new media etc

Forbes: Paid online content can't supplant ad revs

2010-02-03T20:03:00.000-08:00

MarketWatch -- Forbes Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Forbes said Tuesday that while media outlets may be able to reap more cash by charging readers for online content, it won't be enough to supplant ad sales.

"I don't think you going to see emerge a one-size-fits-all [model], I think you're going to see a number of paradigms," Forbes told MarketWatch after a speech before the Boston College Executives' Club in Boston. "But I think if even some of them do work, still the bulk of the revenue will come from marketing and advertising."

Forbes also said the entrance of Microsoft's (MSFT 28.81, +0.18, +0.63%) Bing into the online arena could give media outlets more leverage in charging for content that was previously free.

"Bing from Microsoft, if they aggressively went out and tried to sign contracts with information providers that you could only get it on Bing, and that you, the information provider, we'll pay you a fee for it, that might put some pressure on Google (GOOG 541.80, +0.98, +0.18%) and some of the other portals," said Forbes.

Forbes also dismissed the idea that media outlets could be accused by the government of collusion if several start charging for previously free content in short order.

"We're all cats now, it's very hard to herd us," Forbes said of the media industry.

NY Times to begin charging visitors

2010-01-20T11:55:00.000-08:00

The New York Times plans to introduce a metered billing system on its Website sometime next year. The newspaper will begin to charge frequent visitors to its Website along the lines of what the Financial Times does on FT.com, which starts charging people who visit the site more than 10 times a month. But the new model is unlikely to move the needle on the New York Times’ digital revenues.

Details are spare on how exactly the model will work, but it is possible to do some rough back-of-the-envelope calculations. According to comScore, NYTimes.com attracted 12.4 million U.S. visitors in December, 2009, down from 15.4 million in September, 2009. If you include all the sites the New York Times operates, including About.com, Boston.com, and the sites of various local papers, the numbers jump to 52.8 million U.S. visitors in December. But right now the company is only talking about putting up a metered billing system on the NYTimes.com proper. So we are talking about an audience of 12.4 million in the U.S. and about 20 million worldwide.

The average visitor in the U.S. comes to the site 3.7 times a month, a number which has been steadily rising. Let’s say for argument’s sake that the NYT adopts the same policy as the FT, and only charges people who visit more than 10 times a month. Let’s also be super-generous and estimate that 20 percent of its audience comes to the site more than 10 times a month, or roughly 3 million people in the U.S., or 4 million worldwide. Now subtract about a million print subscribers since they won’t be charged anything extra to read the paper online.

How many of the 2 to 3 million loyal readers who are left will actually pay for the online edition, and how much will they pay? Back in 2005 to 2007, when the NYT was offering a partial pay wall through TimesSelect, it got 210,000 readers to pay $50 a year. That added $10.5 million to its top line. The FT.com charges about $25 a month to frequent visitors. But the FT is a financial publication and, like the WSJ, readers are willing to pay more for that information. The NYT appeals to a broader demographic, so let’s assume the pricing will fall within the range of $10 to $15 a month.

If the New York Times gets 10 percent of its frequent readers who aren’t already subscribers to pay $10 a month that would come to as much as $3 million in extra revenue worldwide (300,000 X $10), or an extra $9 million a quarter. In the third quarter of 2009, the New York Times recorded $39 million in Internet advertising revenues across all of its newspaper properties. Adding $9 million would be a significant jump. But what you also have to take into account is that those Internet advertising revenues were down by $8.8 million from the year before due to the advertising recession and the decline in classifieds revenues.

So at $10 per online subscriber, the New York Times would only be replacing the online advertising revenues it lost last year. If it can charge $15 or get more than 300,000 subscribers, the numbers start to make more sense. And if the meter drives more people to subscribe to the print paper, that’s even better for the New York Times (and, in fact, I suspect that growing print subscribers is really what this is all about).

However, there is one last part to this equation. How many of those 3 million readers who hit the meter will simply stop coming to the NYTimes.com and find their news elsewhere? To the extent that the New York Times drives away a portion of its online audience, its online advertising revenues will drop as well. Getting that balancing act right will be crucial to the success of this metered scheme.

Canadian online advertising revenue grows to $1.6b, surpasses radio

2009-12-30T19:10:00.000-08:00

IAB Canada Newsletters - The Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada (IAB) today announced that Canadian Online Advertising Revenues exceeded budgeted expectations of $1.5 billion, and grew by 29% in 2008 to just over $1.6 billion.

Publisher revenue from Online advertising in Canada has more than quadrupled over the past five years -- building from $364 million in 2004 to the $1.6 billion mark in 2008 -- surpassing 2008 Radio revenues of $1.55 billion in the process.

Online Advertising now occupies third spot in terms of both time spent by consumers with media, as well as marketing spend by Advertisers, representing a full 11% of the combined $14 billion spent on all major media in Canada (TV, Newspapers, Internet, Radio, Magazines and Out Of Home).

Of the $1.6 billion, approximately $317 million or 20% of Online ad revenue was received by French Canadian Online publishing properties, representing year-over-year growth of 22%.

Search advertising (at 38% of total revenues), continues to lead in terms of share of dollars, followed by Display at 31%, and Classifieds at 30%. Online Video advertising grew by 33% from its relatively small base of $9 million in 2007 to $12 million in 2008, while Email advertising stayed stable at approximately $18 million.

2008 Canadian Online Ad Revenue by Advertiser Category was also tabulated, and was as follows:

# Automotive - 13%;
# Financial - 11%;
# Technology - 10%;
# Telecommunications - 9%;
# Packaged Goods - 8%;
# Media + Entertainment (Music, Film, TV) - 6%;
# Leisure (Travel, Hotel, Hospitality) - 6%;
# Retail - 5%; and,
# Other - 32%. Publishers within IAB Canada’s Annual Revenue Survey have projected that their revenues will continue to grow at an enviable pace, with Online Advertising Revenue in Canada estimated to be $1.75 billion in 2009, or 9.2% more than the 2008 actuals. This forecast includes a 7.8% increase to $342 million for French Publishers’ Online advertising revenue.

“Even in the face of uncertain economic conditions and continued pressure on total advertising budgets, clearly, Online advertising has cemented itself as a mainstay in the overall media buy,” says Paula Gignac, President, IAB Canada. “And although 2009 has presented substantial challenges to the entire Canadian marketing community, we’re confident that Online advertising will continue to grow at the projected pace, for the simple reason that as the Internet continues to engage and delight consumers, it matches these accomplishments with a persistent ability to deliver measureable Advertiser results.”

Download the Detailed IAB Canada 2008 Actuals/2009 Budgeted Internet Advertising Revenue Report.

Canada's Internet lags behind other countries: Study

2009-12-30T19:06:00.000-08:00

CanWest — Canada is lagging behind other industrialized countries because it forces consumers to pay high prices for slow broadband Internet service, says a recent report by Harvard University.

The 232-page report by the school's Berkman Center for Internet and Society gave Canada an overall ranking of 22 out of 30 countries, based on the affordability, accessibility and speed of the country's broadband Internet.

Released late Wednesday, the report, which was commissioned for the Federal Communications Commission — the U.S. counterpart of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission — also placed Canada 25th in affordability of the Internet.

"The highest prices for the lowest speeds are overwhelmingly offered by firms in the United States and Canada, all of which inhabit markets structured around 'inter-modal' competition — that is, competition between one incumbent owning a telephone system, and one incumbent owning a cable system," said the report.

Canada also ranked 16th in the category of access to wireless technology, down from second place in 2003.

The report even singles out Canada as a country where Internet policies should not be mirrored.

"As with speed and entry-level prices, however, Canada's performance merits caution when observing its policies," it said. "While penetration there is high, not only is speed lower, but prices, too, are high in every tier of service."

The report blamed the low rankings on the country's "regulatory hesitation."

"Canada looks like a case where the concern for incumbent investment incentives, without quite reaching to the level of abstention, resulted in a weaker version of unbundling than was implemented in many of the other countries we reviewed here," it said.

Michael Geist, a professor at the University of Ottawa, said Thursday he wasn't surprised by the results of the study.

"Frankly, countries all around the world typically get far better deals for much faster speeds than Canadians experience, and they get it for far less," he told Global News.

Meanwhile, Finland officials announced Thursday that the country will now guarantee all citizens be legally entitled to a minimum broadband connection speed of one megabit per second.

It's the first country in the world to make universal minimum Internet access speeds a legal requirement.

10 news media content in 2010

2009-12-24T20:47:00.000-08:00

From Mashable:

The news media is experiencing a renaissance. As we end the year, its state in 2009 can be summarized as a year of turmoil, layoffs and cutbacks in an industry desperately seeking to reinvent its business model and content. But despite the thousands of journalism jobs lost, the future has much hope and opportunity for those that are willing to adapt to a changing industry.

Much of that change is happening now. And in the coming year, news organizations will look to approach monetization and content experimentation that is focused on looking at the web in a new way. News (news) in 2010 will blur the lines between audience and creator more than ever in an era of social media. Below is a look at several trends in content distribution and presentation that we will likely see more of in 2010.

Full story here.

1. Living Stories
2. Real-Time News Streams
3. Blogozines
4. Distributed Social News
5. News Goes Mobile
6. The Year of Geo-Location
7. Story-Streaming
8. Social TV Online
9. Marketers as Producers
10. Social News Gaming

'News should come to us'

2009-12-24T20:43:00.000-08:00

Professor Jeff Jervis in New York predicts that streaming will be the next mainstream media format. Bye bye websites....

Tweet: What does the post-page, post-site, post-media media world look like? @stephenfry, that’s what.

The next phase of media, I’ve been thinking, will be after the page and after the site. Media can’t expect us to go to it all the time. Media has to come to us. Media must insinuate itself into our streams.

Time spent on newspaper websites drops

2009-12-24T20:32:00.000-08:00

Editor and Publisher - The average time spent per person at the top newspaper Web sites took a hit in November compared to the presidential election month of November 2008.

Of the top 30 Web sites, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution had the highest average time per person at 23 minutes and 38 seconds.

Nielsen Online, which provided the data, defines the time per person as the average time spent at the site over the course of a month. (Nielsen also vastly expanded its panels in June 2009 and that could affect year-over-year trending.)

Below is the average time spent per person (hours: minutes: seconds) in November 2009 compared to November 2008, ranked by unique users.

For the October list, go here.

