Could it be that we are headed for another major “internet changes everything” moment? Recently I was listening to Talk of the Nation and they had an hour dedicated to the future of media.  Their guest Ken Doctor has written a book called Newsonomics and they asked him how is it that traditional media is losing money on the print side and not making it up online? Where is that money going?

 His answer?  Digital Direct.  More and more companies are taking their advertising dollars and marketing directly to consumers and to businesses. Here is what he said that caught my attention:

“Well, the Web is simply its own system, and what newspaper publishers – and I used to work in the news trade – figured is that magically, there would be a transition. There would be a road, and yup, the old business would go down. The new business would come up, and it’s kind of a New Yorker cartoon of, you know, follow the line on the presentation spreadsheet.

But, of course, the new world doesn’t pay. It pays far differently. And the biggest difference there is not even just reading. It’s advertising. Marketers now go direct: Honda, Best Buy, Macy’s, you name it. And they’re putting $66 billion a year – this is according to some research I did with OutSell, a company I do work with – $66 billion a year U.S. companies are putting into their own marketing through digital means: their own Web sites and own outreach.

This is coming out of advertising. Another $23 billion is going to online advertising, and no more than 10 percent of that’s going to traditional news media.”

We at Marketbright can attest to this growth in Digital Direct as we are direct beneficiaries of this trend.  Are you seeing this trend in your own company?