Well, Ad Age’s 100 Leading National Advertisers report was just published and once again, the numbers are interesting.  Total U.S. measured media spending was $149 billion in 2007.  That’s a huge number but is only a small increase of 0.2% over 2006.  While the overall number didn’t really change, where the money was spent did.  The big winner was the Internet where spending was up 33.3%. The biggest losers were both radio and newspaper.  Both down nearly double digit percentages. At this point, based on common sense, none of these numbers are surprising.

Here’s what is surprising.

In 2007, U.S. ad spending on the Internet was $11.31 billion.  Impressive!  Ad spending on all TV, including Network, Spot, Syndicated, and Cable was $64.43 billion.  Staggering! Print media, including Newspaper and Magazine spending comes in a close second at $58.55 billion.  And rounding out traditional media was Radio, where nearly $11 billion was spent as well.  That’s $133.98 billion spent on traditional media. Or almost 90% of the $149 billion spent in 2007.

Am I missing something here?  Am I the only one who has a Tivo, an iPod, or Satellite Radio?  Most days, we can position ourselves to avoid most traditional marketing efforts. The problem is, its like a drug and the reps know it.  Run a full page newspaper ad and your ad rep will bring you 25 copies of the paper to pass out to all your friends, like cigars when your daughter was born.  They want your ad dollars and will do what it takes to get it.

Where do we go from here?

Traditional media will never go away, it will always have a place in the market.  But mark my words, in the coming years there will be billions of search marketing dollars up for grabs.  You better be ready.  It’s going to be fun.