NYTimes.com -- 0:17:17 -- 0:36:32
washingtonpost.com -- 0:10:52 -- 0:14:15
LA Times -- 0:07:15 -- 0:07:07
USATODAY.com -- 0:14:21 -- 0:15:58
Wall Street Journal Online -- 0:08:35 -- 0:11:57

Daily News Online Edition -- 0:05:16 -- 0:05:29
New York Post -- 0:08:41 -- 0:09:55
Chicago Tribune -- 0:10:35 -- 0:07:12
Boston.com -- 0:15:47 -- 0:13:27
SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle -- 0:09:16 -- 0:12:05

Politico -- 0:08:17 -- 0:10:45
TBO.com -- 0:04:29 -- 0:14:51
Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- 0:23:38 -- 0:11:08
Chicago Sun-Times -- 0:07:19 -- 0:06:47
NJ.com -- 0:10:49 -- 0:06:37

DallasNews.com - The Dallas Morning News -- 0:08:11 -- 0:06:10
Seattle Times Company Online Network -- 0:12:20 -- 0:07:55
MercuryNews.com -- 0:04:16 -- 0:05:11
The Houston Chronicle -- 0:14:36 -- 0:22:15
Baltimore Sun -- 0:06:07 -- 0:09:03

Philly.com -- 0:17:37 -- 0:07:54
Newsday -- 0:07:26 -- 0:05:08
Orlando Sentinel -- 0:06:23 -- 0:07:30
The Washington Times -- 0:05:14 -- 0:04:41
MiamiHerald.com -- 0:06:08 -- 0:04:47

tampabay.com -- 0:04:32 -- 0:06:14
The Denver Post -- 0:07:37 -- 0:04:50
Azcentral.com -- 0:12:46 -- 0:09:16
Star Tribune -- 0:20:02 -- 0:20:32
KansasCity.com -- 0:09:54 -- 0:04:20

Most visited web site and most searched term in 2009

2009-12-24T20:26:00.000-08:00

clickz - Facebook was the most searched term during 2009, according to Hitwise. Citing data collected between January and November 2009, the online measurement firm reckons the social networking site accounted for 0.67 percent of all searches during that period.

Rival social networking site MySpace was second overall for the year, but the continued growth of Facebook saw it rise from 10th position in 2008 to overtake its rival in 2009.

Facebook was also the third most visited Web site of the year, Hitwise says, behind Google and Yahoo's mail product, which came first and second, respectively, for the second year running.

Overall, Google accounted for 6.7 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2009. Yahoo Mail accounted for 4.44 percent of visits, followed by Facebook with 4.26 percent, Yahoo with 3.36 percent, and MySpace at 3 percent.

Top 10 Most Searched Terms
2009	2008
facebook	myspace
myspace	craigslist
craigslist	ebay
youtube	google
yahoo mail	myspace.com
google	yahoo
yahoo	youtube
ebay	yahoo mail
facebook login	yahoo.com
myspace.com	facebook
Source: Experian Hitwise

Top 10 Most Visited Web Sites Among U.S. Users
2009	2008
www.google.com	www.google.com
mail.yahoo.com	mail.yahoo.com
www.facebook.com	www.myspace.com
www.yahoo.com	www.yahoo.com
www.myspace.com	mail.live.com
mail.live.com	www.ebay.com
www.youtube.com	search.yahoo.com
search.yahoo.com	www.msn.com
www.msn.com	www.facebook.com
www.ebay.com	www.youtube.com
Source: Experian Hitwise

Ads going real-time

2009-12-24T20:22:00.000-08:00

Dynamic ads: Offered by TheDigitel in Charleston, S.C., this tool allows advertisers to change ad content dynamically via a text message, Facebook or blog update, or using a Twitter or Flickr photo feed. "If you can feed it, our thing can eat it," claims TheDigitel's website. Advertisers fill out a form to create the ad and designate which parts are static, and which are dynamic.

8 must-have traits of tomorrow’s journalist

2009-12-24T18:11:00.000-08:00

Another good article from Marshable about journalism of tomorrow:

As the news industry looks to reconstruct its suffering business model, the journalists of today must reconstruct their skill sets for the growing world of online media. Because of cutbacks at many news organizations, the jobs available are highly competitive. News companies are seeking journalists who are jacks of all trades, yet still masters of one (or more).

2010 will likely be a time of transition as today’s journalists catch up to learn the multimedia, programming, social media, and business skills they’ll need to tell their stories online. These new skills are especially relevant to startups that are looking to hire multi-skilled and social media-savvy journalists. Below we’ve gathered some skills that are quickly becoming basic requirements for the journalist of tomorrow. These skills are presented in no particular order.

Full story here.

1. Entrepreneurial and Business Savvy
2. Programmer
3. Open-minded Experimenter
4. Multimedia Storyteller
5. The Social Journalist and Community Builder
6. Blogger and Curator
7. Multi-skilled
8. Fundamental Journalism Skills

8 news media business trends for 2010

2009-12-24T18:03:00.000-08:00

8 new trends for 2010 from Marshable:

With the news industry struggling to find new revenue streams that can reshape their broken business model, 2010 will be defined by experiments in news media monetization. This will also include content that is guided more than ever by the audience and ad revenue.

This coming year we will also see the results of news organizations putting pay walls up, as well as new experimental models like accepting Web donations from readers — some of which may prove to be successful. Below are eight emerging news media business trends to look for in 2010.

Full story here.

1. Social Media Monetization
2. Revenue Beyond Advertising
3. As Publications Fold, Others Become Lean and Mean
4. Growth in Hyperlocal and Community Models
5. Local Advertising Grows
6. Local Advertising Models Emerge
7. To Charge or Not To Charge?
8. The Freemium Model

How we can save newspapers

2009-03-22T18:49:00.000-07:00

The Independent - Is it time governments got involved with supporting the world of news-gathering?

The two best print newspapers in the United States – the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and the Christian Science Monitor – have just died. The New York Times is nearly bankrupt, and the Los Angeles Times is already there. In beds all around them in the Emergency Room, the world's newspapers are being fed ink on a drip, as ashen relatives stand and stare. How many of them will survive this depression? And what would a world with drastically fewer people gathering and sifting the news look like?

Newspapers are in a bizarre position. More people are reading the stories we write than ever before: via the web, we have a higher readership than in the most inky-fingered Golden Age. But we are withering. Why?

Since the mid-19th century, newspaper readers haven't had to pick up the full tab for putting the paper together and delivering it to your breakfast table. First they were subsidised by governments or political parties. Then they were paid for primarily by advertisers who want to sell you stuff. The price on the cover is only a small fraction of the money it takes to pay for gathering the news.

This model is ailing now because, as Professor Paul Starr of Princeton explains: "Until recently, the internet seemed primarily to be additive, vastly enlarging the opportunities for self-expression and public debate, while newspapers and other old media continued serving their old functions, such as financing the bulk of original reporting for the general public." You increasingly read it online, but the bill was picked up by print readers and print advertising.

But this could only ever last for a transitional decade. As more and more readers begin to click rather than flick, it is almost over. The problem is that an online reader is worth 10 per cent of a print reader to advertisers. So for every reader you lose on the page, you need to gain 10 on the screen. The sums don't add up – so the newspapers are sickening and shedding staff.

Does it matter? There are some reasons to scorn newspapers in the US, where the press is unusually pompous and proud and protective of the interests of the powerful while bragging about its "balance." Yes, advertising-funded newspapers are a fractured lens on the world, unconsciously under-reporting anything that threatens the interests of their paymasters. The recently reissued book Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky shows this brilliantly: it's why almost all newspapers failed on Iraq, on the disastrous effects of deregulation, and now on the climate crisis. But today, we are facing the possibility of replacing this fractured lens with no lens at all.

When I last wrote about the need to save newspapers, one reader snapped: "Why don't you launch a campaign to save CB radios too?" But CB radios don't play a crucial role in a democracy. It has been put best by Joe Matthews, a former reporter for the Los Angeles Times, who says: "With fewer watchdogs, you get less barking: corruption undiscovered, events not witnessed, tips about problems that never reach anyone's ears because those ears have left the newsroom. How can we know what we'll never know?"

A recent study in The Journal of Law, Economics and Organisation found that one of the biggest single factors in reducing corruption in a country is "the free circulation of daily newspapers per person." Go to any country, and you'll find that the lower the newspaper circulation, the higher the corruption. If nobody's watching, anything goes.

As inky news-gatherers vanish, there is a vacuum that online journalists are not able to fill. With less advertising cash and no upfront payments from the readers at all, they have far less money to send out foreign correspondents, assign people to tricky investigations, or do the long slog that journalism so often requires. Look at the best political site, the Huffington Post, for which – in the interests of full disclosure – I should point out I write. As they are the first to admit, HufPo pays nothing to its contributors, and it knows what is happening in the world only because newspapers send out correspondents. If they vanish, blogs will be left in an airless cabin, talking only about themselves.

This doesn't have to happen. Many people in the increasingly frantic newspaper industry whisper about potential techno-solutions. Some say an easy system of online micro-payments – an i-Tunes for the news – will save us. Others invest hope in the Kindle, the hand-held device on which you can buy a newspaper. But we can't afford to wait for them to go mainstream: journalism's accumulated structures, brands and wisdom could be lost forever by then.

There is a better way. In an age of bailouts, several European governments are experimenting with ways to support the world of news-gathering so it will survive for the 21st century. The best plan has come from French President Nicolas Sarkozy. He has launched a programme where every French citizen, on her 18th birthday, will be given a year's free subscription to a newspaper of her choice. The effects are subtle. Many young readers will develop a newspaper habit. In turn, newspapers will compete harder to capture this lucrative guaranteed market, and make their product accessible and fresh. A benevolent whirl replaces the current death-spiral.

Of course there is a terrible danger in making newspapers dependent on the government's actions. Nobody wants that. But there are ways to avoid this trap. In 1971, the Swedish government set up a system of subsidies to newspapers allocated by an independent body on the basis of circulation and revenue data. Intriguingly, the Swedish press became more adversarial and critical after it was introduced, not less.

As the thud of falling newspapers echoes across the Atlantic, we can't afford to dawdle. Good newspapers – for all their flaws and selective vision – are the sinews of representative government. In 1787, Thomas Jefferson wrote: "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter." Unless we act now, fast, we may be left with the opposite: a government, but no newspapers left to monitor them.

