I had a tradesman at the house today. The company he works for was a diligent advertiser on my previous radio stations. Part of why I chose them was the impact of having heard their commercials many hundreds of times while on air.

He didn’t know this background. While he was wandering around, measuring bits and pieces, I was discussing with my partner the definition of a digital advertisement. Below is a definition I got via Amazon ads.

The reason for this discussion was around Victorian Premier Dan Andrews decision, from July 1, to stop government print advertising in the Herald Sun and The Age to focus on digital and TV.

The tradesman said something around small and local businesses not getting a lot of benefit out of digital advertising because of the scale that big organisations like the Government is capable of.

I realised something in the Premier’s words that I don’t think has been acknowledged.

Andrews said the decision is a recalibrating of its ad spend post Covid to television and digital.

Television and digital. Not television, digital and radio.

I know that Government spending on commercial radio during election time and more importantly, in times of crisis, is not only essential for isolated listeners, but also a considerable and consistent boon to radio advertising coffers.

If government, energy companies, telcos and the like all decided to move towards recalibrating their ad spend post covid to digital and television, so that you could only access the information via online, streaming or, critically, when you have access to a power source, the implications next time there is a natural disaster could be devastating.