Journal of Interactive Advertising

ISSN: (Print) 1525-2019 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujia20

A Decade of Change and the Emergence of Digital

Media: Analysis of Trade Press Coverage of the
Advertising Industry from 2005-2014

Sally J. McMillan & Courtney C. Childers Ph.D

To cite this article: Sally J. McMillan & Courtney C. Childers Ph.D (2017): A Decade of Change
and the Emergence of Digital Media: Analysis of Trade Press Coverage of the Advertising Industry
from 2005-2014, Journal of Interactive Advertising, DOI: 10.1080/15252019.2017.1315320

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15252019.2017.1315320

Accepted author version posted online: 05

Apr 2017.

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A Decade of Change and the Emergence of Digital Media: Analysis of Trade Press

Coverage of the Advertising Industry from 2005-2014

Sally J. McMillan, Ph.D, Professor*, Courtney C. Childers, Ph.D Associate Professor

School of Advertising and Public Relations, College of Communication and Information,

University of Tennessee, 476 Communication Building, Knoxville, TN, USA 37996, Phone:

(865) 974-5097, Email: sjmcmill@utk.edu

School of Advertising and Public Relations, College of Communication and Information,

University of Tennessee, 476 Communication Building, Knoxville, TN, USA 37996, Phone:

(865) 94-5108

*
Address correspondence to Sally J. McMillan, School of Advertising and Public Relations,

College of Communication and Information, University of Tennessee, 476 Communication

Building, Knoxville, TN 37996. Email: sjmcmill@utk.edu

Sally J. McMillan (PhD, University of Oregon) is a Professor in the School of Advertising and

Public Relations, College of Communication and Information, University of Tennessee.

Courtney C. Childers (PhD, University of Alabama is an Associate Professor in the School of

Advertising and Public Relations, College of Communication and Information, University of

Tennessee.

The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable assistance in the

review process.

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Abstract

This study uses Harold Innis’ concepts of space- and time-biased media to examine digital media

for 10 years beginning in 2005. Both syndicated spending data and industry trade press were

used to assess trends and changes. After the recession of 2008, spending for online media

surpassed spending on print for the first time. Digital was the dominant medium covered in most

years of trade articles; however, the coverage of the rise (and fall) of media types was not as

linear as was the actual change in spending. Additional analysis showed that trade press coverage

focused mostly on the advertising agency business and that digital media were more central to

core topics than were other media types. Concepts of time and space (Innis, 1951, 2007) were

also explored as overarching themes within the sample. Implications for theory, practice, and

pedagogy are discussed.

Keywords

Interactive technologies, Interactive advertising formats, Online advertising, Advertising History,

Harold Innis

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Introduction and Literature

Time and space. The concepts are central to our understanding of the physical world, the media

of communication, and the tools of advertising. During the 1920s, changes in physics, media

technology, and advertising practice led to major changes in perceptions of time and space. And

in the 1940s and 50s Harold Innis, a Canadian political economist, looked back to the 20s (as

well as earlier time periods) as he wove together the threads of time and space in his analysis of

the fur trade, fishing practices, and media evolution (Heyer, 2003; Innis, 1949, 1951).

Innis’ examination of the ways that media are “biased” toward time and space was

influenced by relativity theory (Patterson, 1990). He saw the rise of radio in the early part of the

20th century as an extension of the “space-biased” modern media that tended to favor political

organizations and enable the kind of political persuasion that helped to explain both Hitler’s rise

and Roosevelt’s reelection (Innis, 1951, 2007). He idealized Greek civilization in which a strong

time-biased oral tradition served as a kind of “balance” to the space-biased written medium to

enable a culture in which both political and religious organizations could thrive (Innis, 1951).

Innis also traced a rising “obsession” with advertising that began in the 1920s with an increase in

the need for pulp to create the newspapers on which those ads were printed (Innis, 1949).

For advertisers, the 1920s brought about a need to rationalize time and space in new ways

as they were faced with buying space in newspapers and time in radio. During this period

innovations such as market research, the Audit Bureau of Circulation, and the development of

new cost measures allowed them to develop a new logic based on what they always wanted to

buy anyway -- exposure to potential consumers (Johnston, 2006). By the 1960s the role of the

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advertising “agent” in buying time and space from media outlets had become so ingrained in

advertising practice that it was the core financial model for the advertising business. The work of

agencies was supported by the commissions they earned by buying time and space at wholesale

prices and charging their clients the “list price” for placing their ads (Edwards, 2005; Holt,

1998).

The 1990s brought new disruptions to time and space. The introduction of graphical user

interfaces to the connected networks of the Internet made possible a new form of digital

communication that was not bound by space or time. Negroponte (1995) was an early believer

that digital technologies would empower individuals and social groups to bypass traditional

communication professionals to create their own versions of news and their own

recommendation engines that would replace branded communication. But, as Turow and Draper

noted, such optimistic views of the empowered individual: “often do not take into consideration

the industrial mechanisms that construct both audiences and the realities to which those

audiences are exposed” (2014, p. 648). Turow (2012) suggests that advertising messages

embedded in media content are one of those industrial mechanisms.

Advertisers were faced with an innovation that disrupted their worldview in much the

same way radio had challenged them earlier in the century (Barnouw, 1966; Lappin, 1995;

McMillan, 1998; Smulyan, 1994). Not only did the Internet allow “anytime anywhere”

communication, it also blurred the distinction between “audience” and “media” (Scolari, 2009).

