Friday, June 27, 2008

Cable first to go in economic downturn! But the rubes who stay will still watch the commercials!

I'm pretty floored by this "3 Minute Ad Age" video featuring an ad exec reporting on recent market research on consumer spending habits in our economic downturn (people might actually cancel their cable!--seemingly sad news for the ad biz) and its ad biz upside (those stupid Americans still watch the commercials! Even with their DVRs!). What gets me most? The treatment of the American public as mindless boobs? The faith in market research? The potential disappearance of old-fashioned viewing? Most go back to writing, but much to ponder in Ad Age's video snack.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I saw that as well. There's a lot of interesting places this kind of thing goes in. For one, there's an "industry therapy" in these conference sessions and keynotes not entirely unlike the "consumer therapy" that advertising itself attempts to deliver. That is, "yes, we're anxious, but really things aren't that bad; let me assuage your fears." Hell, we do the same thing to a degree at our own conferences!

If the study he cites is to be believed (and we've seen/heard similar things since 2006 or so), than perhaps these shifts in media consumption bubbling around at the margins really are going to explode (esp. via mobile/online content delivery), and before too long. "Cable" (figuratively; we've had Dish Network since 1999) is increasingly superfluous to media consumption in my house, and we're probably only one cool WiFi-enabled magic media box away from dispensing with it down the line.