Our 2010 Trends are Today's Essential Strategies -

In early 2010, MyersBizNet published our trends report, identifying the media and advertising community's most important issues and concerns. We focused on data, legacy media business models, the need for multi-screen programming expansion, the focus on programmatic-led commoditization of media inventory, and shopper marketing. As a MyersBizNet member, you rely on our insights and market intelligence for your marketplace perspectives. Over the past 30-years, our forecasts and vision has proven to be the most accurate in the business, although the industry often progresses more slowly than we anticipate. In that context, it's worthwhile looking back at our 2010 analyses and forecasts.

2010-2012 MyersBizNet Media Trends Report

1. The Beachfront Property of the Media Industry is Being Reinforced

2. Consumers are NOT in Control. Crowds and Data are King of Media and Marketing

3. Advertisers Have Stopped Complaining and Learned to Love the Media

4. As Video Advertising Options Increase, Commoditization Will Take Its Toll

5. Big Screen. Small Screen. 3D Screen. We All Scream for Multiple Screens

6. Redefining the Magazine as Marketing Platform

7. Advertising R-O-I: There is No Holy Grail, So Stop Looking For it

8. Marketers are Becoming Media Companies

9. TV Commercials vs. Online Video Advertising: Battle of Conflicting Business Models

Cost efficient mass media will continue to thrive as the bulwark of marketers' media plans.

• There will be fewer and fewer media options that deliver advertiser-friendly content, cost efficiency and scale for marketers that require wide, synchronous and frequent exposure for their ad messages – which represents the majority of marketers.

• Media companies that can deliver effective reach and frequency to target audiences on a relatively cost efficient basis will achieve the greatest growth.

• Broadcast and large cable networks, radio, selected newspapers and magazines, out-of-home, selected digital-only content providers and networks, will continue to grow.

• At the same time, content with strong and clearly identifiable brand equity will gain relevance for long-term multi-purpose partnerships with marketers.

Social Media, Online Video, Mobile and GPS-Based Media are clearly this decade's hot categories for brand marketers.

But combined they capture just 0.7%, of total marketing expenditures in the U.S.* In 2012, Myers forecasts these categories will represent less than 2.0% of marketers' spending. (In 2014, these categories of digital-originated media represent just 3.0% of total marketing communications budgets.) So while growth of these new media is well into the double digits, it will be several years before they capture a meaningful percentage of total marketing budgets. From each of these categories, a handful of sustainable new media providers have emerged, with perhaps a smaller handful yet to be identified. Their common characteristic of success is scale and the ability to aggregate their users in ways that are relevant to marketers. (In 2014, Google captures an estimated 90% of total mobile advertising budgets.)Even the most successful consumer sites are failing unless they can deliver both scale and marketing relevance.

Over the next decade, two trends will have increasing relevance to media companies and marketers, both focused on data :

• Enhanced research, software systems and navigational dashboards that better identify -- as well as predict and guide -- the media consumption patterns of scalable groups of people will become important currency;

• Activation tools and automated-planning and buying media systems will organize audiences based more on the perceptions, likes and dislikes of consumers than on the narrowly targeted nuances of their purchasing interests. It's not the consumers who are king, it's the data about them. Data is relevant only to the extent that it defines measurable, sustainable and scalable crowds that are relevant to specific marketers.

It may be 2015 or 2016 before these realities significantly impact the business, but by that time traditional content-centric media sellers will need to have in place alternative revenue models that generate revenues above and beyond what is available in the share-of-market and cost efficiency game in which they now play.

There simply will not be sufficient dollars in the marketplace for today's video media leaders to sustain the mid-single digit growth that most of them require without restructuring their current business models.

(The 2014/15 network TV Upfront marketplace experience total revenue declines estimated at 4% to 5%.) Technology is enabling too many opportunities for generating audience reach at improved cost efficiencies through automated systems. Too many video media alternatives and more cost efficient ways to reach audiences effectively will eventually result in disintermediation of the traditional media/agency buyer-seller relationships that are sustaining the businesses of most TV networks, magazines and other established media. The inevitable progression of technological innovation is commoditization and disintermediation of established business models. At some point during this decade, commoditization will catch up to even the most protected media assets and those that have developed alternative revenue models will be thankful they did.

The greatest value of new media technologies is not the ability to buy audiences at progressively more cost efficient prices.

It's the ability of content producers to identify their audiences, build databases and loyalty programs, communicate directly to them and motivate them to act in measurable ways. Through these capabilities, content-centric media companies can begin attracting non-advertising marketing dollars (below-the-line) that are targeted to shopper marketing initiatives, consumer sales promotion, event marketing, social and conversational interaction, direct sales and other "below-the-line" activities.

Whether it's large screen HDTV, 3D TV, iPad, cinema, computer, mobile or screens yet to be introduced, usage is being integrated across multiple functionalities.

The media industry has been so traditionally locked into rigid silos for the past six decades that it's unnatural for many companies to understand a dynamic that is grounded in convergence and integration. Applications and tools developed for one platform will naturally be embraced by consumers on other platforms. Business models, advertising applications, research methodologies and transactional capabilities implemented by distributors, content producers and marketers will be required for multiple platforms, with the end consumer platform choices being ultimately irrelevant. Content producers must focus on screen-neutral distribution strategies and, to remain tech-relevant, advertisers must rethink their policy of buying advertising impressions exclusively through specific distribution platforms. They also need to sponsor/underwrite appropriate content and dynamically embed their messages in that content as it morphs across multiple platforms, with the consumer driving the process.

*Source: MyersBizNet Annual Economic Data and Spending Forecasts for 52 Media, Advertising and Marketing Categories

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