"When ad spend on media peaked 20 years ago, advertising accounted for 1.25% of our entire GDP. But now, in this increasingly digital days, it's around 0.75%."

#ColinPeacock, 2026

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2019028882/who-s-winning-the-war-where-ad-money-goes-chathams-scandal

So what does this tell us? What all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about the big DataFarms hoovering up most of the remaining ad spend obscures or avoid admitting;

Advertising is a dying industry. Has been since the net went mainstream.

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#podcasts #RNZ #MediaWatch #advertising

Who’s winning the war, where ad money goes, Chathams scandal

The bulk of the big money advertisers spent in our media goes offshore to big online operators. What's the future for the ad industry here? Also: mixed messages about when the war will end in Iran, and a startling scandal in the Chathams that hit the headlines too late.

RNZ

If we ever needed ads to tell us what products and services existed, we certainly don't now. We've got search engines for that, and review/ Q&A sites tell us which ones are any good, and which suppliers are reliably trustworthy.

Media platforms that relies on ads for revenue are dinosaurs, and the asteroid hit about 20 years ago. The DataFarmers are hoovering up the bulk of the shrinking ad spend because they hire the best snake oil salesmen, not because they provide any real value.

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@strypey I'm not sure that's true. Printed news seems to refuse to die, and its demise was foretold over thirty years ago.

The thing you need to understand about sales is that it is the art of selling the things you didn't realise you needed.

This is why supermarkets not only move things around but also place stuff at the end of the aisle so that you impulse-buy when you pass it while looking for where they moved the tomato ketchup to.

@dick_turpin
> Printed news seems to refuse to die, and its demise was foretold over thirty years ago

That's not what MediaWatch and other media industry news outlets tell me. Thousands of newspapers have closed their doors over the last 20 years, mostly small community papers, but also city-scale dailies, especially in the US. Glossy magazines are all but dead as a print medium, although some mastheads survive on life support in digital form.

If any survive, it will be on new revenue sources.

@strypey Meh, most of the 'local' papers found their way to the bottom of bird cages and rabbit hutches anyway. The mainstream media outlets are still going mainly because they can't seem to get their online presence right.

Your advertising budget is better spent on FB and X these days. 🤷🏻‍♂️

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@dick_turpin
> Printed news seems to refuse to die

> most of the 'local' papers found their way to the bottom of bird cages and rabbit hutches anyway

Used newspaper is a highly useful material (great for wrapping broken glass too, lighting fires, etc). Doesn't mean the papers weren't read and valued in the community, or that advertising in them was ineffective prior to the web rendering ads pointless.

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@dick_turpin
> Your advertising budget is better spent on FB and X these days

As I said;

> DataFarmers are hoovering up the bulk of the shrinking ad spend because they hire the best snake oil salesmen, not because they provide any real value

One study I looked at (can't find it right now) claimed that up to 70-90-something percent of Xitter clicks were click fraud.