Unsubstantiated Theory: The Writers strike is good news for online advertising (and beards)

Let me preface this by saying I have absolutely NO DATA support this idea, nor do I have any means to really acquire any. Let me just go further and say I have NO DATA WHATSOEVER on any subject besides what I had for breakfast. This is not an analytical piece, this is a hypothetical piece

Here is theory:
As the writer's strike continues (started November 5, 2007) the "compelling" programming available for television diminishes. This means two things about the TV watching public, there is less to watch on television and there are less people watching television because of the former. The fact that there are less people watching television is probably a bit of a farce, truly the American people will watch any crap on TV, but drip drip drip somebody is frustrated they don't have their new season of shows and may eventually turn off the television. Now, I would posit that a drop in television would very likely equal an increase in internet usage. What else is there to do but update your Facebook account, see what's going up on your favorite blog, or mindlessly surf? Since internet advertising is largely a numbers game. In display advertising more page loads = more impressions = more delivery of inventory and in text / CPC space more page loads = more opportunities to find the right ad you're going to click and when you do more $ for the site using adSense, more $ spent by the advertiser. Either way as volume increases on the internet more revenue pours into online advertising. So at what point do the advertisers and the agencies (let's call them the ad buyers) realize that television isn't reaching their demographic.

Let's talk specifically about men 18-34. Some time ago Wired magazine had an article entitled The Lost Boys (August 2004) where they looked at the difficulty in reaching males in the 18-34 range. Most telling is this quote from a Coke exec

"It's not that men 18 to 34 have stopped watching TV," explains David Raines, the Coke VP in charge of divvying up ad money. "But they're doing a lot of other stuff, too" - going online, watching DVDs, playing videogames. "The bottom line is, ad dollars will follow the consumer."

Also, very telling is some research the article brings up from Jeffrey Cole of UCLA's Internet Project at the time

Network executives freaked at the Nielsen news, but not everyone was surprised. In the five years that Jeffrey Cole has been running the UCLA Internet Project, he's found that Net users consistently watch less TV than other people - in 2003, more than five hours less per week. This pattern has held for every age group, for both sexes, and in every country he's studied, from Hungary to South Korea. Young men are simply the advance guard. "Broadcasters used to say, Internet users are different," says Cole. "But we show that as you go online, you watch less television." Last year, when Cole did a quick survey of people who do watch TV, he found that only 5 percent of them actually paid attention to the ads anyway. "The business model of television, which is to deliver viewers to advertisers," he declares, "is as troubled as that of the music industry."

Okay, okay, so what this is an article from 2004 and some what tangential to my point. Yes, the my point is more or less a correllary to the point of the article that people are moving from TV to the web. I guess my point is, if I'm taking notice then people who are spending ad dollars and are getting Nielsen numbers for viewership on re-runs have probably long since concluded they need to find a way to reach the consumer, and my guess is online is where they are. They get the bit about the dollars following the consumers

Obviously, if this is any substance to this we're talking about fractions of a percent at this point if it's even measurable. Still, as the strike goes on fractions add up and while I'm sure we're not near the tipping point but will the reinstatement of TV really put the genie back in the bottle? While its too soon to tell what happened in Q4 and natural growth in the industry puts growth in display advertising industry in Q1-Q3 2007 up 15% against 2006 with network television down (Network TV -2.5%).

So, anyone have any numbers or research to make this unsubstantiated theory a substantiated one?