In digital environments, individuals both create and consume content, and advertisers place their

messages online in ways that often funds the conduit rather than the content creators. These

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trends in online advertising are making companies like Google, which “serve” many of the

online ads, highly profitable (Farzad, 2008; Kohut, Doherty, Dimock, & Keeter, 2008;

MarketingCharts staff, 2015). But they are devastating to media companies that host

professionally created content and have seen huge declines in advertising revenue

(MarketingCharts staff, 2015). Nevertheless, advertising researchers continued to believe that

advertising media planning could and should retain the “language” and methods that had

emerged in the 20th century as they incorporated 21st century digital tools into integrated media

plans (Cannon, 2001).

The term Web 2.0 came into use in 2005 and was characterized by online venues that invited

user participation rather than the read-only digital publishing of the Web 1.0 era (Bulik, 2006).

The term “social media” also came into use in the mid-2000s as “a catchall phrase for everything

that the old media is not” (A. Fernando, 2007, p. 9). Social media is a term used to refer to digital

networked tools or technologies that enable communication, collaboration, and creative

expression across social networks (Dabbagh & Kitsantas, 2012).

By the mid-2000s, there was a growing recognition that the Internet and related digital

technologies were becoming deeply embedded in common life and that it was important for

scholars to examine the many technological and social practices that have created today’s

“online world” (Haigh, Russell, & Dutton, 2015). A recent review of the advertising literature

found that in 2005, research about the internet surpassed research about both print and broadcast

media in advertising journals (Kim, Hayes, Avant, & Reid, 2014). By 2014, “new media” tools

such as advergaming, blogging, keyword search, twitter, and viral videos, were broadly

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represented in the academic advertising literature (An, Jin, & Park, 2014; Chen & Haley, 2014;

Cho, Huh, & Faber, 2014; A. G. Fernando, Suganthi, & Sivakumaran, 2014; Jin & Phua, 2014;

Yoo, 2014). By 2014, researchers were also beginning to recognize ways in which digital media

environments were creating new multi-tasking behaviors that could actually improve outcomes

such as perception of advertising utility (Duff, Yoon, Wang, & Anghelcev, 2014)

In short, the period from 2005 to 2014 offers a lens for examining the media environment at a

time when both popular terminology and research topics were showing a significant shift toward

digitally enabled interactive advertising. While some literature has examined the impact of

digital technology on communication practice (Edwards-Underwood, 2015; Haigh, 2014; Haigh

et al., 2015; Olmstead, Matsa, Mitchell, & Rosenstiel, 2012; Zavoina & Reichert, 2000), little

has been done to specifically examine how the advertising industry may have changed beginning

with the advent of Web 2.0 and social media in 2005.

Did a major shift in “new media” begin in the mid-2000s? Has the advent of new media tools

fundamentally changed core aspects of advertising practice? Or has the addition of more user-

driven digital tools marked just another minor shift in a constantly evolving field? As Scolari

(2009) notes, Innis has much to offer to the theoretical field of digital communication. This study

will examine how the concepts of time and space, as developed by Innis use the “soft

determinism” (Ritzer, Dean, Jurgenson, Shaw, & Benkler, 2012) of the space/time continuum to

understand changes in the media landscape.

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Four specific research questions provide the framework for the current study and are

designed to help us understand the larger questions of how advertising practice evolved during

the 10-year period from 2005-2014:

RQ 1 How does coverage of digital and other media types in the advertising trade press align

with actual spending as reported by syndicated sources?

RQ 2 How central are digital media and other media types to the primary cluster of terms used

in the advertising trade press during the sample period?

RQ 3 What overall themes were covered by the trade press during this period?

RQ 4 How were time and space portrayed in the trade press during the sample period?

Sampling and Method

Earlier studies have shown that the trade press can provide insight into changes in industry

practice. A study of advertising trade press coverage of interactive media from 1993-1998 found

that articles covered a variety of media ranging from the Web to CD-ROM and that those articles

frequently saw advertising as a key element of the financial model for growth of those media

(McMillan, 1999). Other studies have also used the advertising trade press as a way of

understanding evolution of phenomena such as digital identities (Beck, 2015), advertising to

children (Asquith, 2015; Elliott, 2014), advertising and social issues (Moodie & Hastings, 2009;

Niesen, 2011; Russell & Lamme, 2013; Wilken & Sinclair, 2011), and food and beverage

advertising (Jones, 2007; Klein, 2008).

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The trade journal AdvertisingAge was selected for analysis of advertising practice and to

address the research questions. While it is not the only trade publication representing the

advertising industry, it is one of the oldest with 85 years of publication. According to Kantar

Media’s Standard Rate and Data Service (2015), AdvertisingAge had a verified circulation of

62,381 in 2014. Readers of this magazine are primarily in the advertising, marketing and media

professions. It has also been successfully used as a data source in other scholarly analyses of the

advertising business (Asquith, 2015; Elliott, 2014; Klein, 2008; McMillan, 1999; Wilken &

Sinclair, 2011).

The EBSCO database, Academic Search Premier, was used to draw the sample. The database

provides a listing for each issue of AdvertisingAge and allows for a “drill down” view. When an

issue is selected, the database shows how many articles are in the issue and provides a unique

number for each article. The random number generation feature in Excel was used to select a

single article from each issue of AdvertisingAge. The researchers then captured all of the

information provided for that article including year, volume, issue, date, number of the article

selected, title, abstract, full text of the article, number of words in the article, and subject terms

applied by indexers. A total of 449 articles were selected over the 10-year period.

Table 1 provides a summary of the number of issues in each year of the sample, the average

number of articles in each issue, and the average number of words per article in each year. While

AdvertisingAge still bills itself as a weekly publication, the total number of issues per year

dropped dramatically over the sample period. This may reflect the challenge of operating a print

publication in a media landscape that has grown increasingly digital. AdvertisingAge does

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maintain a website that reproduces articles from the print editions, provides updates between

editions, and adds multimedia content that cannot be included in the print edition.

