Message from Michael -- 2009 Predictions Issue

THE HEADLINE: Let’s just get the major forecast issue out of the way at the start – 2009 will stink… stink being a relative term. If you’re in traditional media, it will stink bad. If you’re in new media, it will stink less. But, regardless, it will stink. The Television Bureau of Advertising predicts total TV spot advertising will drop anywhere from 7% to 11%. The BIA Advisory Services says radio will drop 10% and MediaWeek says 2009 will be the worst year for radio since 1954 when The Lone Ranger went off the air. Online advertising will actually grow, but at a much slower rate. Research firm eMarketer puts the growth at 9% which is a significant drop from the double digit growth of the past. And as Borrell Associates points out, online is a small part (3.5%) of radio and television revenue. Rating service Fitch Ratings has similar dire predictions for newspaper, even going so far as to say that some major cities will be without a newspaper by 2010. So, now that we’ve gotten all the depressing news out of the way, let’s move on to the rest of the predictions.

DIGITAL TV. It’s an obvious point, but it should be made anyway. The big change for many of us is the transition to digital TV scheduled for February 17, 2009… unless President-elect Barack Obama does delay it. Not surprising, the Consumer Electronics Association which is putting on its annual show as we speak, says unit shipments of digital TV’s will increase six percent in 2009 with an expected 35 Million units being shipped out. The association notes that digital TV’s are the primary revenue driver for the industry. Okay, now that we’ve gotten that other obvious point out of the way, let’s really move on to the rest of the predictions.

SOCIALIZE YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS: That seems to be the main message for 2009. Social network this… social media that… Many of the articles I read talk about social media coming of age in 2008 and growing in 2009 as a marketing and branding tool. One of the reasons for companies and marketers to focus on social networking is the growth and interest in ratings and review sites. That is why several groups recommend companies create a kind of CCO position – Chief Conversation Officer – to monitor the online conversation. Here’s a simple metric that says a lot. When I did a search with the key terms media, predictions and 2009, more than 80% of the responses came back with “social media.” However, a note of reality -- our friends at eMarketer predict that while social network spending will outpace other online advertising (10% versus 8.9%), that is down from 126% growth in 2007 and 34% growth in 2008. Several other reports noted the demise of Pownce and Values of n social networks, plus the cutbacks at LinkedIn, Hi5 and Jive. And the much bally-hooed Twitter still is not generating revenue. Be that as it may, several groups, including MediaPost and OMMA (Online Media Marketing Advertising) are planning events and offering webinars to show you how to “make money making friends.” As Marketing Daily’s Diane Mermigas so well puts it, “social media is becoming the new CRM (customer relationship management.) The new ROI is Return On Involvement.”

WHAT YOU GET IS WHAT YOU SEE: And more and more people want to get it at their convenience, which is cited as one of the main reasons for the growth in online video. Research firm Mediamark Research and Intelligence (MRI) reports that downloading TV programs posted the greatest gain in the online world with a 141% jump; but to put that in perspective, that ‘whopping’ increase amounted to a relatively insignificant 3.2% of the online users. Still, watching video online also posted a strong gain (35.4%) but even more significant, that translated into a quarter (23.3%) of all online users which was actually just one step ahead of the popular downloading of music (21.6%), according to MRI. Earlier this year, marketing and research firm Magna Insights predicted a 45% growth in online video in 2009, lower than the 67% in 2007 and the 54% in 2008, but still huge. Researcher Jack Myers goes even further, forecasting a 70% growth in 2009 in online video along with social networking and widgets, which he lumps all together. Looking even further ahead tech research firm ABI Research says the number of online video viewers will grow from the present 563 Million to 941 Million in 2013 because, as research director Michael Wolf puts it, “all stakeholders in the online video ecosystem are eyeing the living room.”

As a Side Note that probably deserves to be more than that, networked video games online is the other major category to watch in 2009. According to projections from the Consumer Electronics Show, the online video game market is expected to grow 11% this year generating a high mark of $22 Billion a year in revenue. The Magna Insights report more than doubles that estimate with a forecast of a 27.4% growth in video gaming, including off-line as well as online.

CLOUDS GET IN YOUR WAY: Despite the lyrics of the Joni Mitchell song, most people in the media technology world believe just the opposite – clouds will guide the way for future computing. Several groups are predicting that 2009 will be the year of cloud computing. Shock of shocks, most of those projections come from the major cloud computing sites, but as website cloudcomputing.sys-con.com points out, with Amazon rolling out CloudFront, Microsoft rolling out Azure, Hosting.com rolling out CloudNine and VMware rolling out vCloud, there is a lot of validity to the claim. Just as a reminder about what cloud computing is, Wikipedia callsit is a metaphor for the Internet. It means all your applications plus IT-technology infrastructure and data are hosted on-line and not on your computer. Much of the future of cloud computing will be seen when the 2nd international cloud computing conference takes place in New York City at the end of March. As the expo website puts it, “entrepreneurial opportunities abound as this classic disruptive technology begins to proliferate.”

