New media ranks most important of media channels amongst local businesses, with cinema coming in last of the media-channel playoffs.

The results are in and the winners are clear. We’ve known this for at least the past two years now, but once, again, the new leaders of advertising have been reconfirmed.

The latest Roy Morgan Business Single Source survey released yesterday confirmed that new media will be top priority for majority of businesses in their media spend, ranking the highest in media channel importance (MCI). Asking 13,381 businesses to consider which channels are more or less important for their business’ marketing needs in the next 12 months, the survey found that the Internet ranked with the highest MCI score across the board of large, medium and small businesses.

Cinema, on the other hand, has been ranked the least importance across the board.

George Pesutto, industry director of media at Roy Morgan Research noted: “Large businesses with substantial budgets still consider the traditional mass media channels to be important to their marketing mix.  However, they are also leading the way in recognising the importance of newer media channels such as Social Media.”

On the other hand, SMEs, with smaller marketing budgets will find media like television and sponsorship prohibitively expensive and will look to the internet, mobile phone and social media marketing for new possibilities and greater accessibility.