RQ1 was addressed by looking at actual spending and trade press coverage. The spending

data was drawn from the Interactive Adverting Bureau (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2017) for

digital media and from Kantar (2015) for traditional media. Media spending data was then

collapsed into four broad categories: digital, print, broadcast, and out of home. The random

sample of articles drawn from AdvertisingAge was used to compare actual spending to trade

press coverage of different media types. Two coders read each article and noted all articles that

referenced any medium and further coded those articles to indicate whether they included

reference to digital, print, broadcast, and/or out of home media. They had 100% agreement on

coding of these media terms.

To address RQ2 and RQ3, all data from the random sample of AdvetisingAge articles was

imported into QDA Miner, a text management and quantitative content analysis program. The

WordStat module of QDA Miner was used to perform computer-assisted content analysis to

address those research questions about centrality of digital media and changes in themes covered

in the trade press.

The researchers approached the final research question about how time and space were

portrayed in the trade press during the sample period, from a qualitative paradigmatic perspective

(Guba, 1990). All articles included in the sample were read multiple times. The authors

highlighted both the implicit and explicit references to time and space in the text. The authors

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then pulled together all of those highlighted references to compare and contrast emergent ideas in

the data (Guest, MacQueen, & Namey, 2012)

Findings

Coverage and Spending

The first research question asked: How does coverage of digital and other media types in the

advertising trade press align with actual spending as reported by syndicated sources? Two

figures summarize findings related to spending and media coverage.

Figure 1 summarizes media spending trends over the 10-year period. The two most dramatic

trends are the rise in spending on digital media (from 10% in 2005 to 34% in 2014) and the

decline in print (from about 38% to 14% during the same time period). The trend lines for those

two media types “crossed” after the 2008 recession with digital receiving 21% of media spending

in 2009 and print receiving 20%. Spending on broadcast media rose to a high of 58% in 2006,

but since then has been on a slow but steady decline ending the period at 50%. Spending on out

of home was at a stable 3% throughout the study period.

Figure 2 shows patterns of media coverage that are a bit more chaotic than the relatively

steady spending trends illustrated in Figure 1. But many of the trends in media coverage parallel

those in advertising spending. Out of home consistently received the lowest media expenditure

and is also consistently the least mentioned media type in the advertising press. In 2005, print

was the primary medium covered in media-related articles (appearing in 40% of all articles). But

just as spending on print has been on the decline so has media coverage -- no articles related to

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print media were found in 2014. Broadcast and digital coverage have more peaks and valleys

than other media types. But overall, the trend for both media types is up: broadcast coverage rose

from 9% of the total in 2005 to 33% in 2015 and digital rose from 23% to 67% over the same

time period in AdvertisingAge.

Cluster Analysis

The second research question asked: How central are digital media and other media types to

the primary cluster of terms used in the advertising trade press during the sample period? To

address that question, cluster analysis was run using WordStat. The cluster map is shown in

Figure 3. The large green cluster represents the primary topics covered during the sample period

in AdvertisingAge. As one would expect some of the most frequently used words (and thus those

with the largest circles and most central to the green cluster) are industry terms such as

advertising, media, and marketing

To specifically address the question of how media types cluster in the word cloud, black

arrows point to the words digital, TV, and magazine because each word is core to one of the

three media-related themes (digital, print, broadcast). Other theme-related terms are typically in

close proximity to the identified word. For example, the words social, online, web, and internet

are all in close proximity to the word digital. And, as shown in Figure 3, all of those digital-

related words are relatively proximate to the central green cluster. By contrast, the word

magazine is far removed from the central cluster and other print-related words (e.g., book,

journal) are also on the periphery. The keyword TV is closer to the central cluster, but many

television-related words (e.g., networks, cable, upfront) trail off into the periphery. Because of

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the very low coverage of out of home, no words clearly emerge on the cluster map to align with

that media type.

Primary Themes

The content analysis feature of WordStat was used to address research question three: What

overall themes were covered by the trade press during this period? Ten clear themes emerged

from the data as shown in Table 2. In addition to providing a summary name for each theme,

Table 2 also shows the primary keywords that cluster together to form the theme, the eigenvalue

for each theme, the percent variance accounted for by this theme, the frequency of theme

appearance in the sample (could be more than once per article), and finally the number of cases

(articles) in which the theme appears expressed both as a number and a percent.

The theme with the strongest eigenvalue includes terms related to advertising agencies. This

is consistent with the focus one would expect from an advertising industry trade publication. The

keywords listed in Table 2 show that this agency-focused theme includes not only generic

agency terms but also the names of specific advertising agencies and agency groups.

The other nine themes include three media types (television, digital, and print), two client-

focused themes (automotive and consumer brands), three themes related to broader economic

and structural issues (advertising spending, executives, and business), and one theme that brings

together job-related terms, time-related terms, terms that address creative themes such as ideas

and designs, and superlative terms such as good and high under an umbrella that we have labeled

“work.”

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Table 3 provides sample quotes from articles in which the themes appeared. The samples

were drawn from multiple issues and years during the sample period and are intended to be

illustrative, not exhaustive. They also illustrate the overlapping nature of themes. For example,

the quote shown as an example of digital media also includes automotive themes. Both the print

and TV examples also have strong digital overtones, and so on.

Time and Space

The final research question was: How were time and space portrayed in the trade press

during the sample period? The researchers approached this question from a qualitative

paradigmatic perspective as detailed in the method section. Following is a summary of the

findings related to both time and space.

