TV Still Leads Because Advertisers, Like Consumers, Are Comfortable With It

We completed an article a couple of days ago saying that despite the rapid growth of new digital ad tools, traditional media will survive for years at least as niche advertising channels.

Part of the reason television, newspapers, magazines and radio will survive, experts tell us, is because consumers are comfortable with them. Millions of people would still prefer to read a publication, watch television or listen to radio than cruise the Internet for their news or entertainment, especially their entertainment.

Television’s numbers are declining, but reports say it is still the leader of the very fragmented media world that advertisers have before them.

Today, we’re told that’s partly because advertisers, like consumers, are also comfortable with television.

David Carr of the New York Times attributes that bit of insight to Brad Adgate, director of research at Horizon Media. Adgate was commenting on the networks’ continued ability to get good prices for their upfront time sales despite the Internet competition, the poor economy, etc.

"Part of what you are seeing is a comfort relationship," Adgate said. "There is a relationship with buyers that has developed over decades and there remains an attitude that if it isn’t broken completely, why fix it?"

That jells with what Mitch Berman, CEO of Zillion TV, told blogger and author Sramana Mitra. The crucial media battle, he said, is "still TV versus PC," but he added that "the TV screen is the screen of choice," not only for consumers and content providers, but also for advertisers

For more on the subject, see The Dominant Ad Media of the Future and "Niche Advertising in Traditional Media."