Traditional media need to be on their toes amid shift to digital, social networking and cable TV

This will be another tough year for conventional media such as television and print, as their advertising revenues will be shared by the alternative online, mobile and cable-TV media increasingly favoured by young consumers. Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn reports.

Business vendors, who last year relocated their advertising expenditures from organising marketing events to TV advertising in order to avoid impact from the political unrest, are expected to shift a crucial portion of their ad budgets back to below-the-line activities this year.

Kitti Chambundabongse, chairman of the Spa-Hakuhodo ad agency, said that despite the major disruption caused by the unrest, the advertising industry had grown on a par with or slightly higher in real terms than the country's economic growth last year.

It was a welcome sign that the business "happiness index" for the media industry had been raised considerably to welcome a better year in 2011, he said.

"The media landscape is being shaped towards the worldwide trend where we have been seeing the consistent increase of spending in the social media, in-store trade, touch-point and transit portions. We will witness more of these alongside traditional media in the years to come," said Kitti.

"There is evidence that digital and social network channels are increasingly becoming necessary as the driving tools for creating stronger relations between brands and consumers in many product categories," he added.

Kitti said that the major proportion of media spending was, however, still among the major and prime traditional media like television , cinema, newspapers, magazines, radio and billboards, which are still regarded as major touch-points for major brands with mass distribution and mass target groups.

"The key challenge facing these traditional media is how to keep the design and content fresh to keep up with consumer lifestyles," he said.

Kitti added that media consumption among the upper middle class had been shifting towards digital media and cable channels, and of course mobile smart-phone content and applications.

"Consumer touch-point media and creativity are most important in prompting action for purchasing my brands relative to the target groups," he said.

According to a recent survey by the Initiative agency, digital has revolutionised the mainstream media as it provides incredibly rapid information delivery and real-time updates of happenings. Digital also offers consumers a fast track for getting news.

Driven by the digital trend, consumers nowadays prefer short texts and have shorter attention spans. The value of traditional media has been diminishing as a result, the survey found.

Thailand's overall media expenditure is expected to have come in at about Bt90 billion last year. Television is still ranked first, with 95 per cent of consumers across all regions watching every day. About 93 per cent of consumers across all ages also watch television on a daily basis.

Meanwhile, online advertising spending increased by 30 per cent to about Bt1.9 billion last year, representing a huge rise from the 2007 level when expenditures reached only Bt800 million, according to the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre and Kasikorn Research Centre.

Overall advertising spending on cable TV reached Bt800 million last year, according to estimates by the 54 leading cable-TV stations.

According to Initiative, ad spending on TV increased by 16 per cent last year, when inflation is taken into account. Excluding inflation, however, the rise was just 0.3 per cent to Bt70.4 billion. Television lost viewers and efficiency during the year, the agency said.

Meanwhile, the number of households installing cable or satellite TV increased by 52 per cent from 6.3 million in 2009 to 9.6 million last year. The number is forecast to increase by 49 per cent to 14.3 million this year.

Today, about 46 per cent of households across the country have cable TV, with some 31.2 million viewers. It is estimated that cable TV will replace all antenna-based TV by 2013.

With the boom in digital technology, consumers nowadays are able to watch TV programmes without a television set, as they can use alternative media such as mobile phones and the Internet.

Many content providers have now bypassed mainstream television by delivering their content themselves to alternative channels. Cable-TV subscribers, for instance, can watch their favourite content on both TV and the Internet free of charge.

Online media will soon be the No-1 source of entertainment, said Initiative.

The agency said many print-media players had succeeded in hard times by becoming niche operators, focusing on smaller public Apply ations with less text and more visuals, speedier processing, and operating in both online and offline formats.

There will be strong collaboration around all media platforms, such as between magazines and e-shopping sites, it added.

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