Time

The word “time” was used 569 times in the 449 captured articles. Consistent with the industry

focus on “buying time” in broadcast media, many of the references to time were in the context of

television. One article noted that television began with relatively “long-form” advertising, but

over the course of decades, duration of ads dropped from 60 to 30 to 15 seconds. But by 2011,

advertisers had begun to experiment with time in new ways. They tried 5-second pitches. And

they also “embedded” promotional messages in headers, footers, and scrolling bars that kept

messages on screens during programmed content to fight against the “fast forward” option on the

remote control (Steinberg, 2011).

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Several articles each year addressed what is called the “upfront” market for buying time

on television and cable shows in the spring and summer before those shows actually begin to air

in the fall. In the early years of the sample, those articles were a fairly straightforward report on

new programs and how much revenue they generated in the “upfronts.” But by 2007, it was clear

that the traditional model of “pre-selling” time was under assault. An article began as follows:

[T]he mania has already begun, as networks pore over how best to bring their

assets to market and agencies wrangle over myriad measurement issues, from

engagement to commercial ratings to the continuing ‘live plus’ ratings debate.

Then there’s the headache of how digital will roll into those complex package

deals. (Atkinson, 2007, p. 3)

This quote reveals several disrupters to the market for time. First it points to changes in how

television time is measured. In 2006, Nielsen ratings, the primary metric for television

viewership, changed to track not only live but also “time shifted” (also known as live plus)

viewing (Dumenco, 2006). Secondly, both the networks and the agencies buying time from them

were trying to determine how to measure and place value on ways that consumers engaged with

television content both on social media such as Facebook and Twitter and on digital platforms

provided by the networks.

Other articles provided information on how cable networks were using behavioral

targeting and sequential ad serving as alternatives to attract advertisers to their web sites when

revenue from sales of broadcast time dropped (Klaassen, 2006). Media companies later used

those same micro-targeting techniques in selling broadcast time (Kantrowitz, 2013). And

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advertisers began making their decisions about which broadcast time to buy based on levels of

social media engagement generated by television shows (Learmonth, 2012).

By the last two “upfront” seasons, it was clear that the tradition of ever-increasing cost of

network shows had given way to a new tradition of decreasing advertiser investment in

television. In 2013, upfront buying was down by an estimated $1 billion over the previous year

(Poggi, 2013). As early as 2012, the networks were trying to enhance their failing revenues by

pushing “value added” digital content through something they called the “NewFront” season

which came before the upfront buying (Steinberg, 2012).

Time, as it appears in the sampled articles, is about more than upfront or NewFront buying.

Multiple articles also focused on the need for timely interaction between producers and

consumers. There were also frequent contrasts between past and present practices. One article

that tied together these concepts was a profile of direct marketing legend Lester Wunderman who

contrasted “old” methods which separated personalized selling from mass advertising with the

new form of “personal advertising” that is evolving through digital media. He said:

I can’t tell you what a revelation, in my lifetime, [it is] to see us go from kind of

the horse-and-buggy form of advertising to the internet. It’s just miraculous. The

things we know about people, our ability to make messages more relevant and

timely-advertising is just more efficient than it used to be (Crain, 2010, p. 15).

The topic of time also appeared in the context of some print media. For example, one article

chronicled the decision of the Wall Street Journal to add a Saturday edition but noted that one of

the challenges was that many readers get their weekday papers at a business address but want the

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Saturday edition at a home address. Technology enables the delivery of a weekend paper in one

place and a weekday paper in another (Schnuer, 2005). Not only does this article address

addition of a new time for a print publication, it also shows the interplay between time, place,

and technology.

Space

The word “space” was used 829 times in the 449 captured articles. Many of the references to

space were in the context of newspapers and magazines. One early article used historical context

while also explaining the relationship between space and money in the advertising business:

The mid-1800s brought the birth of the ad agency business, with the first ‘agent.’

Volney Palmer … set up shop in Philadelphia as an agent for newspapers,

soliciting ads to fill their space and collecting the money. Francis Wayland Ayer

then created the ad agency as it was to remain into the 21st century, representing

advertisers and operating under a commission system (Edwards, 2005, p. 86).

Articles related to print publication, and selling space in them, were more frequent early in the

sample. For example, a 2005 article chronicled the rise of new magazine titles and included the

following quote from Peter Hunsinger, publisher of GQ magazine: “What’s happening is a lot of

one-night-stand journalism. A lot of people are starting new magazines to attract advertising, not

because there’s a real crying need from readers” (Fine, 2005, p. 51). But the economic recession

of 2007-2009 forced print publications to recognize that their business model was changing.

Print publications lost millions of dollars during the recession and most advertisers seemed to

have little interest in returning to the traditional model of buying magazine space (Ives, 2008).

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References to space and space-related terms appeared in other contexts as well. For example,

there were references to “geo-targeting” tools that track users’ actual location in real time (Patel,

2011). Bonin Bough who is global director for digital and social media at PepsiCo said: “We

know where people are and can talk to them from a geo-located perspective that’s a huge

opportunity” (Patel, 2010, p. 8).

The term “native” was also used in the context of the “geography” of media content.

“Native content” is also sometimes called sponsored or branded content. Typically, it is paid

placement of content that is made to look like the medium in which it appears. Often seen as a

strategy for “low-end” publications, a 2013 article announced that, partly in response to 12

consecutive quarters of declining sales of traditional ad space, the New York Times planned to

add native content to its web site (“Native ads coming to the New York Times,” 2013). Media

purist who believe in a firm separation of ad space from media content, depicted this move as “a

deal with the devil” and “destroying the village in order to save it” while proponents of the

practice noted that these “native ad spaces” are clearly labeled and not produced by the

newsroom staff (Sebastian, 2013, p. 11).