Evolution over Revolution: Canadian marketers tiptoe into the digital age

2009-03-02T17:04:00.000-08:00

Ipsos Reid study - The digital revolution has overtaken the world in nearly every corner of technology and commerce. Yet for those traditional bastions of trend spotters, trend setters, and trend followers – the marketer – the approach and embrace of the new digital era is taken with a degree of caution. At first look, it appears that Canadian marketers are taking a more evolutionary approach in tackling the digital world, preferring to first build on their own knowledge and experience with the medium before fully embracing it. There is some merit to a cautious approach, but being too cautious or too slow to embrace the digital era comes with some risk.

This past October, Ipsos Reid launched the findings of a new study conducted in collaboration with the Canadian Marketing Association. The study specifically asked marketers about their thoughts, attitudes, and behaviours toward the expanding world of digital marketing, and how their business is managing or embracing it.

The study showed that some 4 in 10 marketers (39 per cent) believe that “spending on TV will decrease over the next two years,” reinforcing the current trend in growth of digital forms of marketing and the shift away from mass marketing to more targeted marketing approaches. Currently, the digital component accounts for only 8 per cent of total marketing spend, yet two thirds (65 per cent) of the marketers surveyed strongly agree that their “senior management is very interested in digital marketing”. This appears to follow market trends and the overall consumer appetite for accessing media through new technology.

The survey results reveal that while marketers are broadening their priorities from traditional mass vehicles such as television to include more targeted Internet and digital marketing tactics, there exist both hurdles and opportunities for the marketing industry as a whole.

Media consumption is changing. New technologies such as personal video recorders, video games, the Internet, and others, are allowing people to consume media in different ways. All of this means that media consumption has become a much more active and less passive pursuit than in the past. Consumers spend almost as much on devices and applications designed to help them avoid advertising as advertisers spend on advertising itself. For the marketer, this means that an integrated approach is necessary.
Familiarity Builds Comfort

In terms of familiarity and usage, some forms of digital marketing appear to have matured and, in some respects, become part of the traditional marketing mix. This includes e-mail marketing, online advertising, search engine marketing (paid), search engine optimization, and interactive consumer websites. Others continue to be considered emerging opportunities in that they still generate only low levels of usage within the marketing community. These emerging approaches include e-CRM, social network marketing, viral marketing, blogging/podcasting, in-store digital media, online video marketing, and mobile marketing.

With both familiarity and usage on the increase, why aren’t marketers allocating more of their budget to digital? Despite positive trends, there is still a distinct lack of knowledge (31 per cent) with marketers either indicating that they are just starting to explore or consider the digital realm (12 per cent) or that they are unsure of its effectiveness (12 per cent). Sentiments such as concerns over video sharing sites and the effectiveness of online viral marketing continue to reflect a neutral wait-and-see approach.

In most areas of the digital landscape, the study reveals that it remains the case that advertising and marketing agencies are more familiar with and express stronger usage of digital than their counterparts on the client side of the equation. While the agencies are taking the lead to a certain degree, it is perhaps not enough. The question remains…are agencies doing enough to educate their clients? And if not, this could be an opportunity area for some organizations to step into?
Best Practices for Digital Marketing

Best practices in digital marketing as noted in the study mirror some of the best practices in traditional marketing. However, there are a few additions to the list. Of note is the need to get permission (7 per cent) and the requirement to be customized and relevant (12 per cent). All of the best practices mentioned by Canadian marketers fall under the mantra of knowing who to target, knowing what to say, establishing metrics to measure success, and executing in an ethical fashion.

Digital marketing presents an increasingly complex arena and the perceptions of digital marketing are diverse. While Canadian marketers appear cautious on the outset, they are eager to learn and explore the opportunities presented in this new digital world. What they require is a confident and competent guide to help show them the way.

Online Video Ad Spend to Surge 89% in 2007

2008-10-08T03:50:00.000-07:00

Spending on online video advertising is expected to increase 89% in 2007 compared with 2006, according to a new eMarketer report, "Internet Video: Advertising Experiments & Exploding Content."

Video ad spend in the U.S. will reach $775 million in 2007, growing 89% from $410 million in 2006, eMarketer predicts. Still, online video ad spend will constitute just 4.2% of total online ad spending in the U.S. However, that proportion is expected to reach 11.5% in 2010, becoming a $2.9 billion business.

"At some time early in 2010, one in 10 dollars devoted to internet advertising will go for video placements," said David Hallerman, eMarketer's senior analyst and author of the report.

The high year-over-year growth rates of online video ad spend are expected to continue over the next several years: 67.7% in 2008, 53.8% in 2009 and 45.0% in 2010.

Pew report: New breed of 'net newsers' shape US media habits

2008-09-14T18:11:00.000-07:00

The Guardian - A new generation of well-educated, technically-savvy young web users are shaping the media habits of the US, with one in 20 Americans saying they do not watch TV on a typical day and a sharp decline in newspaper readership, according to new research.

The biennial Pew Research Center report on changing news audiences described 13% of the US public as "net newsers" - web users under 35 who read more political blogs than watch national news coverage, rely heavily on web-based news during the day and have a strong interest in technology and technology news.

Yahoo, MSN and CNN were the three most popular web news destinations, though users gave many of the leading mainstream media websites low credibility ratings.

Just 6% said the Huffington Post was very highly credible and 13% said the same of Google News, which aggregates news from mainstream news organisations.

Net newsers are typically affluent and 80% are graduates, making them a highly desirable demographic for advertisers.

They do favour some traditional media brands, including the New Yorker, The Atlantic and the BBC, the Pew survey of 3,600 adults found. But only 47% watch TV news on an average day.

The research paints a picture of steady decline in the US newspaper industry, with the percentage of Americans who regularly read print titles falling from 58% in 1993 to 34% in 2008.

According to the long-running survey, respondents saying they listened to radio news fell from 47% to 35% over the same period. As for network TV, the national news dropped from 60% to 29% and local news from 77% to 52%.

Cable TV grew from 33% of Pew respondents saying they watched it in 2000 to 39% this year, while the number of people who turn to web news at least three days each week rose from 2% in 1996 to 37% in 2008.

"For more than a decade, the audiences for most traditional news sources have steadily declined, as the number of people getting news online has surged," said the Pew report.

"A sizable minority of Americans find themselves at the intersection of these two long-standing trends in news consumption."

However, TV is still the most popular medium for the US, with 46% of the public classified as "traditionalists" who watch throughout the day, but are likely to be older and less well educated than net newsers.

More than 40% of this traditionalist group are unemployed, and were found to prefer visual news stories to audio and have little interest in science or technology news.

A further 14% are described as "disengaged", a poorly-educated group with little interest in current affairs.

Pew's research identified a further 23% of US media consumers as "integrators", an older group who are affluent and influential but still rely mostly on TV news and are interested in politics.

The research also found that the proportion of young people in the US getting no daily news has increased from 25% in 1998 to 34%, with only 10% of people using social networking sites for their news.

Top Canadian Web Rankings January 2008

2008-02-26T17:38:00.000-08:00

Google Sites Rank as Top Visited Property for the First Time in Canada

Tax, Career, Real Estate, and Travel Sites Experience Gains in the New Year

TORONTO, CANADA, February 25, 2008 –comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its January 2008 rankings of the largest and fastest-growing Internet properties and site categories in Canada based on data from its comScore Media Metrix service. The month saw increases to tax, career, real estate, travel, and health-related sites as Canadians reevaluated the past year and planned for 2008. Google Sites vaulted into the top position as the most visited Web property in Canada for the first time.

"Several job sites such as Monster, Workopolis, and JobBank achieved significant gains in January as many Canadians resolved to improve their careers in 2008," said Brent Bernie, president of comScore Media Metrix, comScore Canada. "January is also an active time of year for visiting government entities both on the provincial and federal level, which provides Canadians with the necessary information and tools for preparing for a busy RRSP and tax season. Finally, the extreme cold weather and record breaking snow levels in Canada have driven us to travel entities on the Web in hopes of finding warmer destinations."

Top Gaining Site Categories for January 2008

Top 10 Gaining Site Categories by Number of Canadian Unique Visitors January 2008 vs. December 2007 Total Canada – Home and Work Locations* Source: comScore Media Metrix


	Total Unique Visitors (000)
	Dec-2007	Jan-2008	% Change
Total Internet : Total Audience	23,784	23,802	0
Taxes	1,805	2,591	44
Retail - Health Care	1,511	2,032	34
Hotels/Resorts	4,302	5,658	32
Career Services and Development	7,762	9,761	26
Real Estate	5,816	7,107	22
Online Travel Agents	5,639	6,885	22
Business to Business	5,058	6,009	19
Health - Information	8,028	9,530	19
Training and Education	673	793	18
Family	8,041	9,438	17

* Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Top Gaining Properties for January 2008

Top 10 Gaining Properties by Number of Canadian Unique Visitors* January 2008 vs. December 2007 Total Canada – Home and Work Locations** Source: comScore Media Metrix


Property	Total Unique Visitors (000)
Property	Dec-2007	Jan-2008	% Change
Total Internet : Total Audience	23,784	23,802	0
Softvoyage.com	1,747	2,665	53
Workopolis.com	2,808	4,184	49
Monster Worldwide	2,825	3,994	41
JobBank.gc.ca	1,413	1,983	40
Canada Revenue Agency	1,691	2,339	38
MacRAE’S Owen Media Network	1,486	2,051	38
MLS.ca	2,158	2,861	33
Gov.on.ca	1,887	2,477	31
Expedia Inc	3,770	4,890	30
ServiceCanada.gc.ca	2,145	2,762	29

*Ranking based on the top 100 Canadian properties in January 2008.

** Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

How to drive revenue from ads on your site

2008-02-22T22:26:00.000-08:00

Yahoo blog - As a publisher, it’s important to know how to optimize your web site to help drive better traffic. This can help drive up your program earnings which is enough motivation for most publishers.

Last year, Yahoo!’s Cody Simms and Amit Paunikar wrote in a great four-part series on this blog about various optimization practices. In case you missed it—and in case you don’t have time to read a four-part series—we’ve boiled it down to some key tips to help your business.

Focus on making your site as text-based as possible

“Crawlers” are programs that analyze the content on your site for ad targeting purposes. Be sure to include important topic-oriented items in the text fields of your site, rather than hinting at them in image or other elements.

Consider adding dynamic content on the home page

Content that frequently changes while remaining on-topic for your audience not only keeps the interest of your audience, it perks up the attention of our content analyzers. Static content could bore users, which may result in low click-through rates.

