Digital signage offers advertisers and marketers the chance to reach consumers at the point of purchase via a medium that's powerful and appealing.

The latest figures from The Nielsen Company, the outfit that's best known for tracking TV watching and compiling viewership statistics known as ratings, reveal the number of dollars spent on advertising in the United States during the first nine months of 2009 declined 11.5 percent, a drop of $10.9 billion to $83.4 billion, compared to the same period the previous year.

To help put the decline in perspective, consider that this total exceeds by nearly $2 billion the approximate cost of a pair of Nimitz-class super aircraft carriers, like the USS Carl Vinson and the USS John C. Stennis. If the decline proves to have continued on pace in the fourth quarter, throw in another Nimitz-class carrier to visualize the annual decline for 2009. By the way, that's nearly a third of entire U.S. fleet of Nimitz-class carriers.

Hardest hit was the local Sunday supplement advertising category -down 48.3 percent compared to the first three quarters in 2008, Nielsen reported. But many other categories, including spot TV, local and national newspapers, network television, radio and local, national and B-2-B magazines, all suffered double digit declines in advertising spending.

Without question, the precipitous fall reflects the ongoing economic struggles in this country. Looking a little more carefully at the findings also reveals advertisers are reassessing where to spend their dollars. That's nowhere more apparent than in the continuing migration of advertisers away from print. According to Nielsen senior VP for new business development Terrie Brennan, local newspapers saw 12,000 fewer advertisers in their pages last year, while nine of 10 top cable TV categories saw increased ad spending.

Why would so many fewer advertisers spend their precious ad budgets in newspapers, while other advertisers embrace cable TV? One important reason is declining newspaper circulation. In October 2009, The New York Times online reported U.S. newspaper circulation fell 10 percent since the end of 2008. People reading fewer print newspapers turn to new media like the Internet and other traditional sources, such as cable TV.

The uptick in cable advertising also likely can be traced to the ability of cable channels to serve special interests, i.e. cooking, home improvement, movies, news, weather, etc., as well as that of cable operators to allow advertisers to target specific geographic areas of the cable service area.

Beyond these specifics, there's a more basic reason: tough economic circumstances focus the mind, sharpen thinking and force reassessment of spending. It appears from the numbers, that reassessing media selections comes down in favor of the popularity of video in a form that can be targeted to reach desired consumers.

This sort of reasoning is easily transferable to digital signage. It too makes use of all the appealing elements of television. It too can be used to target specific, desirable demographics. But unlike cable TV, digital signage also offers the added benefit of reaching shoppers at the point of purchase -or more accurately at the point where a buying decision is being made. Advertisers forced by the recession to sharpen their thinking and reassess media choices should keep in mind that more than 70 percent of consumer buying decisions are made at retail, according to the Point of Purchase Advertising Institute.

Albert Einstein is often quoted as saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Given today's economic climate, advertisers can no longer afford to make tried-and-true media choices. Declining budgets are forcing them to reassess their options in a bid to remain as effective as they have been in the past with fewer dollars to spend. Mindlessly remaking old media decisions would be insane, and ignoring how digital signage can help achieve desired goals would be downright crazy.