This kind of “encroachment” of advertising messages into editorial spaces was reported

across media types. A 2006 editorial reported on survey findings that half of senior marketing

executives have paid for editorial coverage in print or broadcast news and that two-thirds of

consumers thought editorial mentions of a product had been paid for. But AdvertisingAge editors

criticized the “pay to play” practice and noted that “trusted, independent editorial creates the

environment crucial for effective advertising” (“Pay for play is bad news,” 2006, p. 15).

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Several articles also made reference to digital places and spaces. In an interview with

AdvertisingAge, Microsoft founder Bill Gates talked about how digital spaces were evolving

from two-dimensional places to three-dimensional environments where customers can feel like

they are “walking around downtown on the screen.” He noted that these kinds of interactional

spaces are fundamental shift from the “old broadcast approach, where the sets are fixed and

everybody’s got to watch the same thing” (“Garfield vs. Gates,” 2007, p. 4).

Discussion

Overall, four broad research questions guided the study: 1) How does coverage of digital and

other media types in the advertising trade press align with actual spending as reported by

syndicated sources? 2) How central are digital media and other media types to the primary

cluster of terms used in the advertising trade press during the sample period? 3) What overall

themes were covered by the trade press during this period? 4) How were time and space

portrayed in the trade press during the sample period?

As reported above, a clear spending trend emerged with digital on the rise, print in a dramatic

decline, broadcast experiencing a slow decline, and out of home holding steady in a minor role.

It is interesting to note that the point at which digital began to outpace print for advertising

spending was immediately following the recession of 2008.

While overall trade press coverage of media types did not show quite as clear a trend line,

specific articles did report on the post-recession shift to digital advertising as a cost-saving

measure (Bradley, 2011; Crain, 2009; “Glimmer of Hope on the Jobs Front as Staffing

Stabilizes,” 2009; Michael, 2010; Zmuda, 2011). This study was not designed to study valence of

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any of the covered topics. But a quick review of articles, shows that some of the coverage of

traditional media turned increasingly pessimistic in the latter half of the sample. Some headlines,

such as “Will print survive the next five years?” (Ives, 2008), hinted at a potential doomsday.

Others, such as “Guess which medium is as effective as ever: TV”(Neff, 2009), sound almost

desperately hopeful for the future of traditional media and business models.

The trend lines in Figures 1 and 2 suggest that money “talks” in a relatively measured and

systematic way as advertisers make decisions about where to place their messages. By contrast,

the trade press took more wild swings in coverage of media types with only out of home

advertising maintaining a relatively similar position in both spending and coverage. This could

be a function of the sampling method used in this study. It could also reflect the tendency of an

industry-focused trade publication to both “hype” change (digital coverage began to outpace

print in 2006 -- three years before digital spending outpaced print) and hang on as long as

possible to “cash cows” (despite the steady decline in broadcast spending from 2006-2014,

AdvertisingAge coverage of broadcast media was on a fairly steady rise after 2010).

The cluster analysis presented in Figure 3 provides a visual summary of key terms used in

AdvertisingAge throughout the sample period. It also illustrates relatively centrality of key media

terms. As one would expect from the coverage summary presented in Figure 2, broadcast and

digital received more coverage and are closer to the “central cluster” of words than are print

media. And the marginal role of outdoor media is also confirmed as no terms directly related to

that media type appear in this visualization.

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It is interesting to see that the words surrounding digital include other related terms such as

online and social. In addition, key business terms, such as revenue, ads, and marketers appear

nearby. Television is by far the dominant broadcast medium and appears fairly close to the

central word cluster. Other television terms such as show and director appear nearby. But, as

noted earlier, many TV terms (e.g., network, commercial, and ratings) are far from the central

core as is radio.

Magazines, books, and journals all appear at the periphery of the word cloud. This

marginalization of print media is also evident in the thematic analysis presented in Table 2. The

print theme explains the least in terms of variance among the 10 identified themes and appeared

in less than half of all articles. Television is the dominant media-related theme in terms of

eigenvalue, but it appears in slight less than half of the articles whereas digital has a lower

eigenvalue but appears in almost 70% of the articles. This suggests that digital media has become

pervasive in articles on a broad range of topics whereas articles about television are more

focused on that specific medium rather than on broader advertising topics. Advertising spending

almost always focuses on media buying and selling. Thus it is interesting to note that this is the

most pervasive theme appearing in almost 92% of all articles.

As noted earlier, the dominant theme in terms eigenvalue is agencies. This theme appeared in

almost 73% of all articles and often appeared more than once in articles. This is not surprising

given the target audience of AdvertisingAge. Other themes such as work, executives, and

business also directly touch people who are working in the advertising business. While the

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“client-side” of the advertising business is represented in themes such as automotive and

consumer brands, the sampled articles clearly have a stronger agency focus.

Finally, in returning to Innis’ ideas of space and time “bias” in communication, the

qualitative examination of content related to time and space revealed several interesting trends.

Innis observed that media evolution tended to favor space-biased media that enable bureaucratic

structures, speed up the process of communication, and minimize oral traditions. He idealized

the classical Greek period and suggested that it was the counterbalance of “time-biased” oral

culture and “space-biased” writing tools that enabled that civilization to flourish (Innis, 1951).

The text analyzed in this study, supports Innis’ prediction that media would continue to evolve

into tools that minimize time. But digital media have also dramatically changed notions of

space.

