NEWS: Is Public Relations Ready for Discontinuous Change?

November 21, 2005

Is Public Relations Ready for Discontinuous Change?

As the Thanksgiving holiday nears, I try to gather my thoughts on the year past and to anticipate the year ahead. The most striking development for our industry must be the fundamental shifts occurring in media. Here are a few statistics:

* Every dollar coming out of print advertising revenue for newspapers is replaced by only 33 cents online, according to Citigroup analyst William Bird. Print advertising accounts for approximately 66% of total revenue for newspapers. This money is ebbing away to web competitors like Monster.com or Yahoo.

* The largest 50 Web companies are attracting 96% of the ad spending on line, according to Pricewaterhouse Coopers, with the majority going to AOL, Google, MSN and Yahoo. The hottest genre of Web advertising is 15 second commercials that run before on line videos on sites such as WebMD.