Domain owners are in the media business even though they don't always think of what they do in that way. The best thing about that is that the media business is a pretty darn good place to be right now. At Media Daily News this week columnist Joe Mandese kicked off his 

latest article with this sentence, "Despite broader issues in the overall economy, the media industry continues to be among the fastest growing industrial sectors in America." Better yet, Mandese cited a new study from private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) that details how the biggest waves within the media business are all breaking in favor of those of us who operate online. 

VSS said that "newspapers, long the dominant U.S. advertising platform, have fallen behind broadcast TV this year, which itself is poised to be usurped by the Internet within the next three years." VSS Executive VP James Rutherfurd said that in 2002, traditional media soaked up 95% of all ad spending. It has now fallen to 85% and Rutherfurd said it will plunge to 68% by 2012. 

VSS projects that ad spending on new media will climb 21% to $81.67 billion in 2008, and will account for 17.7% of total advertising and marketing spending, up from just 6.9% in 2002. "By comparison, traditional advertising and marketing will inch up only 0.4% in 2008 to $378.48 billion, including a 1.8% decline in traditional advertising, despite the influx of political and Olympics advertising, as newspapers, consumer magazines and broadcast radio all post declines for the year," the report projects.

The Internet land rush is still on despite a weak economy. Businesses of all kinds, and especially media businesses, want to operate on the web where the overhead is low and the reach is wide.  Domains are the new printing presses for disseminating news and information, they are the storefronts for the millions of businesses setting up shop online and they are the billboards for businesses new and
old that are moving their advertising to the Internet. I continue to believe that domain owners are in the right place at the right time as the media business continues to work its way through one of the biggest upheavals in history. Have a great weekend and I'll be back with you on Monday!
(Posted August 7, 2008)