There may be a resurgence of “oral cultures” online as individuals have the opportunity to use

social media tools to update their friends and family about the every-day aspects of their lives --

a practice that Innis associated with time-biased media that required people to be co-located for

this type of communication (Innis, 1951). But as Turow (2012) noted, these interpersonal

“places” have evolved in a way that privileges commercial structures of media and marketing

organizations. Both the trade press (Kimmel, 2006) and earlier academic research (McMillan,

2010) suggest that consumers are fighting to keep advertisers out of their personal spaces. But

industry giants like Facebook have the muscle to fight back (Delo, 2012).

Advertisers may acknowledge that they need to engage in dialogue (Bloom, 2006; Lico, 2008).

They may also recognize that consumers are empowered to use search tools to express interest

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(Bloom, 2005), blogs to express opinions (Sanders, 2005), and recommendation tools to express

satisfaction (Bloom, 2006). But in the context of the advertising trade press, all of that dialogue

is in service of commerce. This does not mean that citizens aren’t using digital dialogue tools in

non-commercial ways. But this sample suggests that marketers are trying to find ways to

“monetize” dialogue.

As marketers seek to address consumers directly, professionally created content, particularly

news content, seems to be in danger of becoming marginalized. Why should a retailer buy

advertising space in a local paper if consumers can receive targeted messages on their mobile

devices as they are walking past a retail store? Why should retailers have stores at all if

consumers can digitally walk through a 3-D environment made up of all of the retailers who

carry merchandise of interest to them? This environment has come to be called u-commerce

(with “u” indicating ubiquitous) and McGuigan and Manzerolle (2015) note:

In foregrounding concerns of space, time, and consciousness, u-commerce

exemplifies a commercial theory of media and invites critique at the nexus of

medium theory and political economy. The work of Harold Innis is uniquely

suited to this task. (p. 1830)

McGuigan and Manzerolle note that the evolution of mobile computing devices is central to the

development of u-commerce which removes all the friction of time and space from marketplace

interactions.

As we move into a new era of communication tools, there has often been confusion over

what makes them new. Scolari (2009) notes that major discontinuous changes in media (such as

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radio brought in the early 20th century) often lead to semantic change in how we think about

media. Since the mid-90s, both scholars and practitioners have referred to the current

communication era as “new media.” What makes it new: hypertext, networking, interactivity,

mobility, repurposing of multimedia content, speed of distribution, consumer-generated content,

social media, or is it really just about “being digital” as Negroponte (1995) famously

proclaimed at the dawn of the Internet era?

How would Innis see today’s “new media?” Would he see the capacity for both space-biased

and time-biased communication in the blending of the personal, professional, political, and

commercial spheres? Or would he simply see that digital media tools have further extended the

space-biased mechanisms that speed up time, weaken communities, and place power in the

hands of centralized and bureaucratic organizations? As Carey (1967) noted, one of the great

ironies of technological revolutions is that while they continued to have the technologically

driven characteristics of space-biased media, they served to reverse relations between space and

time.

If in primitive societies time is continuous and space discontinuous, in modern

societies as space becomes continuous, time becomes discontinuous. In what

seems like an ironic twist of language, spatially biased media obliterate space

while temporally biased media obliterate time (p. 30).

Have digital technologies obliterated both time and space? From an advertiser and content

creator perspective, data reviewed in this study suggest major shifts may be occurring.

Marketers no longer need to buy time or space in professionally created content in order to

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reach consumers. They can engage with them directly on social media and respond to their

search requests with targeted purchase offers. Content can be created by “amateurs” and the

consumers themselves in blogs, social media posts, and feedback left on retail sites. Both time

and space can be eliminated as barriers to “u-commerce.”

What will be the impact on society? Innis saw biases of communication as central to the

development of empires and believed that technology-facilitated space-biased tools of

communication enabled the rise of regional and global political structures and ambitions.

Changes in media technology led to “disturbances in public opinion and political organization”

(Innis, 2007, p. 187). And Innis also saw technological change in communication as being a

central factor to his belief that “every civilization has its own method of suicide” (Innis, 2007,

p. 141). Will digital communication tools be a form of suicide for civilization as we know it?

That is a question beyond the scope of the current study, but one that is clearly intertwined with

the concepts presented here. During the study period and in the text analyzed, there were clear

indications that digital communication tools were beginning to change the political process. The

United States election cycle of 2016 will undoubtedly be heavily examined in that context.

Implications

This study has illustrated the potential usefulness of the work of Innis in helping to shape an

understanding of media evolution. While the work of Innis informed Marshall McLuhan and

provided the underpinnings of medium theory, relatively few researchers have specifically

looked to Innis’ work in “space” and “time” to help us understand the digital world that

transcends both space and time (Buxton & Acland, 1999; Compton & Comor, 2007; Lazaroiu,

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2009; McGuigan & Manzerolle, 2015; Mullen, 2008; Pietrzyk, 2012; Widder, 2015). This paper

suggests that such work should be continued and that understanding of space and time is also of

critical importance to mass media practitioners who are seeing major disruptions in their space-

time world.

For advertising practitioners, this research study suggests it is important that advertising

professionals seek a broad range of inputs to understand their environment. If they depend on a

single print trade publication, they might see a world that is agency centric, that virtually ignores

consumers, and that has come to focus almost all discussions of media into two categories

(digital and broadcast). Advertising professionals could also see a world that is “shrinking.”

AdvertisingAge has shrunk from 51 issues with an average of 58.29 articles per issue in 2005 to

25 issues with an average of 41.00 articles per issue in 2014. It’s also important to note that print

content (which was used for purposes in this study) could have been shifted to online articles and

content housed behind a pay wall on the adage.com website. A trend that further illustrates issues

of time and space.

