is now complete faith in the Internet. Two-thirds say there will be no Internet bubble burst in the next two years and 71% are happy for their brands to be associated with social media sites. And what business model will win in that environment? Some 62% say it will be advertising-supported while only 25% believe it will be subscriber-based.

But mobile is still a question mark. Some 84% of respondents expect mobile rich media to become mass market, representing the largest growth opportunity for media and entertainment firms, the only real question being when?Some 55% believe mobile will become a major player within three years while 45% say it will take longer, and 51% put the blame for that on consumer readiness.

But Accenture does not believe executives fully understand the effort it is going to take to realize those new revenue streams. “It is great news that media organizations are developing a consistent strategic view of the key growth areas, but execution is slow,” said Gavin Mann, digital media lead for Accenture’s Media and Entertainment division.  “There clearly remains a huge effort to put in place the necessary capabilities, and it is apparent that the size of the task is still not fully understood. I am not claiming it is easy to turn around some of the world’s greatest media organizations, but I do believe it is essential if they are to remain great.”

Ben Silverman’s speech to the TelevisionWeek Upfront Summit in New York last week has caused a stir for how he believes multi-platform is the key to television’s future. He said television will only truly be within its element with the live broadcast of major events. Otherwise TV programs must go multi-platform. That means that if you want to watch a couple of additional scenes from a TV show then go to the network’s web site. Indeed some series could even end on TV and continue on the web.

He said that with one show debuting this fall, “Kath and Kim” continued scenes will appear on the web after each episode airs. “Around our new offerings there will literally be shows that end on air and the last scene will continue online,” Silverman said. As an indication of the future, NBC Universal has just made a deal with the Magical Elves production company that covers unscripted, scripted, digital, wireless and short-form projects.

Will multi-platform work for TV programs? Bloggers writing about Silverman’s speech don’t seem very enamored being asked to go from television to the web to see the rest of a TV show. One compared it to going to a movie and the last scenes were not shown in the cinema and one had to go online for the ending. And another asked what about the old and the poor who don’t have or use computers?

But multl-platform is certainly on the minds of traditional media. On the editorial front, for instance, the Chicago Tribune produces short videos of its film critics and other columnists and places them on YouTube and other web channels, and on the advertising side the Tribune uses its Hoy Spanish newspaper and its RedEye free paper targeted at younger readers that between them offer the studios a more encompassing media package than they ever had before.

Tom Schager, Tribune’s entertainment division sales manager, told Variety that the idea is “to push studios and agencies to treat us less as a newspaper company and more as a content company.”  The studios have cut their newspaper  advertising spend  by some 40%  over the past three years so trying to claw some of that back with innovative plans is no bad thing.

Another study, this one from PQ Media, predicts that by 2012 alternative media will make up 26.6% of all US advertising and marketing spending. “Alternative  advertising and marketing media are driving a new media order that presents vast opportunities for industry stakeholders, but also key challenges for some of the fastest growing digital media segments,” according to Patrick Quinn, president and CEO of PQ Media.

But for all the growth in alternative media Quinn notes there is life still in traditional media. The Super Bowl, for instance, garnered its largest domestic TV audience this year – some 97.5 million viewers.

And thus his conclusion, “The claim about the death of broadcast and print media is premature.”