When digital media first entered the picture, it was all the rage.

To some extent it still is….but its role has changed.

Back in the day, agencies and marketers looked at digital as something special and different…treated it independent of their full on media campaign. It served as a platform for the hip and cool and wasn’t looked at as just another medium to build into a fully integrated program.

Dollars moved rapidly into digital platforms, new technologies sprung up like weeds in my neighbor’s yard, and everybody was chasing the new and shiny object.

Today, marketers and agencies for the most part treat digital for what it is – a great platform that should be effectively integrated into a multi-media marketing campaign.

So it was interesting to see, for the first time in our 10 year history, that marketers were more enthusiastic about traditional media than their agency counterparts.  In our latest survey among marketers and agencies, agencies suggest that their marketing partners will spend more in digital platforms than marketers say they’ll spend.

Here is a video I recorded that speaks to the results: Mark Sneider talks about traditional vs. digital media enthusiasm among marketers and agencies.

Seems there’s a bit of balancing going on, on the marketer side.  A recognition that yes, digital is important and digital is good…but it’s not all the rage.  Traditional media has its place and can play an important role…just like its digital peer.

So what does this mean for you, the marketer?

If your agency is still in that “chasing the shiny object” mode, bringing you ideas without any context for how they fit into the bigger, more strategic plan of building your business, you might want to either push them, or push them out.