The Media Rebound is Here and it’s coming at you fast … So it’s your decision if you want to join them or not.

January 2^nd an article in NYT screamed at me … The Title … After Two Slow Years, an Industry Rebounds Begins.

Thank goodness.  It’s about time!

For those of you who sell media – it’s time you get into 2011 with the rest of the world, (actually, you’re already late.)

Here’s a few reasons why:

• For the first time, advertisers are projected to have spent more on online ads than on newspaper ads in 2010, according to data by eMarketer
• “As marketers, we’re getting much more sophisticated about digital marketing as a core part of the mix … the company also sees future investment in experiential marketing and social media, which is still an area many marketers are experimenting with”  – Gayle Troberman, Global GM Branded Entertainment, MSN
• Digital initiatives like social media are “increasingly a part of every major campaign in some way, even if it’s just a Facebook page” – Brian Wieser, Executive Vice President and Director of Global Forecasting at Magnaglobal, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies
• Paran Johar, Chief Executive at Jumptap, is predicting that mobile “will get it’s own allocation in advertisers’ marketing budgets” this year as the amount of money devoted to mobile video grows.

Here’s the article from the NYT:

After Two Slow Years, an Industry Rebound Begins

By TANZINA VEGA and STUART ELLIOTT

Published: January 2, 2011

WHEN Stephen Colbert wanted to raise money for the recovery efforts after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, he worked with a behemoth technology company, Microsoft. Every time Mr. Colbert said the word “Bing” on the “Colbert Report,” the company donated $2,500 to the Colbert Nation Gulf of America Fund.

Nancy Hill of the Four A’s said there were signs of robust economic improvement.

That effort at brand integration raised $100,000 for the charity and increased recognition for Microsoft’s search engine. And in 2011, it is the type of advertising that the company plans to continue pursuing.

“Media partners have woken up and realized they can interrupt their viewer less and potentially do more for marketers,” said Gayle Troberman, the chief creative officer for Microsoft marketing.

Television advertising, whether through integrated-brand campaigns like Microsoft’s or otherwise, has been one of the bright spots as the advertising industry begins to recover from the devastating effects of the recession and marketers experiment with a variety of new ways to reach the audience.

During the financial crisis and its aftermath, most advertisers reduced spending in virtually all forms of media, even those that had been enjoying strong growth in ad revenue. Now, a recovery seems to be taking hold on Madison Avenue and conditions are widely perceived as improving.

“This is more like it,” said David F. Poltrack, chief research officer at the CBS Corporation and president of the CBS Vision unit. “After two years that have not been pleasant for any of us, things are looking up.”

Mr. Poltrack’s boss, Leslie Moonves, president and chief executive of CBS, said he had already looked at some results for the first quarter of the new year and, for the company’s local businesses, the increases were “equal to what they are in the third and fourth quarter” of 2010, “which is pretty remarkable.”

Also, demand is strong for commercial time on the national CBS network that is bought on a short-term basis, Mr. Moonves said, in what is known as the scatter market.

Those prices are 35 percent higher than the prices for commercial time that CBS sold in the spring on a long-term basis, he added, in what is known as the upfront market.

Nancy Hill, president and chief executive of the Four A’s, the trade association for ad agencies, said that despite “concerns on Main Street” about the economy, “I believe that economic improvement will be consistent and robust in 2011; the signs are all there.”

The trends that were remaking the industry before 2008 appear to be picking up where they left off. That means this year is likely to bring rapid growth for spending on ads in new media, resumed growth for spending on television advertising and struggles for print media, particularly newspapers.

According to data from Kantar Media, advertising expenditures for all media for the first half of 2010 increased 5.7 percent from 2009 to about $63.6 billion. Television advertising led the pack in spending because of an increase in demand from the automotive and retail markets, and political advertising.

Spending on advertising in local newspapers showed a significant decline over the last 19 quarters, with a 4.6 percent decrease for the first half of 2010 compared with the same period in 2009, according to data from Kantar Media.

For the first time, advertisers are projected to have spent more on online ads than on newspaper ads in 2010, according to data by eMarketer.

