The market share of advertising on traditional media including TV, newspaper, broadcast and magazine will see the first all-round decline in 2005 since China's reform in the late 1970s.

The decline is mainly due to the rise of new media like the Internet and the mobile phone short message, the Beijing-based Economic Information Daily quoted Huang Shengmin, head of the Advertising Studies School with Communication University of China (CUC), as saying Thursday.

A specialized annual report released by the CUC Advertising Studies School showed that the advertising market share of TV, newspaper, broadcast and magazine were 38.8 percent, 23.1 percent,3.0 percent and 7.4 percent respectively in 2004, and are predicted to drop to 38.7 percent, 22.1 percent, 2.8 percent and 6.9 percent in 2005.

The traditional media, which used to take 80 percent of the advertising market share, took only 45 percent of the market in 2004.

"The major shortcoming of the traditional media is their one versus many model without clear target audience," said Huang. "Impact of ads on these media have been weakening along with their increasing number and the climbing fee they charge."

Companies are forced to turn to new media as their profits failto follow their ad investment in the traditional media, Huang said.

Currently, sales volume of China's advertising industry total 120 billion yuan (14.8 billion US dollars), with the lion's share taken by the new media.

Among others, the outdoor advertising takes 12 to 13 billion yuan, and the Internet takes 2.9 billion yuan.

Media targeting limited audience like community advertising, lift advertising and club advertising are also becoming new favorites of some advertisers.

Source: Xinhua