Darren Herman

The digital media world is jumping for joy.  Advertising agencies, publishers, technology companies, etc.  For the first time, the Internet has surpassed print as an advertising vehicle.  WSJ, Ad Age, Venture Beat, and others wrote about it recently. U.S. spending on online ads will hit $25.8 billion in 2010, compared with $22.8 billion spent on print ads in newspapers, the Wall Street Journal reported.

This is a big deal.  Many Venture Capital funds will forward these articles to their LP’s to validate many of their investments and I’m sure many entrepreneurs will reference this in their fundraising docs.  Patch (AOL) will reap benefits of this if they continue to kick butt and the entire ecosystem will thrive.

But lets talk about television, a media vehicle that has exponentially the amount of ad dollars invested within then Print.

I believe and have said it here and within keynotes many times that Internet will consume television.  Internet + Television go together like peanut butter and jelly.  Your set top box is a computer for all intents and purposes (edited: thanks Colin!) and the delivery of programming will be thru digital methods.  Once this happens, Internet + Television will be inseparable.  Additionally, the way in which marketers and their respective agencies purchase these advertising units will be through media platforms that triangulate many different data points to accurately target ads down to (or beyond) the household level.

The FCC might have something to do with the last sentence above, but I believe that addressable ad targeting is ultimately beneficial for the consumer and the entire ecosystem.

A bit more theoretically, I believe digital won’t be a channel in the future, but a backbone to all existing channels.  Digital penetration to television, print, radio, OOH, and others has obviously already begun and isn’t replacing them all per se, but enhancing the experience and making them more efficient.

Related articles

• Web expected to eclipse print in ad spending (theglobeandmail.com)
• Zenith Optimedia: Display to grow in 2011, TV still ad king (econsultancy.com)
• TV and Internet Convergence (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Survey: Parents treat Internet, TV similarly (boston.com)
• Advertising: Still Counting on the Power of Television (nytimes.com)