As a Side Note, watch for the sale of ‘netbooks’ to grow in 2009. These mini-me’s of computers are becoming mainstream with Hewlett Packard jumping into the manufacture of the devices along with Lenovo. Weighing less than three pounds and with a small solid state hard drive, their main purpose is just to get you on the Internet where cloud computing offerings will replace your maxed out home computer. (I will confess that I am looking at trying this approach.)

And as an only semi-related side note to the side note, look for the acronym OLPC to emerge this year. It stands for One Laptop Per Child. A non-profit U.S. organization funded by several major corporations has been established to provide these ‘educational devices’ to children in third world, developing nations.

BUSINESS LOOK AT TECHNOLOGY IN 2009. As much, if not more, than any of the media guru’s prognostications, the recommendation by Forbes Magazine of “dirt cheap” tech stocks to buy, may tell us more about the upcoming year. At less than six bucks a share ($5.93 at last check), Harmonic (listed as HLIT) is worth a look as the transition from SDTV to HDTV gathers momentum. The company makes and sells high-performance products designed to deliver the next generation of broadcast and on-demand services. If you have a little more money, take a look at Skyworks Solutions ($6.42 and listed as SWKS), which makes and markets high performance analog and mixed signal semi-conductors used for wireless communication. Old-line company Corning (GLW and $10) is worth a look because it is definitely not old-line in its products. It is the leading global maker of advanced glass products used in LCD’s. Forbes editors say they expect an ‘inventory correction’ and the transition from tube TV’s to LCD TV’s is far from over. Netgear (NTGR and $10.74) specializes in networking products and solutions – LAN’s – for the home and small business market. The Forbes editors cite the ongoing transition from wired to wireless markets. Another old stand-by is Western Digital (WDC and $15.35), the leading maker and supplier of hard drives used not just in personal computers but consumer electronics in general. The Forbes editors say the weakened consumer spending will put pressure on hard drive sales short-term, but long-term, the need for greater data storage will only grow and grow. Lastly a complete unknown (at least, to me) is MEMC Electronic Materials (WFR and $17.76) which is one of the world’s largest makers of wafers for the semiconductor and solar industries. The Forbes forecasters admit the semiconductor market is down and that may last a while, but they anticipate another ‘inventory correction’ with growth in markets like China and India. But more particularly, the solar application wafer business should grow.

OTHER THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR: This is my addition to the list – things I didn’t see mentioned in great detail in other reports, but which I think will be worth noting. Watch for WiMax to become more prevalent in 2009, replacing WiFix transmission in many cases. Microsoft may actually get it right, or at least closer to right, when it releases Windows v.7, replacing the clunky Vista operating system, but there will still be bugs. Google will release its new browser system, Chrome, onto an unsuspecting public as it continues its efforts to dominate the on-line world.

Last year the buzz phrase was ‘cause marketing’ – tying your product to a public service, ‘feel good’ cause. This year watch for the new buzz phrase to be ‘content marketing’ – in which relevant information is made part of your advertising message to provide value to the consumer. Also look for “personal branding” to come into the ‘buzz-ophere’ (a word I just made up) as blogging, web 2.0 and Internet Interactivity spreads people’s individual social networking needs.

But the big issue of the year, especially considering the economy situation, will be measurement and metrics. Several groups are offering differing measures for everything from the Internet to social networking to word of mouth. Stay tuned for more, as marketers and companies look to get more “bang for their buck.”

FOOTNOTE #1: We didn’t mention Mobile growth in this report although several reports predict continuing growth in this area. The reason I didn’t is that we talked about it in the previous MfM report looking back at 2008, and besides, I couldn’t beat the headline I wrote in the last MfM – Bear Bryant’s Agile, Mobile and Hostile. I would note that the Magna Insight report cited earlier, predicts that mobile will grow 42.6% in 2009 which is pretty impressive given other areas, but not as impressive as the doubling (118.2%) in 2007 and the 73.4% in 2008.

I also made a brief mention of the newspaper dilemma at the top of this report. Again, I touched on it in the previous MfM, but it too is probably one of the scarier scenarios. On the upside of this, there are several prognostications that journalists may find unexpected sources of work with corporations as marketers realize they need the natural story telling skills of journalists to tell the narrative of their particular product. Ann Handley of MarketingProfs says such writers are ‘natural’ content managers, a sentiment echoed by content management site Junta42.com. Columnist Jon Fine of BusinessWeek goes several steps further, predicting a “shadow” media industry staffed by the laid off journalists. Lastly I didn’t talk much about Widgets, but this is another area to watch as they become – in the words of one group – the new ad unit. Or as I put, the new coin of the realm.

FOOTNOTE #2: My list of subscribers (I am happy to say) has continued to grow. But that will mean I will have to look at another way to distribute this newsletter. So, in the coming year, I will be switching to ConstantContact, an email and newsletter managing service. Stay tuned as I experiment with this.