Ad dollars should naturally follow consumer behavior and here’s another indication that you should be moving dollars from traditional media to the Internet.
This research is from the Pew Research Center and you can read more here but the main takeaway about the internet is:
Since 2008, the percentage using the internet as a main campaign news source has increased 11 points, to 47%, making it the second most frequently used news source by voters. Nearly three-in-ten voters (27%) name newspapers, while 20% cite radio and 3% magazines.
This is just another example of how the internet is changing consumer behavior at the expense of time spent with traditional media and your ad dollars should follow this consumer behavior.
The question is, through your ad builder should you be encouraging your retailers to run print ads in newspapers or should you be leading them away from print towards digital? The answer is that you should continue to be helping them with print, even though the numbers are down there are still a lot of valuable customers reading printed newspapers and plenty of smart advertisers continue to run ads. However, you should also be helping your retailers move to digital where consumers are doing most of their product research today and where the cost of the media is very low, if not zero.