Today’s marketers are operating under a new set of rules. They must respond to a range of new challenges related to new media, changes in consumer behavior, a difficult market environment, and global expansion. With the rules changing, businesses are seeking new ways to market to, communicate with, and reach consumers. The implications of the fundamental shifts in consumer behavior are having a profound impact on marketing organizations and how they are spending their budgets. Print service providers (PSPs) and marketing service providers (MSPs) must again re-evaluate the services that they are offering to customers and the role that they want to play in the lucrative marketing value chain.

Whether we like it or not, media is moving toward two-way communication and interaction, as evidenced both by the rapid growth of social networking and personalization of the media experience as well as by consumers’ desire to access video, music, and information “on-demand” on the device of their choosing. Over the past 36 months, the media world as we know it has changed. Marketers understand the statistics and are building strategies aligned with reaching today’s difficult-to-reach consumers. Reflect on the following data:

The end result is that marketers and advertisers are shifting more of their marketing spending to interactive, engaging media solutions. They realize that consumers are no longer sitting ducks for advertising bullets and that methods must be changed. Today’s consumers can choose their experiences and are becoming much more sophisticated with this newfound freedom. Marketers need to become increasingly more sophisticated in how to deliver their messages by clothing them in interesting content and delivering an engaging interface.