My point is that they're not in competition with offline media. My point is that such an assertion is absurd. As I pointed out, they're quitting offline ads.

Not to mention the trend that more and more dollars are being spent online, not offline.

Well, it would be bad news if a medium that had only existed for a few years and had <3% of the marketplace were declining in its market share, wouldn't it?

I don't know why you think the assertion is absurd. It seems like a pretty sensible assertion to me, but I don't know very much about marketing. Do you have time to share some of your marketing experience that makes it so obvious to you that online and offline ads aren't in competition?

It seems like, at a minimum, online and offline advertisers are in competition. If online ads are sufficiently good at getting customers to buy from you, and your competitors are only advertising offline, then you're going to take market share away from them — and have more money to plow into online ads. If particular advertisers can shift part of their advertising spend between online and offline, that represents a more direct kind of competition between online and offline advertising.

They still have TV ads (for now). And from what I understand, they pulled out of print and audio because they couldn't create a feedback loop on those formats. I'd bet anything they'll be back to audio and print when those formats become truly measurable.

Just because I only sell custom suits online doesn't mean I'm not in competition with people selling custom suits in brick and mortar stores with tailors and salespeople and such.

"My point is that such an assertion is absurd."

You assert that, but you don't appear to back that up with evidence or argument.