Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Web Giants taking on Traditional Advertising?

After the dotcom crash, there have been only few great powerhouses of online ad distributors left. In the ring are the big boys, Google, Yahoo and eBay, all whom have well established themselves in the online media / advertising market and boy are they eyeing the traditional media market now.

Google is casting its net to offer print ads to its advertisers, Yahoo announced a major deal with 176 newspapers for content and advertising and eBay develops an online system for buying and selling of media.

And there are concerns that these entrants with they well entrenched online customers and systems could easily edge out the traditional advertising sellers who are already stuck pretty much in the corner, what with ad spending dropping over the years.

This is going to be an interesting one because of what both sides could essentially do to better their positions. Traditional Media firms should be thinking of ways to re-engage their primary crowd with more innovative campaigns and delivery methods. Also, they have an avenue to push for ad sales in the online environment if they have strong enough brand names.

As for the online media giants, they would need to understand that the traditional media is going to be a whole new ballgame, one with overheads which are perhaps not found in the online space and thus, new strategies are needed to enter this already highly competitive space.

I, for one, won’t even put off the idea of bigger M&As which can marry online and traditional media companies together in the pursuit of greater synergy and exposure. Possibly there also may be casualties along the way too, who knows?

It’s going to be a rather interesting path ahead for the ad media and publishing industry.

[related : Battle lines forming in battle for traditional media's Web advertising ]

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