This prediction brings to mind a whole list of predictions in which purported experts got it wrong. Chief of these is the Decca executive who vetoed signing The Beatles because "the guitar is on the way out."* (Turns out, the embarrassment of this miscalculation helped pave the way for the Rolling Stones to get signed on with Decca, whose executives did not want to make the same mistake twice.)
This week a Media Daily News story made predictions regarding advertising spending in 2016. The stats provide a fairly good snapshot regarding current media consumption.
Laurie Sullivan's article is titled Advertising To Surpass $500 Billion In 2016. That's a pretty hefty chunk of change. "Where is it all going?" one might ask. The short answer is, ad money will continue to go where the eyeballs are. Near $200 billion will go to television, despite the prediction that TV was soon going to be dead. But the internet is certainly garnering a big part of the growth in ad spending. And for the fourth year in a row print advertising is on a decline.
And yet... bookstores are still doing a ton of business with overflowing magazine racks displaying new titles every month. People keep reminding me that they prefer to hold a magazine in their lap and don't like turning the pages online. To each her own, I guess. But those handheld devices have made massive inroads and where the eyeballs go those ad dollars are swift to follow.
What I do know is that there's plenty of change taking place in the world, and for some reason we like reading articles that help us guess what will happen next. At least I do. You can read the rest of Laurie Sullivan's article here.
* EdNote: Read about more "bad calls" here in my article Who Are Your Experts?
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