Saturday, November 1, 2008

Traditional vs New Media


This week, the discussion was all about the battle between traditional media and new media. When discussing the future of traditional and new media, there are numerous questions that must be considered including: Will any traditional/new media become obsolete? Will traditional technology learn to adapt and evolve into the new media realm? Is traditional media still useful? What new technology is becoming available?

First of all, traditional media and new media needs to be defined in order to build a criteria for analysis. Traditional media is defined as "print, radio, TV, yellow pages, and even outdoor ads" (Using traditional media in your B2B marketing programs, 2007). Traditional media, in a marketing sense, utilizes numerous forms of media such as direct marketing, printed advertisements, radio and television commercials, etc. New media, on the other hand, is "a form of communicating in the digital world" which includes formats such as the internet, electronic publishing on CD-ROM, DVD, digital television, podcasting, etc. (Definition of: New media, 2008). A vast amount of advertising dollars are being spent on new media advertising such as banners, pop-up advertisements, widgets, etc.

The first point that was made within the discussion is the idea of traditional media not becoming obsolete within the next fifty years. Some points were made that traditional media would adapt to new media, but the idea of traditional media entirely fading away at such a rapid rate did not seem realistic. In fact, there have been studies done at universities such as Iowa State where the findings disprove the idea of traditional media falling behind new media. In this study, there were dramatic increases in the use of new media, but there was a slight increase in the use of traditional media as well. The pattern that developed, according to this research, is "people don't actually drop their old habits--or if they do, they do very slowly over a long period of time--but they create new habits very quickly." Therefore, companies may want to continue to advertise on both formats for the time being until more dramatic results form between new media and traditional media (Young, 2008).

The second interesting point was a discussion about the future of one form of traditional media in particular: newspapers. While newspaper website views have increased by 8 percent, weekly subscriptions have fallen by 2.5 percent with Sunday subscriptions falling by 3.1 percent. This movement is in part due to the younger generation and their enthusiasm toward new media (Caverly, 2006). However, the extinction of newspapers has been predicted over the past twenty years, yet they are still being read and circulations still exist. There have been predictions in the past that other forms of news media such as cable news would make newspapers a fading memory, but newspapers continue to defend its existence against competition from other news sources. While researchers such as Philip Meyer believe newspapers will become extinct within the next fifty years, predicting the extinction of media is often a hit and miss situation (Farhi, 2005).

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Caverly, D. (2006, May 9). Newspaper sales fall, web traffic increases. WebProNews. Retrieved November 1, 2008, from http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2006/05/09/newspaper-sales-fall-web-traffic-increases

Definition of: New media. PC Magazine. Retrieved November 1, 2008, from http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=new+media&i=47936,00.asp

Farhi, P. (2005). A bright future for newspapers. American Journalism Review. Retreived November 1, 2008, from http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=3885

Using traditional media in your B2B marketing programs. Marketing M.O. Retrieved November 1, 2008, from http://www.marketingmo.com/resources/traditional_media.aspx

Young, L. (2008, October 29). Iowa State U finds new media not replacing traditional media; newspapers, magazines, radio, tv see slight increase in use. AHN. Retrieved November 1, 2008, from http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7012833259

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