News
Observations and Predictions for 2009
Here are a few observations related to the recession and some predictions for technology and marketing changes in 2009.
I've included sources at the end.
- One of my favorite quotes about the recession's impact on internet usage is from Hal Varian, Google's Chief Economist. He said "I think we’ll see an increase in Internet use… It’s free". I think the same will go for broadcast television, another form of cheap entertainment. Because these 2 forms of media will grow while overall ad budgets are expected to shrink in 2009, there should be some terrific deals to be had here. And the most efficient way to find these deals will be on Google.
- Printed media is in trouble. They already attract proportionally too much advertising spend for how much time consumers spend reading (9% of consumers time is spent reading yet it gets 48% of all media budgets). In a world of oversaturated media (where even Joe the Plumber is reporting on international news), consumers are looking for an aggregation of news from a source they trust. Small local newspapers and big brand newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times provide that trusted voice and will continue to operate. Newspapers that go broad by covering a mix of local, national and international news will fail because they're spread too thin.
- Travel is way down. I travel a lot and hotels, planes and resorts all seem to operate way under capacity. In resort destinations like Las Vegas, half the restaurants are shut down every night because there aren't enough diners to fill seats. Studies show that people still intend to travel in 2009 but I think vacations will be less extravagant and staycations will increase.
- Business travel will be hit especially hard. I've never had such an easy time as before scoring free upgrades on planes flown between big business cities like San Francisco and New York. Clearly business travelers are either scaling down to economy class or just staying home. That's good news for Webex, Cisco and others who provide teleconferencing solutions. Conference attendance is also dropping with both attendees and sponsors pulling out.
- eBooks take off. Amazon's Kindle has been sold out for weeks and they don't expect to clear the backlog for a couple months. The device itself is pricey but not too pricey for people who read a lot. Carrying a small device instead of 2 newspapers, 3 magazines, a business book and the latest fiction thriller in my backpack has made me a bigger reader again. Since Amazon cares about selling books, they'll gladly open their marketplace to other devices and this will help the industry grow. Self-publishing will also see an uptick now that it's tremendously easy and very cheap to publish a short book and sell it digitally on Amazon. Thanks to the ability to deliver books digitally and show them on an internet-connected device, I predict we'll see sponsored books in the next year, giving consumers access to free or heavily discounted books. Sponsorships might be in the form of whitepapers that have relevance to the book.
- Mobile should continue strong growth. The latest generation of phones puts the power of a computer in people's pockets. And they will use these mobile devices to shop smarter and save some money. Retailers with competitive in-store pricing will benefit too. Instead of going home to check the price, the consumer can decide on the spot if the price in the store is right and make the purchase.
- Convergence is still a ways off. Until one of the major players offers an affordable line of products that connects the internet with the living room tv, this space will remain reserved to geeks.
- As consumers are more price conscious they comparison shop more before buying and this translates into more clicks for the same number of conversions, or lower overall ROI. The retailers with the best prices will make a killing but the others will face an uphill battle with declining ROIs.
eMarketer's CEO Geoff Ramsey's 7 predictions for 2008: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006837
John Battelle of Federated Media: http://battellemedia.com/archives/004772.php
Steve Rosenbaum's 5 Trends for 2009: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-rosenbaum/5-trends-that-will-change_b_155119.html