Three weeks ago I was speaking at a technical/CMS conference down in Austin, and the response of the attendees to several of my initial questions highlighted yet again the challenge facing local media (especially TV).
Keep in mind that the audience was composed of men and women who all work in the Web industry (digital agencies, technology companies, even folks that run university websites), so obviously some of the answers are skewed heavily in favor of the Web over other media. Still, though, these are generally successful people who would make up a valuable part of any advertiser’s demographic.
As I asked:
“How many of you are on LinkedIn at least once a week?” – 100% of the 60 or so attendees’ hands went up.
“How many on Facebook?” – 90% of the hands went up.
“How many on Twitter?” – 60% of the hands went up.
“MySpace?” – 40%
“How many of you read a hardcopy newspaper at least several times a week?” – roughly 20% of the hands went up (including my own, I am a devoted Wall Street Journal subscriber and am very attached to using downtime “during taxi, takeoff, and landing” to read through the Journal.)
Then, the kicker:
“How many of you watch a local TV newscast at least once a week?” – perhaps 15% of the hands went up.
Interestingly, roughly the same number of people put their hands up when I asked how many of them visited a local media website on a regular basis – a positive note which still doesn’t make up for the decline in core audience.
These types of quick surveys always emphasize for me how much traditional local media outlets are still letting Yahoo!, Google, Weather.com, Craigslist, and the various social media players dominate what will be the main growth engine for advertisers in the coming years.
As part of the industry representing local interactive, I hope that owners of these sites will soon realize that generating 5 million (mm), 10 mm, or even 40 mm pageviews a month in most local markets still means less than a 5% share of the overall online market for user engagement (and only a small fraction of most local sites are generating even 10 mm pageviews a month currently). Hopefully, this will lead to a level of (smart) investment that is commensurate with the revenue numbers that Wall Street desires.