Structure your site

Your site structure helps your users and our systems to understand what your site is about. Here are some tips:
• Integrate keywords into your URL structure. Consider using permalinks, rather than query strings.
• Use strong keywords as “anchor text.” Link text should be descriptive rather than text like “Click here.”
• Use concise descriptors. Put short descriptions under a link when possible.

Content do’s

You want to make your content relevant, which helps drive your click-through rate. Relevant content can also help ads become more appealing to your users. Here are several actions to take that should help on this front:
• Write for users. Users generally come to your page to read your content, not to click on ads.
• Maintain your editorial integrity. Write unique articles that drive traffic to your site.
• Take time to optimize your web pages. Use distinct titles, headers and section headlines for each article.
• Limit the number of low-content pages on your site. If you have a page with a lot of images, make sure you use alternate text.
• Maintain a high “signal-to-noise” ratio. Keep the content of each page focused on one or two topics at most.

Content don’ts

Simplicity helps clarity, so you don’t want to load your site down with too much stuff. Here are a few tips of what not to do with your content:
• Don’t use unnecessary code.
• Don’t use unnecessary language.
• Don’t try to take shortcuts around lack of content or traffic.
• Whatever network you use, don’t violate the “Terms of Service” or “Terms and Conditions.”

Ethnic media and the advertisers

2008-02-07T16:51:00.000-08:00

U.S. ASIAN WIRE — According to the Selig Center for Economic Growth, Asian Americans represented $253 billion in spending power in 2001, and this number is projected to reach $528 billion by 2009. While Hispanics make up the largest minority in the U.S., there are 13.5 million Asian Americans (residents who say they are Asian or Asian in combination with one or more other races) according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau findings. This group comprises 5% of the total U.S. population. There is also a sizeable proportion of Asian Americans who are business owners and entrepreneurs.

Rather than an afterthought, Asian Americans should be of special interest to marketers. While Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco have the highest Asian populations, other cities are increasingly becoming urban hubs. According to a 2005 report titled "Asian Americans in the U.S." written by Dr. Robert Brown and Ms. Ruth Washton for Package Facts, specific goods and services, including computers and Internet services, home electronics, and automobiles are more likely to be owned by Asian Americans than other ethnic groups.

A study by Ethnic Media in America conducted by Bendixen & Associates in partnership with the Center for American Progress Leadership Conference on Civil Rights in Education Fund revealed that Asian-American newspapers reach a substantial percentage of adults in the U.S. Approximately 80 percent of all Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese adults read an ethnic newspaper on a regular basis. This reach extends to other media outlets, including television and the Internet.

Ethnic media can play a powerful role as part of a marketer's overall media mix. One of their chief advantages is cost efficiency. In addition to their unique connection with the community, ethnic media typically can't charge the same ad rates as mainstream media of a similar size. One estimate is that less than 4% of ad dollars go to ethnic media.

Saul Gitlin, EVP of strategic services at Kang and Lee Advertising, is one of the leading experts on marketing to Asian Americans. "I think planners and buyers need to know that this is a very rich media environment. They may not be aware of them personally, but the media is there." He tells potential advertisers that Asian-American marketing is cost effective and essential to a complete ad campaign.

There are currently significant changes taking place in the advertising marketplace. Audiences are moving away from big media and adopting more niche media instead. The entrenched model of advertising has been leveraging the economies of scale—the more people an advertiser reaches with his message, the greater the opportunity to make a sale. In an interview with Ad Age, media guru Rishad Tobaccowala said the new model must be outcome, engagement and effectiveness instead. Surveys show that ethnic media connects with ethnic consumers along three important variables: reach, use and trust.

For a variety of reasons, the Asian media is difficult to measure as a group. Not only does "Asian" not speak of a single culture or nationality, it also doesn't define a particular language. Even within Asian nationalities, there are language differences that make it difficult to group. China alone has seven distinct dialects.

Media buyers with no experience in ethnic communities often find that their efforts fail to perform well, leaving them with the conclusion that these communities may not be worth pursuing. In addition, many marketers fear their pitches might unwittingly offend people from other cultures. Brian M. Heiss, Senior Vice President & Managing Editor of Diversity Spectrum Corporation, said, "There is no handbook out there that says, 'This is how you market to Asian Americans.'" According to Heiss, "If you do it with thoughtfulness and understanding, you may be successful."

For marketers trying to reach the Asian-American community the obstacles may be cultural, not language. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 86% of Asians are literate in English.

Ted Fang, publisher of San Francisco-based AsianWeek, an English-language newspaper serving the Asian/Pacific Islander community, says that the one unifying factor for the community is English. Fang says that due to, "the inter-ethnicity of marriage—when a Korean woman marries a Chinese man—the language they speak at home is probably English." A recent study by OMD Worldwide concluded that ad relevancy is more about communicating in kind culturally than speaking in a language.

Leslie Yngojo-Bowes, the president and founder of U.S. Asian Wire, was previously the media relations manager for Business Wire when she realized that the needs of the Asian community weren't being addressed. She launched U.S. Asian Wire, Inc. in 2006, a distributor of press releases and news content specifically reaching Asian American media. She is currently collaborating with Ted Fang to develop an Asian Pacific American Media Association. "It's a win-win for media, advertisers, PR, marketers, and the Asian community -- bringing this full circle" stated Ms. Yngojo-Bowes. We are hosting our first organizational meeting with participants from Asian American press in Orlando, Florida later this month. This is very exciting and the timing is ripe as advertisers, marketers, and PR specialists are increasing efforts to reach Asian American communities."

Ethnic media has traditionally encountered indifference from media buyers who, despite studies to the contrary, believe that they can reach the ethnic community through mainstream newspapers and magazines. There is still a lack of awareness from media buyers about the buying power of nonwhites. "The media cartel has run a business based on the Ozzie and Harriet general market," said Jo Muse, chairman of ad agency Muse Cordero Chen & Partners.

Some marketers demand proof in advance that their campaigns to reach ethnic audiences will pay off in sales, a standard not applied to other media says Deborah Gray-Young of ad agency E. Morris Communications.

The burden of making themselves more appealing to advertisers lay upon ethnic media itself. The ethnic media has traditionally survived on local ads—auto repair shops, grocery stores and restaurants—and classified advertising. Measurement has been perceived as a problem for many ethnic media outlets, preventing them from attracting mainstream ads.

In a special marketing forum that addressed the political landscape as related to advertising, Len Fong, principal of The Kobayashi Maru Group, said one of the ways to get past the advertising "gatekeepers" is to create critical mass for ethnic media.

"We need to know marketing numbers," Fong said. "We lack the proof of performance—a lot of our media outlets are not even audited. That prevents us from being in consideration. "Asian media leaders need to develop their own research and provide local data about the community and local market to their clients, seeking out third-party validation where possible. In addition, ethnic media must provide detailed demographic information about their readers that large advertisers require."

Amee Enriquez, the Executive Editor of Balita, a newspaper for the Filipino community in Southern California, says that they chose to become audited for several reasons. "We wanted to add more credibility to our newspaper. What better way to do so than joining the ranks of other reputable news organizations that underwent the same process? Doing so separates us from others who claim numbers but can't back them up."

At this moment, there is a great opportunity for Asian media to increase their participation in the marketplace. Gitlin says, "Some clients will still look at a population below 6% of total and [think] they don't need to address it. But let's look at California. Asians make up 20% of the population in California and more than that in San Francisco. If I start a meeting by asking a potential client if California is important to them, it shows them how profound this audience segment really is."

Heidi Gardner, the VP of Diversity and Strategic Programs at American Advertising Federation, stated that ethnic media adoption is a three-stage process. "First you have awareness, then acceptance, then change. On the whole, the [advertising] industry is somewhere between awareness and acceptance. Yes, it's moving slowly but we're getting there."

Email wins best marketing medium title

2008-01-26T19:34:00.000-08:00

Search Engine Journal - Datran Media (an online marketing firm specializing in email marketing) recently published the results of a survey which consists of 2,000 online marketers in December 2007 on the best performing medium for their online marketing efforts.

eMail marketing came ahead of search and display. There are some very interesting statistics in this survey that many will find helpful.

82% of the marketers surveyed indicated that they plan to increase their use of email marketing in 2008, and 55% of the respondents said they expect ROI from email to be higher than any other channel.
Email ROI will hit $45.65 for every dollar spent in 2008, more than twice the ROI of other mediums including search and display, said Datran Media, citing data from the Direct Marketing Association.
Some 67% of respondents stated that email has helped boost sales through other channels. In these scenarios, email is a tool for sales as well as a media channel.
Search is the favored channel for complementing the email channel.

Marketers from 90 companies including OgilvyOne Worldwide, Avenue A/Razorfish and Stamps.com offered valuable insight into major brands’ overall positive outlook for the email channel. Across these companies and others, 67 percent of respondents stated that email has helped boost sales through other channels. In these scenarios, email is leveraged as a tool for sales as well as a media channel.

Although eMail may seem and look to be the greatest thing through this survey, keep in mind email can be very tricky.

Just like there are many SEOs that promise you the world and don’t deliver, search marketing companies that provide no results through PPC marketing, eMail can provide with you horrible ROI’s if you don’t do the right research and carefully choose who you use to do your email marketing.

More Americans use web as source of political info

2008-01-19T20:40:00.000-08:00

ClickZ - The percentage of Americans who regularly go online for news about the presidential campaign has increased from 13% in 2004 to 24% for the 2008 elections. "Internet's Broader Role in Campaign 2008" released by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and Pew Internet & American Life Project looks at the increased usage of social networking sites and online videos for topical election news.

42% of young adults ages 18 to 29 use the Web as a primary source, up from 20% in 2004. As a whole, nearly one in four American adults regularly learn about campaign information from the Internet, up from 9% during the 2000 presidential campaign.

People get campaign news from many sources. MSNBC leads the pack; 26% of the respondents say they go there. MSNBC is followed by CNN (23%) and Yahoo News (22%). The survey identifies sources it categorizes as long-tail sites such as the Drudge Report (3%); MySpace (3%); and YouTube (2%).

Younger audiences cast a wider net to find relevant news. When asked which Web sites they head to for campaign news, 41% of 18 to 49 year olds listed more than one Web site, compared to 24% of people 30 and over. Younger audiences look at more than long-tail news sites; 61% of 18 to 29 year olds get campaign news from at least one of the three top sites (MSNBC, CNN, and Yahoo News) versus 46% over 30 years of age.