For educators, this study is a reminder that media history remains an important bedrock of our

curriculum. While the detailed political economy treatises laid out by Innis may be too complex

for undergraduates, those students do need to have a basic understanding of how technology has

changed communication over time. This study also offers evidence that the trade press can serve

at least a partial agenda-setting function in helping students identify emerging trends in the

career fields for which they are preparing. But the study also points to the importance of taking

both an historical and current reading of the pulse of the trade press to help students understand

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the industry. It’s always important for advertising educators to integrate economic perspective

into classroom discussion as so much of the industry is tied to money.

For advertising scholars, this study provides insight into the content associated with the most-

read trade publication in the industry. The WordStat module of QDA Miner was used to perform

computer-assisted content analysis to identify and chart key trends and themes printed in

AdvertisingAge from 2005-2014. These trends can provide big picture assessments of what

topics need to be addressed in the classroom setting and beyond.

Limitations and Future Research

Investigating only one trade magazine may limit the generalizability of our analysis. While a

decade worth of articles provided fruitful insight for analysis, future research opportunities might

include expanding the years of study given that the publication is almost 90 years old. Updates

are possible for future years in publication as well.

It could also be interesting to examine and compare/contrast how other trade publications

portray the advertising industry differently. A future research study could compare the findings

of the current study to 2005-2014 content in the other major advertising industry trade

publication, Ad Week. According to the 2015 Ad Week media kit, the magazine had

approximately 45,650 print subscribers in 2014 (as compared with 62,381 print readers of

AdvertisingAge). Audiences of AdvertisingAge and Ad Week are similar in that advertising

agencies, marketing professionals and media companies/agencies read the publications to seek

information about industry trends. By analyzing article content of the two major trade

publications, new insights and themes might be gleaned.

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Future research should examine other texts and artifacts that help us understand the role of

individuals and institutions in creating and consuming content and buying and selling time,

space, and attention in digital media environments. If, as Learmonth (2012b) suggests, we are in

the midst of a truly discontinuous media revolution, we cannot look to pre-existing corollaries

to understand that change. Rather, we need to examine “current history” to trace implementation

of new tools in new environments.

While both computer-assisted analysis of media content and qualitative analysis of text can

provide some insight into what those media are presenting to their publics, this kind of analysis

cannot give us direct insight into individuals and organizations. Future research should use

techniques such as interviews and surveys to better understand how practitioners, citizens,

consumers, media organizations, marketers, and advertising agencies perceive and are affected

by digital media.

WordStat proved valuable in identifying words and themes and graphical depiction of

centrality of words within the sample. While it is a tool that allows for exact replication and no

“user error” in coding content, it does not have a sophisticated user interface and is currently

only available on Windows-based computers.

Finally, this study shows that in the 10-year period from 2005-2014, digital media came

to hold a dominant position in trade press coverage and in actual media spending. While the

academic literature also has begun to broadly cover digital media (Kim et al., 2014), there may

be a gap in theorizing about what this shift really means in broad contexts. While Innis can

inform this work, and others have also begun to theorize about what it means to “be digital”

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(Castells, 2000; Haigh, 2014; Krumsvik, 2012; Negroponte, 1995; Turow & Draper, 2014),

more work can be done to explore the potentially revolutionary ways in which time and space

biases are leading to shifts in the media landscape and how these shifts shape our understanding

of media, messages, individuals, organizations, and society.

Conclusion

The 10-year period examined in this study shows some clear change, some stability, and a fair

amount of uncertainty in the world of advertising media. An article published near the middle of

the sample period of the current study attempted to predict the future for a one-year period. The

authors suggested that chief marketing officers (CMOs) would “use digital platforms in new

ways to make their brands integral and integrated parts of customers’ everyday lives” and went

on to suggest that “CMOs should select digital platforms that deliver high engagement value,

connect brands with consumers’ social networks, and provide value and relevance in the context

of each consumer’s location and activity” (Martin & Todorov, 2010, p. 61). The trade press

articles reviewed here suggest that marketers see the value in this type of approach but are still

struggling to fully integrate digital strategies and tactics with their overall media and marketing

plans. So, what will the next 10 years bring?

The 20th century saw a move away from buying print space and broadcast time to buying

opportunities for target audiences to see advertising across media types. Media buying language

continued to include space-based terms such as column inches and time-based terms such as:30

commercials. But brand and media leaders used broad media-agnostic terms such as cost-per-

thousand and gross rating points to plan and evaluate success.

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Are digital media leading us toward a similar shift? As consumer interactions in digital

environments provide a wealth of data about their reading, viewing, and interacting patterns, are

marketers moving toward a model in which new metrics will allow them to “normalize” their

media purchases in new ways? For example, will measures such as engagement with brand-

related content replace GRPs? Will cost-per-click replace cost-per-thousand? Arguments have

been made for fully integrating all media planning (Cannon, 2001) and that advertisers need to

think beyond reach and frequency as new, uber-targeted variables are often available on digital

platforms of today. But will that integration occur by finding ways to plan for digital media

within existing frameworks, or will advertisers and marketers develop a whole new advertising

language?

Consumers read less paper (Starr, 2012), have shifted to digital news sources (Olmstead et al.,

2012), and are multi-tasking among multiple types of professionally prepared and socially

generated digital content (Duff et al., 2014). The sought-after audience of millennials, those

young people who are currently18-24 years old, is a generation that has grown up on digital

platforms and devices. In the next few years, millennials will join the advertising industry and

start their own career paths in a world of endless digital targeting options. By 2024, another

decade of change may result in a new way of understanding relationships between consumers,

advertisers, and media that erases space/time language in media buying and develops a new

individual/action language that describes new relationships between producers and consumers.

Only time will tell. Watch this space.

