The Death of Advertising

Abstract Mass media advertising as we know it today is on its deathbed, and its prognosis is poor. Advertising agencies are restructuring to accommodate a harsher advertising climate, agency income is flat, agency employees are being laid off, direct marketing is stealing business from traditional advertising, and the growth of sales promotion and integrated marketing communications both come at the expense of traditional advertising. The reason for advertising's impending demise is the advent of new technologies that have resulted in the fragmentation of media and markets, and the empowerment of consumers. In the place of traditional mass media advertising, a new communications environment is developing around an evolving network of new media, which is high capacity, interactive and multimedia. The result is a new era of producer-consumer interaction. Because of the speed of technological innovation, the new media advertising paradigm that results will attain prominence faster than did mass media advertising. The new paradigm of 21st Century Marketing and advertising will be dominant by 2010 and should last well into the middle of the century. If they hope to survive, university advertising departments will have about ten years to 1) think of themselves much more broadly, and 2) transform themselves into departments specializing in information transfer in the new media environment.