The data are part of a quadrennial survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Internet & American Life Project on campaign news and political communication. The survey was conducted in December 2007 among 1,430 adults.

China has 210m internet users!

2008-01-18T17:50:00.000-08:00

SEJ - China has now 210 million users according to a press release from the China Internet Network Information Centre (The CNNIC is a government agency).

That’s a lot, considering that half a year ago there were only 165 million users and a year ago 137 million. In one year the number of users has gone up with 73 million users.

Full story here.

Top 30 newspaper sites Dec 2007

2008-01-18T00:52:00.000-08:00

Editor and Publisher - Monthly Top 30 Most Popular Newspaper Sites

NEW YORK Newsday's online traffic edged past The Wall Street Journal Online in the month of December, according to the latest data from Nielsen Online (owned by E&P's parent company). Newsday had 6.4 million unique users in December compared to the Wall Street Journal, which had 5.4 million uniques.

Newsday managed to almost triple its traffic compared to December 2006 data.

The New York Times once again tops the chart of the top 30 newspaper Web sites with 17.1 million unique users, a 29.9% year-over-year gain.

The number of people visiting the Orlando Sentinel surged 78.6% to 1.5 million uniques in December 2007 compared to December 2006.

Politico.com continued to do well, in the 21st slot.

The number of unique users slipped in San Francisco. SFGate.com and the San Francisco Chronicle fell 30.9% year-over-year for that month. Visitors to AZCentral (part of the online arm of the Arizona Republic) dropped off 36.6%.

Below is the list for the top 30 newspaper Web sites for December. As always, this is custom-made by Nielsen. Look for the average time spent data at these papers in the coming days.

Brand or Channel -- Unique Audience (000) -- Year-over-year % Change

NYTimes.com -- 17,177 -- 29.9%
USATODAY.com -- 9,939 -- 9.1%
washingtonpost.com -- 8,478 -- 11.2%
Newsday -- 6,450 -- 182.8%
Wall Street Journal Online -- 5,409 -- 109.0%

LA Times -- 4,607 -- (-6.4%)
Boston.com -- 4,364 -- 15.0%
Chicago Tribune -- 3,891 -- 14.0%
Daily News Online Edition -- 2,956 -- 23.2%
New York Post -- 2,851 -- (-5.7%)

SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle -- 2,785 -- (-30.9%)
Philly.com -- 2,300 -- 33.4%
International Herald Tribune -- 2,250 -- 14.9%
Village Voice Media -- 2,224 -- 70.6%
Chicago Sun-Times -- 2,186 -- 8.3%

Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- 1,974 -- 26.2%
The Houston Chronicle -- 1,946 -- (-18.6%)
The Seattle Times -- 1,840 -- (-19.3%)
DallasNews.com - The Dallas Morning News -- 1,828 -- 21.9%
Seattle Post-Intelligencer -- 1,785 -- (-0.1%)

The Politico -- 1,672 -- N/A
Orlando Sentinel -- 1,522 -- 78.6%
NJ.com -- 1,455 -- 40.1%
Azcentral.com -- 1,435 -- (-36.6%)
Baltimore Sun -- 1,332 -- 26.2%

MercuryNews.com -- 1,315 -- (-15.1%)
The Detroit News -- 1,256 -- 21.4%
The San Diego Union-Tribune -- 1,180 -- 10.4%
Detroit Free Press -- 1,168 -- (-22.9%)
The Washington Times -- 1,161 -- (-24.9%)

AFP reporters barred from using Wikipedia and Facebook as sources

2008-01-18T00:47:00.000-08:00

journalism.co.uk - Agence France Presse (AFP) has banned its journalists from using Facebook and Wikipedia as sources, the agency's London bureau chief told a Lord's Committee yesterday.

In response to a question from the Lord's Committee on Media Ownership and the News about the trustworthiness of online sources, Pierre Lesourd said that internal rules that governed the entire organisation prevented journalists from relying on many new 'virtual' sources for news.

"We have internal rules that are regularly updated [on this matter]. Wikipedia for example, we have a written rule inside the company that forbids any journalist using Wikipedia," he said.

"We have the same thing, updated last week, for Facebook because of the incident with Bilawal Bhutto in Oxford.

"Some newspapers picked up pictures on Facebook about Mr Bhutto, which turned out to be fake.

"We are trying to be vigilant about it but, obviously, everyday a new virtual source appears. We have to be very careful."

Speaking to Journalim.co.uk today, Mr Lesourd clarified the policy, stating that reporters working for the international agency could not pick up information from these sites for news without referring to other, more reliable sources for factual clarification.

Internet 'significant in 14 or 15 years time' until then the paper makes the money

2008-01-17T19:35:00.000-08:00

journalism.co.uk - The editor of The Sun newspaper told a Lords' Committee the internet edition can't yet replicate the economic operations of the newspaper.

Giving evidence to the Lord's Committee on Media Ownership and the News, Rebekah Wade said that The Sun's revenue from the internet would only become significant in '14 to 15 years time'.

Staggering growth of online operations did not mean that much, she added, as growth was from a base of nil and revenue from the newspaper's daily print sales of nearly three million remained most important economically.

However, she added, that may change in the coming years as internet operations developed.

"We have a set of projections [for internet development] and sets of targets that we want to achieve, and so far we are achieving them.

"Long-term I can't be detailed and say this percentage will come from the internet but it will become significant in 14 to 15 years time. Right now the newspaper makes the money."

Asked by the Committee about an aging print readership Wade said that the aim of the paper was to bring younger readers to The Sun brand through its digital operations.

"Out of the 300,000 daily unique users [on Sun Online] 70% will be under 35. It's very different from the newspaper, online we are bringing young readers to the Sun world. This is our strategy," she said.

2008 new media trend

2008-01-11T23:18:00.000-08:00

New Communications Review - Entertainment of the Future is Circular
"Circular Entertainment," identified by Nokia as a result of a global study into the future of entertainment, predicts that up to a quarter of the entertainment consumed by people by 2012 will have been created, edited and shared within their peer circle rather than coming out of traditional media groups. The study, "A Glimpse of the Next Episode" by The Future Laboratory, combines views from industry leading figures with Nokia's research from a sample of 900 million consumers around the world to construct a global picture of what it believes entertainment will look like over the next five years. Read the full article here.

Want A More Successful Business? Meet Social Needs
New research from Communispace, supporting the hypothesis that people are looking to fulfill six essential social needs online, and drawing on the Maslow hierarchy of human needs, concludes that businesses that help facilitate those needs are more likely to create deeper emotional bonds than usually exist between companies and customers. In the report by Julie Schlack, Michael Jennings and Manila Austin "Meeting Business Needs by Meeting Social Needs...", the Communispace researchers, building on the work of social scientists, have identified the specific social needs that are met through participating in social networks. The study addresses "Six Social Needs" and relates them to Online social networks, suggesting that business can take advantage of these observations in creating more affinity with their prospects and customers. Read more about the study here.

Get Back to The Basics for 2008, Marketers Say
According to the first annual survey of Top Marketing Trends for 2008 of 1700 MENG (Marketing Executives Networking Group) members, conducted by Anderson Analytics, key areas for 2008 are found to be:
(1) Marketing basics (60% "Very Important") which include specific concepts such as customer satisfaction, customer retention, segmentation, brand loyalty and ROI were of greatest interest. (2) Search Engine Optimization (42%) had relatively wide appeal, and cut across marketers in all fields. (3) "Green Marketing" (32%) was another important emerging concept and it was identified as the trendiest marketing buzzword. Read more about it here.

Almost 50% of Internet Users Google Themselves
Internet users are becoming more aware of their digital footprint; 47% have searched for information about themselves online, up from just 22% five years ago. However, few monitor their online presence with great regularity. Just 3% of self-searchers report that they make a regular habit of it and 74% have checked up on their digital footprints only once or twice. Access the full report here.

Yahoo to Dominate 2008 $8.6B Graphical Ad Market
Get ready to pay more for both premium and remnant display ad inventory. JP Morgan is forecasting the U.S. graphical ad market to hit nearly $8.6 billion this year--a 20% increase from 2007, with much of that cash flow being driven by costlier CPMs. Analysts on JP Morgan's U.S. Equity Research Internet team gave their bullish predictions for the display market during a recent 2008 Global Internet Outlook conference call, Analyst Imran Khan named Yahoo as one of the "greatest beneficiaries of improved graphical advertising trends." MSN, AOL and CNET were included as winners in the buoyant display market, but Khan went so far as to peg Yahoo as the leader in 2008--forecast to snag 10% of the $20 billion global graphical ad market. MSN is slated to snag roughly 7.2%, while AOL and CNET will own 5% and about 2% of the global display market, respectively. Read more about it here.

Online Advertising Spending up 48% for 2008
According to the Executive Summary of a newly released Borrell Associates study on the 2008 outlook for local Online advertising, a 48 percent increase in local online ad spending is anticipated in 2008, bringing it to $12.6 billion. Driving most of the growth, says the Summary, is the popularity of local search and online video advertising. Local search advertising will more than double next year, to $5 billion, while locally placed online video will triple, to almost $1.3 billion. A major component of local video advertising will be long-form pieces for home, automotive and health-related categories. Access the whole story here.

U.S. Advertising Spending up 4% in 2008
According to a new study from GroupM, advertising spending in the US measured media is expected to increase almost 4% in 2008 compared with 2007, when spending was up about 3%. Worldwide spending is expected to go up 7% in 2008, after an anticipated 6% increase in 2007. US advertising spending is expected increase 3.7%, to $168.6 billion, in 2008. Spending in 2007 is expected to come in at 2.8% higher than in 2006. Worldwide spending is expected to go up 6.8%, to some $479 billion. Read the full article here.

The End is Near for Netscape
Marking the end of an era, AOL has decided to retire the Netscape Web browser after nearly 14 years of operation. As a result, AOL has decided to throw its weight behind Mozilla's Firefox browser. "AOL's focus on transitioning to an ad-supported Web business leaves little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be," AOL/Netscape development director Tom Drapeau said in a recent blog posting. AOL, which acquired Netscape for $4.2 billion in 1998, will maintain Netscape only as a general-use portal as of February 1. Read more about it here.

