Media Advertising Not Under Threat

Media advertising is not under any threat from the new marketing possibilities of databases, sponsorship, telemarketing and interactive media, according to Winston Fletcher, chairman of DFSD Bozell, speaking at the Newspaper Society’s advertising conference.

Fletcher pointed out that media advertising actually accounts for 77% of all marketing communications, or £7.825 billion; sales promotion only accounted for £1 billion, direct mail £945m, sponsorship £304m and telemarketing £46m.

Fletcher, chairman of the Advertising Association disagrees with current business and trade press opinion that media advertising is on the way out. Although both direct marketing and sponsorship had shown healthy growth and would continue to prosper, in Britain the average household received just 80 mailshots per year, or 1.6 a week. Sponsorship only accounts for 3% of all marketing communications expenditure. Fletcher estimated that the value of UK television sponsorship in 1994 would not exceed £50m. He dismissed telemarketing, less than 1% of the advertising media, as a means of personal selling, not a communications medium at all.

Worldwide there is a similar picture; Bozell Worldwide carried out a study into the development of interactive media in the United States which concluded that “it will not replace the traditional media vehicles but, in time, may become another option for marketeers.”

He predicted that the much heralded interactive television revolution will not happen for many years; and “When it does, not much will happen.”

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