Reach still achieved by traditional means

The buzz and flurry surrounding digital media does not yet reflect the view of most American adults, according to a story in Ad Age. Most can't say what an RSS feed is; many own I-pods but have never dowloaded a podcast. Most reach is achieved through traditional means, for now.

"While marketing prognosticators and technophiles rush into the future, raving about the next big content delivery system or ad model, the fact is most Americans -- notably adults with steady incomes -- still get their content the old-fashioned way," it says. Here's some of the things that were reported by Ad Age:

• According to Jupiter Research, 7% of American adults write blogs and 22% read them;
• About 8% listen to podcasts and 5% use RSS feeds.
  
• According to a separate study by WorkPlace Print Media, 88% of the at-work audience doesn't even know what RSS is.
  
• And recent data from word-of-mouth research group Keller Fay indicate 92% of brand conversations were taking place offline -- far more than the commonly assumed rate of 80%.
• Only 1% of the country's 210 million mobile-phone subscribers said they choose service providers based on entertainment options, according to Jupiter Research
• Teens and young adults echoed those sentiments in a recent Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll. About half were uninterested in viewing TV or movies on their computers, cellphones or hand-held devices.
  
• Pew Research Center for the People & the Press surveyed 3,204 adults and found that their online interactions were broad -- but not deep. Those who logged on for news spent an average of 32 minutes online daily, significantly less than the time the same group recorded for other media sources -- 53 minutes watching TV news, 43 minutes listening to news on the radio and 40 minutes with a newspaper.
  
• And Universal McCann recently polled what it considers "heavy internet users." More often than not, they said they'd miss TV more than the internet in the case of media withdrawal.

The article points out, however, that we are relatively low on the growth curve and the ways that people get information is more and more complex. So using any of the above as ammunition for denial of the importance or impact of the internet is not wise. Things are changing, just not as much, as fast, or in the way that the leading edge prognosticators are saying.