Australia’s Traditional Media in a Funk

This article in The Australian summarizes a report on overall 2006 media growth in Australia. It singles out print directories as being a particular drag on media spend. It also notes that once online is stripped out, traditional media overall grew at a tepid 1.2 percent pace.

This report is a troubling sign for the directory business in Australia and for Sensis, the dominant player. However, Sensis has worked hard to diversify its business over the years, expanding into verticals, search and classifieds, as a way to stave off the impact of an inevitable decline in print directories.

However, this can’t help Sensis reach its ambitious agenda to double revenues in five year. Sensis passed up an opportunity to boost its growth plans when it bowed out of the bidding on Telecom New Zealand’s Yellow Pages unit, which ended up sold to a Canadian teachers pension fund.