The pulp dailies, weeklies and monthlies have hoped that maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel for their venue. Well that may not be the case. 2008 may end up being their last best year even though it appears abysmal. –

Over the next six months, not only will ad spending be down, but the feeling among advertisers and their agencies toward media such as broadcast TV, national newspapers and magazines is growing more pessimistic. The dreary outlook is courtesy of the new Advertiser Optimism Report by Advertiser Perceptions.

But while the outlook is somewhat bleak for the aforementioned ad media, others like online, cable TV and mobile are likely to attract more of marketers’ money.

The report shows a large percentage of the advertisers polled (68%) said they plan to increase their ad spending online. Still, that number is down four points from 72% six months ago. The numbers were also slightly down for cable TV (27% vs. 28%) and mobile (51% vs. 53%) over that same period but remained on the “optimistic” side of the scale.

Advertisers were more pessimistic on broadcast TV, with only 16% saying they would increase their ad spending on broadcast. That is down from the 22% who said they planned to increase their broadcast TV budget a year ago, and only slightly better than the 14% who were planning to increase their broadcast spending six months ago. National newspapers, which were already low six months ago at 10%, dropped into the single digits at 9%, while magazines saw a more drastic drop from 22% to 18% over the same time period.

What surprises even me is the telegraphing of a downturn for even broadcast TV and radio. I would have expected a shift to that medium from the funds being pulled from pulp. The only way I can assess this is the following:

• Advertisers still want to attempt to reach their regional or national audience. No pull backs on breadth of coverage.
• To do so they must look at cheaper number of impressions per customer. TV though it provides plenty of eyeballs has traditionally had a higher cost per impression.
• TVoIP I suspect is gathering some traction that provides the TV experience to the viewer and lower costs to the advertiser.

Given that kind of market thinking TVoIP, Web Ads and regional radio placements are probably going to face a boost in usage. On that basis, we could see widespread carnage in the pulp providers more than even I anticipated. Hang on to your hats. The ripple affects could be sizable.

Linky.

DirecTV is offering new set top boxes that do on demand streaming via a broadband connection. a couple of decades back, the prospect of hundreds of channels of programming direct for the satellite was cutting edge and an unbeatable business model. Now there’s a rumor of DirecTV TVoIP service similar to Hulu.

Today were are in the midst of a paradigm shift, when programming becomes content, and rather than consulting programming schedules for when to view or Tivo, increasingly we select content from a menu to view on demand.

Don’t look for DirecTV to scuttle their multi bird system anytime soon, but I’m betting they’ve seen the future. At least they’ve put a toe into the TVoIP pond. In the very near future that pond will be an ocean of  millions of videos from thousands of producers, all available as on demand content. There will not be much of a business in a closed system of  400 - 500 broadcast channels when that happens.

We’ve received a couple of anonymous tips that DirectTV, a $24 billion satellite TV provider, may be entering the online TV wars with a new site called DirectTV Web On Demand. The site would compete with startups like Hulu, Joost, Fancast, Sling.com, etc.

We don’t know much about the service, or even if it’s real. One of the tipsters says they’ve worked on the project and supplied us with the mockup screen shot above, which could quite possibly be real. On the other hand, we’ve spoken with industry insiders and they say they’ve heard nothing about the project. (Tech Crunch)