The internet is peaking too early and those working in digital media are obsessed with beating traditional mediums to become the number one in terms of advertising spend, the general manager of Media Smart said today.
Mark Shaw, GM of Sensis’ digital media sales arm, said rather than fighting to take the top spot in ad revenue terms, the online industry should instead work more closely with its rivals, in turn helping to grow the entire online ad market.
Speaking at AIMIA and IAB’s Future of Digital Advertising conference in Sydney this morning, Shaw said: “Whatever way you look at it online growth has been a remarkable achievement but I’m of the view that really the internet is peaking too early.
“What we want to do is bring it back to reality. The bottom line is we have had a monumental growth but if you backtrack to 2005 and 2006 that was actually the peak of growth with internet. Pre the global financial crisis in 2007 online ad revenue growth actually slowed substantially and is still slowing.”
Referring to industry analysts he added: “What they are all saying is that traditional media will recover from the downturn very well. There is no similar uptick for digital, even though online advertising is spreading to new sectors such as FMCG and retail. Certainly the gap between traditional and digital is going to reduce and that’s a great thing and they are predicted to get close to parity but once that parity happens the growth of online share of the media market pretty much stops.”
Shaw said predictions digital media would account for more than 20% of the ad market over the next five years, while a significant achievement, was not enough.
“I’m posing the question and saying as an industry if we get comfortable settling in down with a 25% to 30% share of the media market, are we really fulfilling the promises of what online is all about.
“We get so caught up about beating traditional. I don’t think that this is the right tack. If we can get better at understanding what digital does and what buyers and sellers want, understanding how digital works with traditional, and look at models that make it easier for advertisers to integrate we could actually have a role here in growing the media market massively.
“We are outperforming other mediums well, but let’s not pat ourselves on the back too much.”
He added: “We are here to change the world not to take a bit of it. As opposed to being focused on simply building digital share which I think we are to a degree, should we not be using the digital platform as a way of reinventing the role that marketing actually plays? With that you get marketing become more value to the consumers and company and out of that you grow the demand for marketing and hence you get the media market growing massively as well.”
