Old-World Media Start to Feel the Pain

OLD-WORLD MEDIA START TO FEEL THE PAIN
[SOURCE: AdAge, AUTHOR: Matthew Creamer]
Last week, TNS found that U.S. ad spending fell for the second quarter in a row, the first time that had happened since 2001. Depressing as it might appear, it's a trend you might want to get used to, though not for the business-cycle reasons you might expect. Sure, ad expenditure is linked to the overall health of the U.S. economy. And factors such as the ever-expanding subprime-mortgage mess are sure to play a role, as will the relative health of major mass marketers such as the rather sickly Big Three automakers, whose declining spend is what TNS blamed for the downward slide. But there's something else going on that has nothing to do with the natural rhythms of booms and busts or the fortunes of Madison Avenue's biggest clients. Simply put, American companies are shifting more and more marketing dollars out of paid media. You see it happening every day as marketers—smart ones, at least—talk about things such as word-of-mouth and conversational marketing, the kind of activity that doesn't feed the coffers of media sellers or traditional ad agencies and hence goes unmeasured in bellwethers such as TNS reports.
http://adage.com/article?article_id=120490