As we know, when a recession or "contraction" is starting, the media and the ad industry in general are among the first to suffer cutbacks.
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Seeing how all these radio company stock prices are tanking how’s that gonna effect Seattle radio stations?
- Thread starter Cobra14
- Start date
I think we're about in the middle of a seachange of the advertising-supported media model that started during the 07-08 recession. Broadcast and social media continues losing it's grip to more direct-to-consumer ads. And as we've talked about on other threads; with the continued influx of big box stores, and shift in on-line auto and furniture sales to local communities, there are just less opportunities for any growth in traditional advertising. If anything, it's the other way around. We're witnessing with required cuts and publicly traded share loss in all things media, there's increasingly little hope for any potential growth of traditional advertising-supported media in the future. Wall Street and shareholders expect growth.
Except for Townsquare
And ultimately it's a matter of scale. Townsquare is still considered a small media company, and was way ahead of the digital game, timing their startup losses when the expense could be balanced by cash flow from traditional radio. Now they have a solid digital plan when traditional radio advertising continues to slide. Depending on what the future of advertising holds, either they will continue to have digital growth, or suffer similar fate as other media companies.
And they just reported Q1 where 50% of their revenue is new media based.
Yes, most ALL media companies are facing declining revenue.
Direct-to-consumer ads? How does that work, unless it's through social media or sidebars on various internet sites? Wouldn't those sites get a cut of the advertising revenue? And couldn't radio stations do the same on their own websites?
Not that it would be a windfall of money, mind you, but you mentioned that even social media would lose advertising revenues to direct-to-consumer advertising, and I'm trying to understand what that really means.
In our shareholder vote, we voted "No" on Pink Floyd.!
One example is Ford.com. You go there and look at the car you want to buy. You see very detailed videos on all their models. Then you click on the specific model you want. Even used cars. Then it routes you to a local dealer. That replaces advertising the local dealer might buy. They still get customers based on their inventory, not on their local service or reputation.
Cars,com works the same way. In fact I bought my current car that way. I went to a new car dealer about 50 miles away because they had the specific model & options I wanted for the price I wanted to pay. Bingo.
Do you currently receive offers or adds via E-mail from either retail outlets you've purchased from, or happen to be vendors of products or services you've searched for via Google? That's called direct marketing. In other words; the vendor is communicating directly to you via electronic mail, texts to your phone, or via those coupon books you receive in the snail mail, not casting a wider net that is broadcasting.
Websites are so 2000. That, and they reach out directly to the consumer who may have searched for a product or service. Cuts out the middleman.
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During covid I got into the habit of ordering food online from various restaurants in the area. They all harvest email & text numbers that they use regularly to pitch repeat business.
The real bad news is that not only have traditional radio advertisers found new ways to reach customers. But their absence has left a void that has been filled with a lot of medical products, insurance ads, and other more annoying spots that might never have aired 25 years ago. So its a double whammy where the quality advertising has left radio, opening the door for whatever's left.
As Kelly said earlier, websites are so 2000. And few radio stations offer anything on their site that creates any significant traffic or interest, meaning that advertisers get no real benefit from being on them.
How many of us... meaning people interested in radio... ever find anything of interest on a radio station site that would make us return to it often?
And then you'll get ads for the next 3 weeks advertising you the Ford Bronco Sport across platforms.
Groupon and Uber Eats are the worst about this. Groupon sends me several emails a day trying to sell me stuff, and Uber Eats does at least once a day asking me to come back. I get other marketing emails occasionally, but not nearly as frequently. The crazy thing is that I've only bought one thing that Groupon advertised to me directly, though if I can work things out, I might go to a concert later this year that I first saw through an email.
Sometimes one comes through from Amazon, but that's rare. And those sorts of emails are more 2000 than websites. We called them 'spam' in the 1990s, when email lists were the big thing (before the web kicked in). So I still am having difficulty trying to figure out how spam emails and spam texts are replacing social media adverts and other, more general ads.
And I know that a lot of advertisements on websites are targeted, from the sharing of data. In other words, on many sites the ads you will see and the ads I will see are different ones. But the website would still get a cut. I think it's the same way on social media, and has been for a while. If I search for guitar oriented stuff, sooner or later I'll see a guitar ad on social media.
But I would think the social media still gets a cut of the ad revenue.
But many stations promote their website as a venue for listening online. Most radio station websites I've seen have "listen online" buttons.
A lot of stations promote their own "app", which I think is a proprietary program you load on your phone and it puts its own icon on the screen and you use it to get your audio, and any spam that comes along with the data mining.
I'm guessing that is the form of 'direct marketing' you and Kelly are referring to?
Now those same bottom-feeder ads are on Twitter since Elon chased the legitimate advertisers, who'd rather not follow the white supremacists.
Then the heading on those sites should be "Listen Now!" with a simple click.
The rest should be "... and while you listen" with program details, local events, sponsored content, weather and the like.
I'm still shocked how many stations don't have a "Listen now!" button or link very easy to find on their home page. Additional stations make it hard to find their schedule or lineup. And some of those with schedule pages don't list them in chronological order or have missing hours. So it would say like "DJ Bill - 1PM to 3PM, Mary & Jeff - 6AM to 9AM, Nightshift - 9PM to midnight."
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