Media buying 101: The media environment (Part 2)

The new trio

We purposely left out a major item in our discussion last week about the various options available to today’s marketer – I’m referring to the item on new media, or to be more up-to-date with our language, digital media. The truth is, present-day and forward-looking analysts have been talking of a new triumvirate in media: it’s no longer TV-radio-print that will be the mantra of the future – it will be TV-internet-mobile. Yes, we are talking of three screens… big, medium, small. Whereas the big screen used to be cinema, and the small screen television, the new dictum is:  big screen means plasma and LCD TV screens in home theater systems, medium means computer monitors, and small means mobile phones.

And it will be the small screen that will be the biggest player among the three. While television enjoys the highest penetration level for now, its use has been steadily declining. The middle guy, your internet-connected computer monitor, is quickly generating critical mass with the advent of affordable broadband. But the real hottie is your mobile phone screen – because it has been the fastest growing medium for some time, and outnumbers the two other screens by a mile.
 
Let’s look at the numbers. You have 89 million Filipinos, living in about 17 million households, watching roughly 20 million TV screens. Yes, there are now more television sets in use than there are households. Multiple set ownership is no longer unusual, with some upper class households having more TV sets than household members. There are TV sets in every room even if these rooms are unoccupied.

And what about computers? How many among us out there log on regularly? According to data from Nielsen Media Research, only 9 percent of consumers had internet access in 2002. Today, that number has grown almost four-folds, with 33 percent of Filipinos logging on to the internet regularly.

In another study conducted by Universal McCann, they saw that while internet penetration is only 15 percent among the population, more than 37 million, or more than 42 percent of the population are active users of the internet, logging on everyday or every other day, with the majority (as much as 83 percent) active in social networking sites like Friendster, Facebook and Multiply.

How about mobile phones? How many cellphones do Filipinos lug around with them everywhere they go? Only 65 million – or more than triple the number of TV screens.

Ask yourself: how much time do you spend watching television? Compare that to how long you stay logged onto the internet everyday. And finally, how many times do you look at your mobile phone per day?

All analysts agree on this point: mobile phones will provide a shortcut to the internet for a growing number of ordinary consumers. If you study the more recent batch of television ads from the two major telcos, they are both touting internet services on their mobile phones. SMS is not dead nor dying, but it is no longer hot, even as we have upped our overall SMS volume to one billion per day. The hot trend in mobile phones is internet services – instant messenger and social networking.

So why are advertisers still pouring more than half of their media budgets on traditional television buys? And allocating less than 2% to digital media – internet and mobile advertising?

Media wars

Going back to the Nielsen report, there have been dramatic changes in media consumption habits in the past several years. TV has managed to keep its numerical superiority as it continues to enjoy 98-99 percent consumer patronage, with cable TV now enjoying almost 50 percent viewership. Radio has gone down six points, to 74 percent from 80 percent. Print is enjoying a resurgence, with newspapers improving 15 points, to 86 percent from 71 percent readership. And magazines almost doubled, now 45 percent from 23 percent. Cinema patronage shrank to 24 percent from 39 percent. Obviously there is a lot of audience shifting going on. It is war among the media – each one is grabbing the decreasing attention span of consumers away from the other media.

On a more specific level, there is another war about to break out. No, it’s not the one on the front pages of the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Philippine Star between Christians and Muslims in Mindanao – it’s the war between the Inquirer and the Star. Both are claiming to be No. 1 in the latest Nielsen media index survey. Although offhand, it looks like the Star is emerging as the winner, with both Metro Manila and other key cities already showing the Star ahead of PDI in readership.

That is not as surprising as the finding that in Manila, the erstwhile unaggressive Manila Bulletin has already edged out PDI, and now occupies the No. 2 slot, relegating the Inquirer to third place.

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