Is Your TV Ready for All-Digital Format in 2009?
According to the CTAM Pulse, a nationwide survey of more than 1,000 U.S. consumers conducted last month by the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing, forty-eight percent of U.S. households are aware of the planned digital TV transition, compared to just 29 percent from a survey taken in July 2005. After February 17, 2009, the nation's broadcast television stations will begin broadcasting exclusively in digital. Any consumer receiving broadcast TV over the air on an analog TV set must take some action for that TV to continue receiving programs from the local TV stations. Read the full article here.

Media Use Differs Between Teens and Tweens
From Mediapost: The Nielsen Company recently announced some of the findings of an in-depth study, "Kids on the Go: Mobile Usage by U.S. Teens and Tweens," on the mobile media and cross media behavior of U.S. "tweens" (ages 8-12), finding that 5% of tweens access the Internet over their phone each month. While 41% of tween mobile Internet users say they do so while commuting or traveling (to school, for example), mobile content such as the Internet is also a social medium for this audience. 26% of tween mobile Internet users say they access the web while at a friend's house and 17% say they do so at social events. Nielsen reports that tweens spend less time surfing the Internet than their teen counterparts. In this report, 48% of U.S. tweens said they spend less than one hour per day online. When they are online, 70% of tweens use the Internet for gaming. Comparatively, 81% of U.S. teens say they spend one hour or more per day online, with e-mail being the most pervasive online activity for this age group. Read more about the study results here.

Google Leads Top 10 Social Bookmarking Sites
According to AddThis.com, the top 10 social bookmarking sites for November were: Google (#1 at 17%), Favorites, Facebook, Live, Del.icio.us, Digg, MyWeb, Ask, Furi, and StumbleUpon (#10 at 3.6%). Find out more here.

TV Watchers Also View Video on Other Devices
According to the recent release of The ChoiceStream 2007 Survey of Viewer Trends in TV and Online Video, 55% of connected consumers who watch TV watch some type of video on devices other than their TV sets, including their computers, mobile phones and digital media players (e.g., iPod). Not surprisingly, video-watching on these alternative devices is more popular among younger consumers (66%) than older ones (36%). Get more information about the survey here.

Online Reviewers Bring Goodwill Toward Men (And Women)
Bazaarvoice recently released the findings of a study that surveyed over 1,300 online reviewers to discover what moved them to share their opinions. Overwhelmingly, the survey found, reviewers are motivated by goodwill and positive sentiment: 90% write reviews in order to help others make better buying decisions, 70% want to help companies improve the products they build and carry, 79% write reviews in order to reward a company, and 87% of the reviews are generally positive in tone. Read the full story here.

Young adults show significant interest in free ad-supported TV show downloads

2008-01-11T16:03:00.000-08:00

Ipsos Reid release - Recent research conducted by Ipsos Insight among U.S. online adults hints that future growth in online video services may be predicated more on downloading models than on streaming models – and potentially more on free ad-based content than on paid content – particularly as younger consumers spend an increasing amount of their disposable time online.

As part of a wider survey of online adults on technology and media trends, consumers were asked to rate their overall preference for a variety of online video service models if they were going to use them to view their “favorite TV shows.” The service models tested included streaming-only and downloading-only versions of both fee-based video services and free, ad-subsidized versions. Two very interesting stories emerged. First, the results clearly illustrate the consumer appetite for free, ad-subsidized online video services, in this case specifically for television programming. In addition, the data also articulates a division in preference among younger and older consumers in general: younger consumers – those ages 18 to 34 – prefer downloading longer form television programming online, while consumers 35 and older have a greater affinity for streaming television programming content.

Please indicate your preference for the following types of online video services if you were going to use them to view your favorite TV shows. Letters indicate the value is significantly higher than the value in the corresponding column at the 95% confidence level.

While today there are very few options offering legitimate free downloads of original television programming on the Internet, the data here suggest there is significant latent demand for these types of services explains Adam Wright, Director with Ipsos Insight: “Directionally, it’s clear the younger generation of consumers have a stronger preference for downloadable options when it comes to accessing television programming on the internet. Many of these consumers have grown up downloading music online, and simply want similar flexibility in how they access television programming online. The challenge for many in the space will be to crack the code on how free downloadable television programming could co-exist with the other traditional video delivery models for delivering an advertising audience.”

Younger Consumers Flocking to Online Video Streams & Downloads

Whether downloads or streams, it is clear that online video services are quickly building an audience with Americans – particularly younger consumers. Today, online adults age 18-34 spend more time surfing the Internet (13.1 hours per week) than they do consuming any other entertainment media, including watching TV (12.3 hours per week). This is quite different from their older counterparts age 35-54 and 55+, who still consume more TV (watch 15.2 and 16.3 hours per week, respectively) than any other entertainment medium. In terms of online behaviors, roughly two-thirds of online adults age 18-34 have streamed a video off of the Internet in the past 30 days, and nearly three in four teenagers have done so in the past 30 days. Far fewer online adults are downloading videos off the Internet today – just over one in four (28%) have downloaded a video file online in the past 30 days, which represents only a modest gain compared to the close of 2006 (23%).

Yet despite the fact the video downloading market today remains relatively niche, the reality is that video streamers and video downloaders are typically the same people. Taking a closer look at the relationship between downloading and streaming reveals an overwhelming majority of online video consumers have accessed video content using both acquisition methods. For example, two in three adults age 18-24 have downloaded and streamed video content off of the Internet. The data here also underscore a similar trend that was noted earlier: the older the market segment, the greater the reliance on streaming vs. downloading as the primary way to access video content online. A number of factors are likely influencing these trends, including a far greater number of free, ad-subsidized video streaming options online in comparison to free video downloads. Other behavioral-driven factors are also likely contributing to this trend, as Wright explains: “Perhaps what’s most striking about the data here is how this illustrates older consumers’ preference for the broadcast model for watching video.”

Specifically, have you ever downloaded or streamed digital video files or both? Letters indicate the value is significantly higher than the value in the corresponding column at the 95% confidence level.

Given what we know – that younger consumers love online video, and are the most likely to prefer downloadable video content online – the question now is just when will video downloading begin to take off in the U.S, and what impact might this have on traditional video delivery models. Wright concludes, “Clearly younger consumers are growing an affinity and expectation for downloadable video content, but they are also spending an increasing amount of their disposable time surfing the Internet, so we may be witnessing the gradual shift in how the next generation will consume video content. As opposed to broadcast models, these consumers want to possess video content so they can view it when and where they want, whether in the living room or ‘on-the-go’ from a portable device. The digital medium is really about empowerment, and video sites that enable younger consumers to access the television content they want in the format they prefer will be in position to quickly build an audience with this highly sought after market.“

Methodology
Data for this study were collected through an Internet-based sampling and data collection methodology using the Ipsos U.S. Internet Panel, and accurately reflects the online population (18 years and older). A total of N=1,033 respondents completed the online questionnaire between October 19 and October 25, 2007. With a total sample size of n= 1,033 respondents, one can say with 95% certainty that the results are accurate to within +/- 3.05 percentage points.

Additional data was sourced from Ipsos Insight’s MOTION Summer Wave study, which was conducted via telephone interviews among a representative U.S. sample of consumers aged 12 years and older in July 2007. To learn more about MOTION, Ipsos quarterly syndicated tracking programming researching the U.S. online video market, please visit: http://www.ipsosinsight.com/knowledge/techcomm/products/motion.aspx

Canadians stick to usual media for news, poll finds

2007-12-27T13:41:00.000-08:00

Vancouver Sun - If you're reading this in the newspaper you're among the 95% of Canadians who turn to traditional media for your general news.

If you're reading this online, you could be among the 42% who use some form of online media for their news.

Those are among the findings of the national media choice and trust poll conducted by IDC Canada for the Information Technology Association of Canada, which concluded that while the Internet has changed people's consumption patterns for breaking news, when it comes to general news traditional media is still the entrenched choice for most Canadians.

Online content has changed consumption patterns for breaking news with 82% of poll respondents looking to traditional media -- newspapers, radio and television -- for that news.

"It's clear that Canadians are traditionalists, and overwhelmingly turn to television, newspapers, and radio for trusted news," said ITAC president Bernard Courtois. "But 65% of Canadian households have high-speed Internet, and this high level of adoption is causing a shift in behaviour, as Internet news outlets begin to creep into the media mix."

The survey, conducted among 1,000 Canadians across all regions, found that 42% access some form of online media for general news and 21% look to online sources for breaking news.

Younger Canadians, aged 18 to 24, tend more to look online for news, with 50% of people in that age group likely to get their information online.

Television rated as the top source for general and breaking news. Online forums have low use but the bigger users of them are the MTV generation and early boomers.

The study concluded age is not necessarily an indicator of adoption.

When respondents were asked where they generally go for news, more than 70% -- in all age groups -- cited television. Among the 50-plus-year-olds, that number climbed to 80%. Among all age groups close to 50% said they read the newspaper and among the 50-plus crowd, that climbed to more than 60%.

Close to 50% of those polled said they listened to the radio for news, except among the so-called Echo generation in which only 33% opted for radio news.

Online news attracted more than 30% of respondents across all age groups except for those who are 50 and over. Online portals attracted 35% of the MTV generation.

People with higher incomes tended to access online news the most. Among respondents who reported annual incomes of $100,000-plus, online news came second with 39% of respondents, after television at 72%. Radio was third at 32%.

The use of television for news drops with age, according to the study, while radio drops among the MTV and Echo generations. By comparison, online portals jump with the MTV and Echo generations and MTV and Gen X generations are the biggest consumers of online news.

The study also found larger families access and trust online news more than smaller families and French respondents trust online media more than their English counterparts.

Online news sources face a credibility challenge with only 11.5% of respondents saying they believe online media is unbiased and 12% believing that it is accurate.

"As was the case when broadcast media came along to challenge print, any new news media is viewed with skepticism, and the Internet is no different," said Courtois.

"Once the industry begins to establish trusted checks and balances, and online news media becomes mainstream, this medium will become a more credible news source for the Canadian public."

Citizen journalism dominates online news in 2007

2007-12-26T15:06:00.000-08:00

Here are the top CyberJournalist.net stories of 2007. Not surprisingly, citizen journalism and user-generated content stories overwhelmingly dominate the top 10.

Top CyberJournalist.net stories of 2007

BusinessWeek layoffs: will all magazines die?

2007-12-13T00:05:00.000-08:00

Mashable - It’s the end of the year, and layoffs are sadly an expected tragedy that comes with year-end business assessments. This year in particular was pretty rough on the printed media industry.

