Backlash likely this year against darker predictions about traditional media

Media & Marketing:This year in media circles is starting a little bit like 2006. Dire warnings about the health of the newspaper industry continue to reverberate, with various seers predicting its imminent demise, with some commentators even putting a date to their predictions.

The gloom surrounding the newspaper industry was the overriding theme of 2006, but increasingly this gloom is starting to attach itself to all traditional media, be that television, radio or magazines.

The simple plot line for many of the gloomiest commentators is this: newspapers, television, radio and magazines are set to be severely, even irreparably, damaged by the growth of online media and have little prospect of ever fully replacing their old readers or viewers with online equivalents.

This simplistic take on events does not bear up to scrutiny and in 2007 there is likely to be something of a backlash against the darker predictions about traditional media. Yes the migration from traditional media to online is happening fast, but the depth and pace of this migration has been exaggerated in some quarters.

One of the largest media buying agencies in Europe, Mediavest summed this up nicely this week, when one of its spokespeople commented that online media was still a tiny part of media spend. "Digital strategies have been 95 per cent of the talk and 5 per cent of the spend", was the neat summation.

In Ireland the ratio may be even starker. According to the last set of figures from the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland (IAPI) online spending trailed behind cinema, television, radio, outdoor and newspapers - and by a country mile too.

These figures covering 2005 are clearly underestimating the online spending since then. But when the 2006 figures issue shortly, do not be surprised if outdoor, radio, television and press are still far ahead of online spending. Cinema is another matter and its place in the pecking order as an advertising medium could be under threat.

Nevertheless the figures should bring a stop to some of the hysteria that has surrounded the debate of old versus new media. The debate is worth having, but the problem is that it is not focused enough.

The online threat to traditional media like press is not all encompassing, it has rough and smooth edges.

For example, few online sites have yet to come up with the layers of fact-checking resources at the disposal of your average broadsheet newspaper.

Few online news and information sites, as opposed to the likes of Google or Rupert Murdoch's My Space, have so far managed to produce anything like the revenues produced by the major television and press groups around the world.

So the panic is in many respects overstated. The threat is there alright and the vulnerabilities of the traditional media are also there.

However, the threat is more stark in some areas and less so in others.

When you strip away the hysteria, the threat from online most alarmingly arises in the classified ad market and Ireland is no exception to this rule.

According to figures from IAPI some 18 per cent of all spending on media in Ireland arises in the classified area. This dwarfs any other type of advertising activity. Put simply the €262 million spent each year on classifieds is up for grabs and that is what should worry traditional media owners.

Whether the hysteria is overdone or not is probably irrelevant at this stage. The financial markets have decided that newspapers needs to get serious about finding new alternative sources of revenue soon.

For example, two weeks ago, McClatchy, one of the largest US newspaper chains, sold the Minneapolis Star Tribune to a private equity firm for $530 million, which was less than half what it paid for the paper eight years earlier.

Lloyds TSB first Olympics sponsor

Lloyds TSB has become the first major sponsor of the 2012 London Olympic Games with an £80 million donation.

While £80 million is a significant sum for a sponsorship, the UK Olympic committee intends to spend £2 billion on the event so the Lloyds deal in that context is only small beer. Banks and insurers were the first to be invited to tender as sponsors and will be followed by telecom, auto, oil and gas and utility companies.

Lloyds is well known in this country as a sporting sponsor, even if it has no high street presence here - it has sponsored the rugby Six Nations tournament.

Rival Barclays had been tipped as favourite to sponsor the Olympics, but it has decided the Olympian ideal is not for it and has instead renewed its English Premiership football deal.

Starcom wins major accounts

The Starcom Mediavest group in Ireland finished 2006 by winning three major new accounts in December valued at €7 million, Alan Cox, managing director, announced yesterday.

The group was appointed by Independent News and Media, Premier Foods and the Health & Safety Authority to handle their media planning and buying.

"These were three great wins for us and crowned a very successful year for which we recorded billings of €82 million" he said.

"Based on our current projections, I expect our billings to top €95 million this year, which would represent a growth rate of over 15 per cent on 2006", Cox forecast.

Emmet Oliver can be contacted at eoliver@irish-times.ie