It’s human nature to both want change to happen, and rue the day it does. The 12th annual State of Media Sales presentation was a mixed bag of good and bad news for advertising sales. During the webinar, SalesFuel Founder and CEO C. Lee Smith, BIA Advisory Services VP of Forecasting and Analysis Nicole Ovadia, and AdMail Director of Sales Denise Gibson presented the latest research.
Where Ad Spend Growth in 2023 is Expected
The research broke down the areas of expected growth for over-the-air (OTA) television, radio, linear cable, out-of-home, print/direct mail and digital, but without getting into the weeds, growth will be in the millions for traditional media and digital growth in 2023 is expected to be in the billions.
What’s Getting Easier
All media sales managers say that selling online/digital advertising is getting easier, as well as the ability to upsell existing accounts, compete with other media, meet advertiser expectations and sell mobile advertising.
What’s Getting Harder
All media sellers say that generating new business and overcoming advertising churn are tied for #1. Those are followed by meeting management/corporate expectations, the ability for them to make more money, the difficulty in selling traditional media advertising and getting/staying motivated to do the job.
Top 5 Job Frustrations
Sales managers today say their top job frustration is the lack of sales talent but that’s probably due a general lack of optimism about the future of the media industry everyone is reading about. Rounding out the Top 5 Frustrations are account attrition, sales staff turnover and lack of lead generation.
Everybody experiences far more than he understands.
Yet it is experience, rather than understanding,
that influences behavior.”
-Marshall McLuhan
All Things Digital
The media companies that will not only survive but thrive are those that embrace the change from traditional to digital media. Expect “the demand for skilled digital marketers to only increase in the coming years,” says LinkedIn.
If you’re a seller, digital marketing is the top skill you need to learn in 2023 to boost your career. Yes, change is challenging, but all the arrows point to now being the best time to learn these new skills and kickstart your career.
Every success story is a tale of
constant adaption, revision and change.
-Richard Branson
DickTaylorBlog 
Digital how, Dick ? Digital video ? Digital print? Digital audio? The pie’s getting split even more ways now, fewer eyes and ears consuming a given medium. Companies embracing the future can’t do that to the exclusion of traditional selling practices. Much like the transition to renewable fuel. It’s a stretch but one can’t replace the other. You can’t escape the inevitable for sure, but the explosion of digital initiatives seems to have taken the advertising eyes off the ball that still exists from what I can see.
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Digital everything Dave, yes.
You’re right about us having too much of everything and we’re now seeing a correction taking place because of it. Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc are all now finding they need to make adjustments to their business plan as a result.
Radio, TV, print have already been doing this.
Before new innovation can take off, it needs an ecosystem. For example, when electricity and the electric motor came along, factories were all powered by a single huge steam powered engine that would power every piece of equipment in a factory by use of belts. Electric motors would allow each machine to be individually powered. This, like renewable energy, didn’t happened overnight, but as new factories were built, they opt’d for electric motors versus the old way.
The ecosystem for an all digital media world is still being created, not preparing for it, means being relegated to a “horse & buggy” existence.
Thank You for getting us thinking about all of these changes in different ways Dave.
-DT
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