“The bad economy has actually accelerated the shift to digital advertising,” Geoff Ramsey, the chief executive of eMarketer, said in a statement.

“Online ads, especially search ads, are increasingly seen by many marketers as a more reliable bet than print ads, which are often difficult to tie to a measurable financial result.”

For brands like Microsoft, Web analytics and research are driving much of the investment into digital media.

“As marketers, we’re getting much more sophisticated about digital marketing as a core part of the mix,” Ms. Troberman said. The company also sees future investment in experiential marketing and social media, which is still an area many marketers are experimenting with.

To promote its Kinect controller for the Xbox 360 last fall, Microsoft introduced “The Kinect for Xbox 360 Tour” and set up locations in various cities where people could play with the Kinect and post videos on a Web site where users could comment. “As technology moves to a more social universe, we definitely see ourselves investing more,” Ms. Troberman

Leslie Moonves of CBS said demand was strong for spots on the national network bought on a short-term basis.

General Electric also plans to continue investing in digital initiatives in the new year. For its Ecomagination campaign, the company used a combination of media including user-generated videos on YouTube, a photo contest on Flickr, instructional Web videos on how to be more environmentally friendly and iAds for mobile devices like iPhones.

“The results have been phenomenal,” said Judy Hu, the global executive director for advertising and branding at G.E. “We are undoubtedly going to be doing more of this.” Ms. Hu said the company also planned to expand the number of digital companies it worked with to apply their expertise in the digital ad space.

Over all, advertisers will continue to have more options to choose from but they will also have to work harder to find their audience.

“Fragmentation of audiences leads to expansion and fragmentation of advertising inventory,” said Jon Swallen, the senior vice president for research at Kantar Media. For advertisers, “there is more choice, more flexibility, more negotiating power than they’ve enjoyed in the past,” he said.

The fastest growing media will be online video and mobile, said Brian Wieser, executive vice president and director of global forecasting at Magnaglobal, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies.

Digital initiatives like social media are “increasingly a part of every major campaign in some way,” Mr. Wieser said, “even if it’s just a Facebook page.”

In a study conducted by Break Media and Advertiser Perceptions, 70 percent of advertisers responding to the survey said they planned to increase their spending on digital video in 2011.

PricewaterhouseCoopers is predicting that spending for online video will increase this year by 38.6 percent from 2010, coming on top of a 39.5 percent increase in 2010 compared with 2009.

Paran Johar, chief executive at Jumptap, is predicting that mobile “will get its own allocation in advertisers’ marketing budgets” this year as the amount of money devoted to mobile video grows.

Turning to traditional media, Mr. Wieser said, “television continues to be resilient,” while “you certainly see weakness in print media.”

Steve King, chief executive at the ZenithOptimedia media division of the Publicis Groupe, said that from 2011 to 2013, Internet advertising would increase 48 percent; followed by commercials on TV and in movie theaters, up 19 percent; outdoor advertising, up 18 percent; and radio, up 10 percent.

Print advertising, by comparison, will fall 2 percent, Mr. King said.

Generally, “we are seeing a recovery,” Mr. King said, “although it is more muted than those after previous downturns.” The amount of money spent on ads in 2008 will not be met and exceeded until 2012, he added.

Adam Smith, futures director at GroupM, the media unit of WPP, attributed about a third of the recovery in ad spending to decisions by marketers of beverage and personal-care products to increase their budgets, followed by sellers of automobiles and financial services, which accounted for a quarter of the recovery.

“The general tenor of clients seems to be on the side of optimism,” Mr. Smith said.

One reason for the resiliency of television as an ad medium, he added, is that many consumers are going online or using their mobile devices as they watch TV, meaning that new media are feeding the growth of a traditional medium rather than stunting it.

There are forecasters, however, who believe that another traditional medium — print — may benefit from a new medium — tablets — rather than be cannibalized by it.

“Some big breakthroughs are on the way for print media to move onto the tablet,” said Nick Pahade, chief executive at Traffiq, a digital media buying company, “which will spur more rapid consumer adoption.”