The fall and rise of online advertising

Around the globe the Internet is growing as a media. More-and-more people move online every day, and start to search for content appropriate to their needs. When they find what they want Net advertisers have another person to target.

Feeding dinosaur-media

Perhaps because the process is this simple, traditional publishers have often failed to get their heads around the Internet phenomenon. Some prefer to see it as a means of finding new readers for their dinosaur-media, and usually require bizarre registration processes and access codes for their websites.

This does not work. For the whole point about the Internet and the New Media is that it is an entire replacement for traditional media, and does its job at such low cost that the service can usually be offered free to the user, or for a very modest subscription.

For Internet users quickly realize that they have access to a diversity and wealth of content beyond the restrictions of a traditional magazine and newspaper. It is not surprising that media owners like Rupert Murdoch are becoming concerned, and beginning to buy websites up, thinking that if you can't beat them, buy them!

Yet advertisers have been very slow to jump on this bandwagon. They can see huge, and often now audited, audiences visiting websites, and still opt for a full-page advertisement in a local newspaper which is very much more expensive than the Net alternative.

Clients lack creativity

Why should this be? Media houses are staffed by bright young executives paid to deliver new ideas to their clients. But they know that nobody ever got fired for taking a full-page advertisement in a newspaper, while the Internet is not yet tried and tested.

Increasingly this inertia and market conservatism is being worn down, even in the Middle East. Clients are beginning to hear about successful campaigns, and those that have had good early experiences are re-booking and expanding their spending online.

Yet online advertising is still a tiny proportion of total spending. A pessimist would think this an indictment. But to any New Media optimist it shows that their remains enormous room for expansion.

Certainly online advertising has plenty of potential to grow while traditional media are arguably over-extended and under threat from competition, including the fast growing online media.

This week sees the inaugural Marketing & Media Show in Dubai and AME Info is participating with a large stand as a representative of the online media in the Middle East. A few years ago AME Info was a much smaller company and such a presence would have been unthinkable.

But then 1.8 million unique users have logged on to AME Info so far in 2005, more than 100% up on the same period last year, and advertisers are beginning to take note.

It can only be a matter of time before the dinosaur-media face extinction. For the Internet is winning the audience away from traditional media and offers much better value-for-money to advertisers.