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Table 1. Summary of AdvertisingAge Issues and Articles

Year Number of Issues Average Articles per Average Words

Issue per Article
2005 51 58.29 500.14
2006 51 54.49 501.65
2007 51 50.67 672.92
2008 47 48.85 630.06
2009 43 38.16 711.70
2010 45 30.82 690.67
2011 45 27.60 876.42
2012 46 26.61 739.67
2013 45 28.69 390.82
2014 25 41.00 584.76

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Table 2. Content Analysis Themes

Name Keywords Eigenval %var Freq Cases %Cases

Agency AGENCY; AGENCIES; 21.13 1.85 1187 326 72.61%
CREATIVE; CLIENTS;
CLIENT; WORK;
INTERPUBLIC; SHOP; WPP;
OMNICOM; PUBLICIS;
ACCOUNT; PARTNERS;
STAFF
Television NBC; ABC; CBS; FOX; 5.17 1.93 684 219 48.78%
UPFRONT; RATINGS;
VIEWERS; SEASON;
NETWORKS; CABLE;
NETWORK; UNIVISION;
SHOWS; WARNER;
ENTERTAINMENT
Automotive MOTOR; FORD; CHRYSLER; 4.76 1.78 419 237 52.78%
SOURCE; TOYOTA;
MEASURED; SPENDING;
TOTAL; RADIO; CORP;
QUARTER; LOCAL
Consumer CONSUMERS; BRAND; 4.25 1.96 1065 334 74.39%
Brands CONSUMER; PRODUCTS;
STORES; STORE;
CUSTOMERS; PRODUCT;
WAL; MART; TEA; FOOD;
MARKETER; BRANDS;
MCDONALD
Advertising MARKETERS; AD; SPENDING; 3.89 2.24 2225 413 91.98%
Spending SPEND; PEOPLE; MEDIA;
MONEY; DOLLARS;
ADVERTISING;
ADVERTISERS; CONSUMER;
MILLION; TRADITIONAL; TV;
INDUSTRY
Digital SOCIAL; ONLINE; DIGITAL; 3.53 1.84 1159 314 69.93%
FACEBOOK; CONTENT;
USERS; VIDEO; GOOGLE;
MOBILE; WEB; YOUTUBE;
APP; SITE; TWITTER; PLAY
Work LOT; GOOD; HIGH; IPHONE; 3.43 2.29 661 367 81.74%
WORKING; YEARS; DAY;

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THINGS; MEN; IDEA; LIFE;

JOBS; TIMES; DESIGN; DAILY
Executives VP; SENIOR; EXEC; OFFICER; 3.20 2.01 1315 378 84.19%
CHIEF; GROUP; PRESIDENT;
MARKETING; DIRECTOR;
COMMUNICATIONS;
EXECUTIVE; STRATEGY
Business PRICE; REVENUE; BUY; 2.99 1.32 366 278 61.92%
BILLION; MICROSOFT;
BUYING; CEO
Print PUBLISHERS; PUBLISHER; 2.86 1.18 373 189 42.09%
MAGAZINE; MAGAZINES;
ADVERTISERS; PAGES; PRINT

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Table 3. Sample Content Related to Themes
Theme Article Details
T-Mobile’s mutinous
Advertising marketing machine,
Spending 2014, issue 17, p. 15
Losing its brand soul:
How Saturn blew its
advantage, 2007, issue 6,
Automotive p. 2
Don’t just sit there,
innovate your way out of
the downturn, 2009, issue
Business 28, p. 11.
We can’t move forward
if cautious marketers
stand in way of
innovation, 2010, issue
Consumer Brands 11, p. 15
Quick to experiment, GM
seeks to make new-media
dialogue pay, 2008, issue
34, p. C34.
Digital
Counter-couture: Men’s
fashion titles on rise even
as ad pages fall, 2005,
Executive issue 9, p. 51.
Just don’t call it
advertising, 2013, issue
33, p. 28
Print
Tech’s effect on behavior
underscored at CES,
Television 2012, issue 3, p. 6.
Dawn Ahmed, 2006,
issue 22, p. S8.
Work
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Sample Content
Since 2010, T-Mobile has nearly doubled its
advertising spending, reaching $1.07 billion
last year, according to the Ad Age DataCenter.
Measured media outlays for Saturn fell from
$229 million in 2003 to $189 million in 2005,
according to TNS Media Intelligence.
Our publishing company has been as hard hit
as anybody, but we have very smart and
resilient people scouring the landscape for new
revenue streams…
The marketing mantra has always been to give
the customer what he or she wants, but that
approach pretty much precludes giving
consumers things they don’t know they want or
haven’t thought of.
“Digital communication is definitely changing
the way we market to consumers,” Mark
LaNeve, VP-vehicle sales, service and
marketing for GM in North America, said at an
Automotive News marketing seminar in Los
Angeles this year.
Some publishing executives point to a broader
picture. Alyce Alston, publisher of W who
oversees Vitals, says major retailers now talk
of a “turnaround” for men’s sales.
Everyone from agencies to former custom
publishers, production studios and media
owners seem to be rethinking their strategies
… to capitalize on content by carefully fitting
their marketing message into a new framework
of the medium surrounding the ad.
High-end TVs are shipping with front-facing
cameras to enable things like facial recognition
and gesture control
Dawn Ahmed figures it’s a natural that she’s
working for Toyota Motor Sales USA. Ms.
Ahmed says she’s been passionate about cars
since she was a kid, when her dad took her to
auto shows and races.
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70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Broadcast Print Out of Home Digital

Figure 1. Summary of Advertising Spending by Media Type

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80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Broadcast Print Out of Home Digital

Figure 2. Summary of Trade Press Coverage by Media Type

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Figure 3. Cluster Mapping

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