Quick Takes: Another Cue to the Growing Conversation

Doc Searls points to a posting by Terry Heaton who points to a posting by Jeff Jarvis who is commenting on this report on the shift in advertising usage .  Here are a few quotes.

Terry Heaton:

Nielsen has released new data from its "engagement panels," and it's not good for the status quo. Only one-third of the 1,000 panelists could recall any TV commercials they had seen, and 21% of viewers could not correctly recall at least one TV program they had viewed. ...

I have never been more convinced that the business model of television is at serious risk and that broadcasters who continue to believe that their real competition is the guy across town (see Steve's excellent piece below) are on a one-way path to the tar pits. It is not a time for same-old, same-old, and reaching for revenue in a multi-platform delivery paradigm alone is not going to produce enough revenue growth to offset losses to our incumbent businesses.

Local information is rapidly becoming commoditized, and that's our core competency. You can't scale a content business in such an environment; the economics have to come from elsewhere.

Veronis Suhler Stevension Report:

Total communications spending expanded at a CAGR of 5.9% in the 2001-2006 period to a record $885.2 billion, driven by strong gains in alternative advertising, marketing, and institutional spending

 

While consumer media usage dipped 0.5% in 2006, institutional time spent with media increased 3.2%, according to the first-ever analysis of business media usage patterns

 

Overall communications spending is projected to grow 6.4% in 2007, exceed $1 trillion in 2008, and post a CAGR of 6.7% from 2006 to 2011 

 

Internet advertising is expected to become the largest ad segment in 2011, surpassing newspapers

 

While communications spending growth accelerated in 2006, outpacing nominal GDP for the fourth time in five years, consumer media usage declined following two consecutive years of decelerating growth, according to exclusive data released today by Veronis Suhler Stevenson ...

Jeff Jarvis:

The report also says that our total media usage is declining, though what’s interesting to me is that part of this, they say, comes from efficiency and that’s an important concept in the morphing of media: The internet exposes the inefficiencies of old media for both “consumers” and advertisers. The internet makes direct connections. Note also in the report that we are taking in less ad-supported media because there is more media without ads and also, again, because we can connect directly to information around advertising.

Doc Searls:

The vector here is not toward more advertising online. It’s toward less advertising overall, and a less “mediated” world.

This is a world where The Media will only be part of the mediated picture. Consumers will always be legion, but with producers and intermediaries becoming legion as well, what makes the rest of the picture? The short answer is anything. This should be good for the economy, as well as civilization, even as it threatens every institution that ever called itself “media”.

Me: The conclusion is that what is happening is that people don't need institutions to manage their interaction with people.  All they need are tools and a desire to be in conversation.  Whether it is a blog or a Facebook site, people more quickly, more efficiently and more effective can find out what they need to know.

Smart businesses will understand that bringing their customers into conversation with them, not for the purpose of advertising their products, but for the purpose of making them apart of their organizational community is going to be a key to the future of their business. 

When reading any media derive content, ask yourself, "Is this a monologue or a conversation?" Do they really want to know what I think? Ask them? If they respond, they maybe, just maybe, a conversation is starting.

An Additional Thought: It isn't that by abandoning the mediating institutions of the media from our interaction, that we are abandoning structure all together.  The difference is that whatever organizational structure we need is developed in service to the conversation, rather than as the controlling structure of the conversation.

An application of this perspective is to the political process that we are now in.  The parties, their media consultants, their fund raisers are all working over time to organize the conversation that they want with us. Just look at these two reports from yesterday.

Modern road to the White House 'verges on insane', say Gingerich.

US public sees news media as biased, inaccurate, uncaring: poll

So the cue in all this is that the conversation happens out of view of the media, because they are still focused on an institutionalized conversation that they control, rather a genuine conversation in which they take part.