After continued declines in subscriptions, newspapers and magazines found it necessary to shift gears, focus a bit more on online distribution models (some even ad-supported), and quite a few people were let go in the process.

Most recently, Business 2.0 was completely cut from the Time Inc. family, while the New York Times recently instituted a temporary hiring freeze.

And now BuisnessWeek is the latest to do the same. According to an Alley Insider report, 8 to 10 staffers have been let go, including national editor Anthony Bianco and photo editor Larry Lippman.

While BusinessWeek’s layoff focuses on the printed side of things, layoffs have been an unfortunate occurrence for some web-based businesses as well. AOL, Eons, Snocap and even Google have had to trim staff in order to compete more effectively with their online businesses.

Holiday e-commerce spending reaches $14b, up 17% over last year

2007-12-07T19:28:00.000-08:00

More than $14 billion has been spent online during the first 32 days (November 1 – December 2) of the November – December 2007 holiday season, said a new comScore report. This marks a 17% gain versus the corresponding days last year. The heaviest online spending day of the season thus far was Cyber Monday (November 26) with $733 million in sales.

According to the report:

Video games, consoles & accessories continues to be the hottest online retail category, rising 145% in November versus the corresponding days last year, while furniture, appliances & equipment (up 45%) and sport & fitness (up 30%) are also performing well. Three of the most popular holiday season categories, toys, consumer electronics, and books & magazines, are each growing at 17%, coinciding with total online retail spending growth.

Fastest Growing Retail E-Commerce Categories by Dollar Sales
November 1-30 vs. Corresponding Days in 2006
Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations

Percent Change in Category Spending ($)

Video Games, Consoles & Accessories
145%

Furniture, Appliances & Equipment
45%

Sport & Fitness
30%

Toys
17%

Consumer Electronics
17%

Books & Magazines
17%

Apparel & Accessories
16%

Computer Hardware
15%

Music, Movies & Videos
14%

Home & Garden
14%

Source: comScore, Inc.

Full story here.

網上廣告效益遠比想像大

2007-12-07T05:11:00.000-08:00

明報 - 早前有調查指出，香港人平均每周花16小時上網，較用於其他傳統媒體的時間都要長。可見要吸引本地消費者的注視，互聯網作為一個廣告媒體的重要性不容忽視。然而，卻不是人人都懂得利用互聯網的優勢，白白浪費廣告開支之餘，對網上賣廣告產生各式誤會。4As廣告公司DDB互動媒體總監譚家強 (Patrick)稱：「仲有好多人以為網上廣告只以青年人為對象，停留在『.com年代』的模式，尤其是中小企(在網上廣告)的發展，最少落後外國7至 10年。」

Patrick表示，相比以前需要多番解釋，才能說服客人試行網上廣告，近年客人多為主動要求。「好多人知道要做，但係不明白如何做。」他指出，最常見的誤解是「互聯網只是銷售青年人用品的渠道」，但從「e-banking」的普及，便可見30至45歲以上，最有消費力的一群，也是互聯網的常客。「這班人在科網熱潮的年代，正好是20歲左右的青年人。」

忌以訪客數點擊率衡量效益

另一個常見的誤解是，用傳統廣告的方式衡量網上廣告的成敗，Patrick稱為「.com boom後遺症」。「客人建立一個網站，常常會以到訪人數作為一個指標，但這是錯的。」他以一個商場為比喻，「應該睇纒到訪者去邊度，有沒有看到你想推廣的東西，就好似入到時代廣場，訪客係去鰦咖啡店，還是看運動用品。數碼技術讓我們可以非常準確地計算得到廣告的成效。」

Patrick笑說，曾經有客戶表示不要賣Banner ad(網站上的廣告橫額)，因為點擊率只有低於1%。「這是以為自己識，但其實唔識，他忘記了Banner ad的作用是提升訪客對品牌的認知，有如掛一張海報，點擊率不是唯一的考量。」又曾有客人認為在香港購物太方便，網上購物根本行不通，這又是另一「.com boom」的後患。「其實根據我們一個調查發現，有23%人在網上看過產品後，之後會親自落去店舖買。因此，我們會建議客戶多在網上做產品介紹。」

網上廣告還有一個很重要的優點，就是價錢較低廉。「在電視台賣一個廣告，隨時要花上百萬元，如果投放在網上廣告，可以用1年！」他笑說。因此，網上廣告可說是非常適合推廣開支有限的中小型企業，例如google的adSense，會為廣告商自動篩選與公司業務相關的網站，以點擊率為收費指標，公司又可以設定每月的開支上限，以防超出預算。

中小企思維落後忽略商機

但Partick直言，本港的中小企在這方面仍需很多教育，「在加拿大，連街口的乾洗店都會有自己的網站。香港(中小企)則仍存在很多『.com boom後遺症』，令他們最少(較外國)落後7至10年。」事實上，公司可以透過自建網站介紹產品，減少顧客滯留在店舖的時間，對小商戶而言可說是求之不得。

不過，網上廣告並非無敵。它的方便和互動性，也可能為廣告商戶帶來麻煩。最簡單的例子，就是經常出現在新聞版面的假銀行網站。Patrick說，其實要複製一個網站一點都不困難。如果有人故意造假網站，並惡意發放虛假資訊，或者記錄網民的個人資料，後果可能非常重。

互動性高品牌經驗難控制

此外，由於互聯網的互動性太高，公司對品牌的控制會較困難，例如在討論區內，誰能保證沒有人會講該品牌的壞話呢？「一些高檔品牌，在雜誌落廣告前，要確定前後10多頁的內容，因為它們對顧客的『品牌經驗』十分覑緊，而互聯網偏偏那麼難以控制，故此很多高檔品牌都很怕做網上廣告，至近年才發現，網上廣告已成為趨勢，才開始做少少。」

阿里媽媽成內地最大網上廣告平台

2007-12-07T05:08:00.000-08:00

文匯報 - 阿里巴巴集團昨宣布，其新創建的阿里媽媽網站已成為內地最大的網上廣告交易平台。阿里巴巴稱，8月10日正式上線的阿里媽媽網站已匯集了超過15萬家中小網站和超過13.5萬的個人博客站點，超過38萬個廣告位，註冊會員超過100萬，覆蓋中小網站總流量超過 10億PV/天。目前，阿里媽媽仍以驚人的速度增長，每天新增近4,000家中小網站，新增1萬名個人博客，新增2萬餘廣告位。

每天新增2萬廣告位

集團新聞發言人金建杭表示，阿里媽媽為中國數千萬中小企業和中小網站提供了一個切合實際的商業模式和收入模式，阿里媽媽的使命是要讓有價值的網站成長起來，使他們成為明天中國的Facebook、Myspace、Youtube。

他續稱，阿里媽媽目前每天成交廣告位2萬多筆。人力網站智聯招聘、中行(3988)、中信行(0998)等多家金融機構，以及一些網遊公司已和阿里媽媽簽約，通過阿里媽媽網站投放廣告。

截至6月30日，阿里巴巴集團旗下B2B公司(1688)國內外註冊用戶超過2,400萬，而集團旗下另外的分支亦發展迅速，如在國內C2C市場份額超過80%的淘寶網，6月底擁有4,000萬的會員和數百萬的店舖，支付寶公司也擁有了5,200萬註冊用戶。

Nielsen tracks TV content on the web through digital watermarks

2007-12-07T04:52:00.000-08:00

Clickz - Though a partnership with Digimarc, Nielsen will use digital watermarking and fingerprinting in online content to provide reporting, and tracking on copyrighted materials. The digital watermarking service is called Nielsen Digital Media Manager.

In addition to tracking for copyright security and compliance, the watermark allows clients to realize the value of their digital content, promote the expansion of Internet-distirbuted media, and facilitate a number of revenue streams. Those include ad-pairing, e-commerce, royalty reporting. Nielsen plans to start by tracking TV content online, but expects to expand to other online content categories and media types.

"We started with TV because we already do the necessary encoding - or watermarking - when we measure TV ratings. The last thing a video stream sees before it leaves a TV station is a Nielsen encoder that puts a digital code on the programming that our home meters can read. That same code can be used to measure TV programming when it is posted on the Internet," said Nielsen company spokesperson Gary Holmes.

Full story here.

Ask readers to tell you what stories to cover, investigate

2007-12-07T04:49:00.000-08:00

The Editors' Weblog - The BBC Magazine asks, "How can papers afford to give away DVDs?" The answer as attributed to media critic Roy Greenslade: "They can't, at least not if they want to make money."

The article goes on to say that DVD giveaways and like promotions are mere ploys for "very short circulation spikes." Where "Editors hope people will buy the paper for the DVD and become loyal readers, leading to long-term stability," most people seem to be buying the paper solely for the giveaway. "It's getting to the stage in a few years where you'll get a free newspaper with your CD or DVD," continued Greenslade. So from this article, it seems that giveaways are not the answer to maintaining or attracting more of a readership.

But the format of the article itself gives insight into a way in which newspapers could attract readers.

It was printed on the BBC's website in a section called "Who, What, Why?" which allows reader feedback and questions, some of which are answered by the BBC for further investigation into a story.

Feedback for this particular article, for instance, included a suggestion that the BBC do a piece on the DVD retail market. Some was quite telling of how consumers feel about newspaper promotions; people get annoyed at having to watch the advertising at the beginning of the DVD and real news readers hate finding their paper full of inserts and giveaways. One said straight out, "Perhaps they should stop giving away freebies and start concentrating on content."

That is what it comes down to: is a newspaper's function to publish outstanding content or is it to sell papers through any means necessary? Maybe by including their readers in such a way as the BBC has done, newspapers will improve content by learning what their readers or potential readers really want and will conversely be able to sell more papers through this attention to public desire instead of luring them briefly with giveaways.

Adwords adds local listings

2007-12-07T04:40:00.000-08:00

Clickz - Google is looking to spice up its local business ad listings with a new user interface design called AdWords Local PlusBox. The updated design will give ads that are located above organic search results the ability to expand and display maps, addresses, phone numbers and driving directions to the business. Google doesn't plan on charging extra for the display features, but will continue to charge customers when a user clicks on a link to their landing page.

Full story here.

