Two tracks: What’s on the horizon — a merge or mirage?

While the digital realm expands its reach, traditional TV holds its ground, proving that the classics never fade, writes Chris Botha

Ad people are the first and the fastest to jump on the “new shiny thing” bandwagon. Last year, we were all opening offices in the metaverse, and this year we are replacing all our employees with AI. Years of research and information have been replaced by “big data” (a rose by any other name …). Who knows what next year will bring?

Despite the bandwagon, media and marketing people still invest most of their advertising spend on good old television, a medium that has been around for 85 years. It’s still measured more or less the same way; ratings and CPPs are still around, and as much as things change, they stay the same.

Meanwhile, the metaverse is sinking somewhere at the bottom of the ocean, long forgotten, joining a long trail of dwang wrapped up in a shiny wrapper, including QR codes, USSD codes and virtual reality (VR).

The traditional media vs digital media debate sometimes appears like two parallel tracks. I worry that our job is to talk about the latest shiny thing (the one track), while implementing the old, tried-and-tested (the other track). While we all keep talking the hybrid game, it is only on the horizon that the two tracks truly merge into one. And even that can be an illusion.

So, what’s happening on each track? When do they merge?

The reality is that the horizon of merging is getting closer and closer — especially for successful media owners. Truly hybrid platforms are increasingly the norm.

On the TV front, we see media owners like MultiChoice aggressively rolling the dice on streaming iterations and overthe-top (OTT) platforms, while being smart enough to know where most of their advertising revenue is coming from.

The SABC and e.tv have followed suit by launching their own streaming services and the race for audiences is on. Meanwhile, Netflix is monetising and the streaming platforms (which all, by the way, actually still make a loss ...) look at their traditional partners to see how they stay financially afloat. On the other end of the scale is a consumer who just wants to sit down and watch some cool content. They don’t care where they are watching that content or on what platform.

On the radio front, we’ve had podcasts and streaming stations for many years and we are slowly starting to see actual investment being placed on these platforms. It feels like the podcast industry is getting its act together and is now coming to agencies and clients with a compelling offer. Cross-platform audience targeting on audio is likely to start gaining traction now.

What does that mean for traditional radio? Who knows? I suspect it will start costing them in the short term, as it’s always made its money out of being a “mass medium”.

The one “traditional platform” that I believe has seen the most drastic change is out-of-home (OOH) advertising. Outdoor (the digital kind) is now available to be bought through a demandside platform (DSP) like you would any other programmatic advertising, and digital screens are going up all over the country.

We’re seeing that OOH can actually start competing with any other streaming service. As media people, we now have to weigh up a cost per view on television, OOH and digital video.

“Despite the bandwagon, media and marketing people still invest the overwhelming majority of their advertising spend on good old television, a medium that has been around for 85 years”

Meanwhile, the traditional side of OOH — good old billboards — is still doing a roaring trade. The latest numbers seem to indicate that OOH occupancy is back to pre-Covid levels. The two tracks running parallel — soon to hopefully meet.

And then there’s print. Ironically, print was the very first “traditional media owner” to embrace the digital world. News24 was built off the back of print journos placing their printed stories on digital platforms. Print, I believe, will move in two directions.

First, we will find free newspapers (community newspapers) growing and reaching more suburbs that have never had community papers. Second, the rest of print will become absolute niche content.

So, the two tracks are actually coming closer to each other and it’s just a matter of time before they meet. Maybe 15 years from now all ad campaigns will be run in the metaverse. But one thing is for certain: 15 years from now, traditional television will still be around and will be doing quite OK for itself.

❒ Chris Botha is the group MD of Park Advertising