There are some huge changes taking place in the advertising industry right now. Indeed, we’re starting to see the decline of traditional media’s ability to attract advertising revenue.
iMedia Connection.com have just sent out a link to Danny Meadows-Klue’s press release. It makes for dramatic reading.
For example, look at the figures Danny provides on the recent growth of online advertising in the UK:
- First half of 2007: £1,334.3 million
- First half of 2006: £917.2 million
- Year on year growth: 41.3%
- Online adspend market share: 14.7%
Just read one of those figures again; 41.3% year on year growth!
Newspapers are hardest hit
As if we didn’t know, newspapers are being hit really hard by these changes. Advertising money is flowing away from them as readership declines.
So, it’s Danny’s take on our industry then that I find most interesting:.
“Job advertising continues to be the lead category (among the ad revenues) … recruitment accounted for a quarter of all web advertising spend (24.7%)…
Although volumes will continue to migrate, some spend will stay in both newspapers and magazines, although advertising form and structure will change towards brand messages about the recruiter…”
I completely agree with Danny’s view. In fact, I couldn’t have put it better myself!
The changes are also taking place in Higher Education
Many of our customers are moving away from print recruitment advertising. They are choosing to use it less as they invest in their e-recruitment activities.
This does not mean, however, that UK H.E. institutions will stop using print advertising all together.
Instead, as Danny suggests, H.E. recruiters want to use their print advertising budgets to ‘brand themselves’.
They would like to advertise in newspapers in new, bold and imaginative ways. Their intention is to try and create a ‘brand’ for the institution.
Whilst I’m doubtful that many HR departments or even whole institutions are clear on what their brand should be, the hope is that they’ll demonstrate how great they are as an organisation and, by association, how good they are as an employer.
When they need to recruit for specific jobs, H.E. recruiters intend to use print as a ‘gateway’ in order to point candidates to their vacancy websites. Once candidates are on these lovely new websites, they’ll be shifted and sorted by automatic candidate selection tools and Applicant Tracking Systems.
Will the newspapers cut their noses off to spoil their faces?
The picture that Danny describes is one that we recognise at jobs.ac.uk
I wonder, however, how newspapers are going to cope with these changes? Will they allow advertisers to use them in the way I describe?
The problem for newspapers is that organisations will advertise in print ever less frequently. As they grow their own electronic talent pools, institutions may only want a press advert every so often and not, as is still the case for many, every day, week or month.
This continued reduction in ad revenue is really going to hurt the newspapers. I wonder, therefore, if they will be forced to increase the price of all of their advertising – branding or otherwise – in order to compensate?
Of course, newspaper owners are not stupid. Some of the headlines in their publications might be but they’re certainly not. They’ll resist, therefore, pushing customers away with higher prices. But for how much longer?
Empowered customers can take their money elsewhere
Something I’ve been told many times by recruiters, is that they hate being forced to pay what they see as over-inflated prices for print advertising.
To put it another way, when you’ve got no choice for something you need, you might moan about the price but you’ll still hand over the cash.
When you do have a choice, and you can source candidates online yourselves, you might not be so compliant.
Mmmm – my brain has just dragged up a faded memory of Porter’s 5 Forces model from my post-grad marketing course.
Check out the bit where he talks about “the power of buyers”
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