“互联网女皇”一幅图预言纸媒未来

    美国最大风投公司凯鹏华盈（KPCB）的分析师玛丽•米克尔每年都会发布年度报告《互联网趋势报告》，内容都颇为有趣。报告中的观点倒不见得多么出人意表，也没有太大轰动性，但当中浓缩整合了科技业与传媒业的现状，读来得益匪浅。例如，她今年的报告中有一幅图表，就有可能让全球纸媒坐立不安。

    图表以百分比形式显示了美国成年人花在纸媒、广播、电视等不同媒体上的时间分布，以及相应媒体获得的广告投放，并将二者进行了对比。在纸媒行业，这张图表显示出一个巨大的鸿沟：其受关注度比其获得的广告投放实际上要低14个百分点。

    It’s always fun when Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers analyst Mary Meeker comes out with her annual “State of the Internet” slide deck. There often isn’t all that much that is shocking or surprising about her conclusions, but the slideshow condenses and aggregates information about the state of affairs in tech and media in a very useful way. For example, she has one chart that likely strikes terror (or at least should strike terror) into the heart of print publishers everywhere.

    The chart shows the percentage of time that U.S. adults spend on various forms of media—print, radio, television, etc.—compared to the amount of advertising spending that is devoted to that medium. And when it comes to print, the slide shows a yawning gap between the amount of attention devoted to that medium and the amount of advertising money that gets spent on it: a gap of 14 percentage points, in fact.

    哈佛大学尼曼新闻实验室主管乔舒亚•本顿指出，米克尔每年的报告中都包含这一对比图。事实上，就受关注度和广告投放之间的悬殊来说，今年的情况有所好转：2011年同类对比显示，纸媒获得了25%的广告投放，但只有7%的受关注度，相差18个百分点。虽然差距有所缩小，但纸媒的这一数据鸿沟仍比其他媒体都要大——移动媒体例外，作为一种相对较新的媒体类别，它的差值也很大，但和纸媒背道而驰：其受关注度远超广告投放量。

    当然，不能仅仅因为纸媒的受关注度在减少，就认定其广告投放必然下滑。其中牵涉许多复杂的因素，比如许多以纸媒业务为主的媒体集团都与品牌达成协议，将平面与线上广告打包出售。再者也可以说，纸媒更适合某些以“打造品牌”为目标的广告，至少许多广告代理商和品牌方仍然认同这个观点。

    即便如此，纸媒的受关注度与广告投放量之间的巨大差距也几乎难以为继。媒体理论家克莱•舍基认为，纸媒广告可能遭遇第二次“断崖式下跌”。届时，纸媒的广告到达率将跌破某一值点，广告公司和品牌会认定纸媒不再具有投放价值。即使退一万步，媒体也应该铭记，纠偏的过程不可能总是一帆风顺。（财富中文网）

    译者：Pessy

    审校：夏林

    As Josh Benton points out at the Nieman Journalism Lab, this slide shows up every year in Meeker’s presentation. The latest version is actually somewhat better in terms of the gap between attention and spending: in the 2011 version, print got 25% of the spending and just 7% of the attention, for a gap of 18 percentage points. Now the gap has shrunk, but it continues to be larger than any other media with the exception of mobile, which is a relatively new category (and its gap is in the other direction).

    Just because print gets a smaller amount of attention doesn’t necessarily mean that the proportion of ad spending should be identical, of course. There are plenty ofcomplicating factors—including the fact that many print-based media outlets offer deals to brands that tie sales of online ads to the print version. Print is also arguably better for some forms of “brand building” advertising, or at least a number of advertising agencies and brands continue to believe this.

    But that said, the likelihood of that gap remaining where it is seems vanishingly small. And as media theorist Clay Shirky has argued, there could even be a second “cliff”coming for advertising sales, in which print reach drops below a certain point and ad agencies and brands suddenly decide it is no longer worth it. If nothing else, media entities should remember that corrections don’t always happen in nice smooth curves.