Online political spending rising rapidly

2007-12-07T04:37:00.000-08:00

ClickZ_- Spending by political advertisers on Internet ads, marketing and promotional efforts is poised this election cycle to be 150 percent higher than the last presidential election cycle. However, although a new PQ Media report shows it could hit $73 million by next November, Web revenues from political advertisers are still a drop in the bucket.

The preliminary Political Media Buying 2008 forecast from PQ estimates $4.5 billion will be spent by political advertisers in '08 and leading up to this year's presidential primaries on all media measured, including broadcast and cable TV, direct mail, PR, newspaper and Internet. The estimated $73 million sliver expected to go towards the Web represents a measly 1.6 percent of the whole.

Growth is steady, though. In the 2004 presidential election cycle, political advertisers spent $29 million on the Web, and during the '06 congressional elections, they put $40 million online. While the numbers are relatively small compared to broadcast TV and direct mail, the anticipated 150 percent leap between the '04 and '08 presidential elections -- when typically far more money is spent compared to non-presidential election cycles -- is a clear sign that the Internet is gaining momentum when it comes to political spending.

Online media spending doesn't mean just display or search advertising. As reported by PQ in 2006, the majority of dollars spent by political advertisers on the Web will go towards e-mail marketing efforts, the method of choice for online fundraising pitches.

Full story here.

Microsoft releases new tools for online advertisers

2007-12-04T23:26:00.000-08:00

Bloggingstocks - Microsoft will be rolling out new tools and services soon to encourage more internet advertisers and producers to create better online ad campaigns, the software giant said this week. Naturally, the new tools will work with Microsoft's adCenter and Live Search environments.

Full story here.

Canadian e-commerce heating up

2007-12-04T23:17:00.000-08:00

Once cool to Internet shopping, Canadian consumers are going online in record numbers.

emarketer - For a number of years no one paid much attention to Canadian B2C e-commerce. There simply wasn’t much of a market there.

Now all online retailers are looking to the north.

”The Canadian dollar’s rise against the US dollar has led to a surge in Canadian cross-border online shopping,” says Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new report, Canada B2C E-Commerce: The Barriers Melt. “It is providing a big boost to home-grown Canadian e-commerce, too.”

Even before the currency shift, there was evidence of Canadian B2C e-commerce taking off. In April 2007, Statistics Canada reported that online retail sales in Canada grew by a healthy 70% in 2006.

”eMarketer estimates that this year Canadians will spend C$15.7 billion (US$14.7 billion) online on products and services such as online travel reservations and event tickets,” says Mr. Grau. “We also include purchases made with foreign Web retailers, the majority of which are on US sites.”

By 2011, online spending will more than double, reaching C$37.2 billion (U$30.2 billion).

”Of course, Canadian B2C e-commerce still has plenty of room to grow,” says Mr. Grau.

Even taking into account that Canada has one-ninth the population of the US, it is still a disproportionately small e-commerce market. Only 78% of Canadian online users are online shoppers, compared to nearly 85% of US users who shop online.

”In addition, the average Canadian online buyer will spend less than a US online buyer this year,” says Mr. Grau.

The major shift in the size of the Canadian B2C market will come as more Canadian retailers move online.

”Even now, only about 15% of retailers in Canada sell online,” says Mr. Grau. “But those that are taking the plunge say an online presence is critical to acquiring new customers.”

To find out more about what is causing the Canadian market to heat up, read the new eMarketer report, Canada B2C E-Commerce: The Barriers Melt.

Print and online hybrid will be the 'future newspaper'

2007-12-04T23:11:00.000-08:00

journalism.co.uk - Danish newspaper The Jutland Post has created a hybrid print and online edition to prepare itself for what it sees as the future of the digital newspaper.

The JP2, which was developed in partnership with Microsoft, is essentially an e-paper with live feeds that regularly and automatically update the content featured on the platform.

The technology is similar to that used by the New York Times Reader and The Daily Mail's e-paper, with a feed linking the Post's content management system with the JP2.

"For us it's a major step towards digital publishing. When the digital paper comes, we will be ready," Jens Nicolaisen, director of electronic media at the Jutland Post, told Journalism.co.uk.

"It [the feed] connects with the articles automatically, so we can generate the JP2 without any journalists or production staff.

"That means we are able to distribute the whole newspaper or different parts on any given platform in any different way."

The JP2, Nicolaisen added, offers a model for content distribution more tailored to readers' demands by combining elements of print, online and RSS, and allowing readers to read offline or print out a paper version.

However, it is limited to being currently available only to PC users.

"If you look at the audience as different reader segments, we want to be able to reach as many as possible," he said.

"With the regular PDF version of the newspaper, people like it, because they can recognise that this is how it is presented in the paper.

"But the problem with that e-paper is that it's not using the technical possibilities that you have in the computer."

Full story here.

AFP buys stake in citizen journalism site Citizenside

2007-12-04T23:00:00.000-08:00

journalism.co.uk - Agence France-Presse (AFP) has bought a 30% stake in the citizen journalism platform Scooplive, which will be renamed Citizenside.

AFP has stated that it will not take part in editorial decisions on the site, which allows users to publish and sell films and photos for commission.

According to a press statement from the agency, it is hoped the investment will allow AFP to 'get closer to readers' and to bring the site's content to AFP's customers for use in their own news production.

"This is for us a purely commercial and technical experiment in the Web 2.0 field, to help our clients, mainly in the media field," said Pierre Louette, AFP chairman.

AFP's investment was matched by another French firm IAM, but the remaining shares for the site, which was set up in 2006, will stay with the platform's creators.

"Citizenside will capitalize on its founders and new partners experience to create a link between two worlds: professional journalism and amateur reporting. We will thus be able to offer good quality documents in real time," said Matthieu Stefani, a founder of Scooplive, in a news release from Citizenside.com.

AP moves towards all-digital platform

2007-12-04T22:55:00.001-08:00

NYT - After a decade of watching newspapers and rival wire services shrink, The Associated Press, the 161-year-old news cooperative, is refitting itself to handle the 24-hour news cycle it helped create.

“You have to adjust to the marketplace,” said Jim Kennedy, The A.P.’s vice president for strategic planning. “The new generation of consumers has completely different habits.”

To feed those habits and manage the news cycle more efficiently, The A.P. will change the way it files, edits and distributes stories, opening at least four regional editing hubs as part of a plan it calls AP2.0.

It is also expanding its multimedia packages for entertainment, business and sports reports. And the company is moving toward an all-digital platform it calls the “Digital Cooperative.”

The changes, The A.P. believes, will counter what hampered some of its rivals, like Dow Jones Newswires and Reuters, which, over the last decade, have cut their staffs as revenues have fallen.

Kathleen Carroll, The A.P.’s executive editor, said the company’s responsibility was to “preserve our future, so that we can continue to provide news from remote places,” and to “rev up our journalism” to make it compelling to customers.

The idea behind the regional hubs, which mimic an overhaul of The A.P.’s foreign operations earlier in the decade, is to reduce editing gridlock at its major filing desks, including that in New York. The regional hubs will handle coverage in their areas, and the New York desk will focus on “the stories that are the tip top of the day,” Ms. Carroll said.

Mr. Kennedy said another goal was to get editors in the regional bureaus back into reporting, which would increase the amount of content, and to reduce the number of people who work on an article during a news cycle.

Full story here.

CRTC looks at online broadcasting

2007-12-04T22:50:00.000-08:00

mediacaster - In remarks at the nextMedia Conference last week, CRTC Commissioner Rita Cugini outlined the Commission's particular interest in the online audio and audiovisual services that deliver experiences similar to conventional television and radio, part of the CRTC New Media Project Initiative.

Commissioner Cugini noted that the CRTC has not made it mind on the challenging issues facing the new media industry in Canada, nor does in know how continuing initiatives to address the situation will turn out.

Commissioner Cugini mentioned the three questions the CRTC is trying to answer: First, is it necessary to develop measures to ensure that broadcasting delivered over the internet and through mobile devices contributes to the objectives of the Broadcasting Act? Second, if it is necessary, can it be done? And finally, if it can be done, how should it be done?

The CRTC first took a look at new media in 1999; in March of this year, it launched a new New Media Initiative, the first phase of which is now completed.

The meeting and industry conference in Toronto was an important part of the second phase, the Commission described, saying it will issue a report in 2008 followed by public hearings.

'NYT' to axe 12 newsroom jobs now, management cuts next year

2007-11-29T02:49:00.000-08:00

Editor and Publisher - Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, announced in a staff memo today that "there are going to be layoffs in the newsroom, for the first time in recent memory." He added that a "hiring freeze" will continue, with open positions filled internally, and next year "we also expect to eliminate a few management jobs in administrative areas."

For now, a dozen "support" workers will be getting the axe, but Keller said the paper has still been able "to avoid the kind of drastic staff cutbacks other news organizations have endured."

Keller noted, "As we approach 2008, it is clear that the newsroom is going to have to do even more to tighten spending, and to help the publisher and the Times Company meet the difficult financial challenges facing our industry. While we are committed to retaining our competitive muscle, we will be facing some tough choices about where to save ...

"Today we notified the Newspaper Guild that about a dozen support positions within the newspaper are being eliminated. We will, for example, be closing the Recording Room as well as trimming a number of clerical and secretarial jobs. The people in those jobs will receive the severance they are entitled under the Guild contract ...

"As we move into 2008, we will be rethinking coverage priorities and how we use our space and our people, but always in ways that preserve what The Times does best. In the future, as in the past few months while these matters were under review, we have worked closely with our partners on the business side, with a single shared ambition: to seek cutbacks and reductions that are as strategically focused as possible, and do nothing to damage our core journalism."

New blog a resource for professional photographers

2007-11-29T02:47:00.000-08:00

mediacaster - Embassy Pro Books, an Oakville, ON-based publisher of photo books for professional photographers and the creative community, has launched a new blog as part of their continuing support for photographers.

The new blog can be found at http://ProfessionalPhotoBooks.com and features a wealth of information that professional photographers can use to enhance their careers and share ideas.
For years, Embassy Pro Books has offered the photographer has complete artistic control of the style, layout, and format of the photo book as well as an online photo album so that their images can tell the story.

A spokesman for Embassy Pro Books said, “The new blog is a natural progression in our ongoing efforts to provide professional photographers with all the resources they need to grow their businesses and enhance their creativity. The blog posts will be written by professional photographers specifically for pro photographers and they are encouraged to post comments and share their ideas.”

The blog posts cover a wide range of categories and target the challenges that photographers commonly face as they grow their businesses.

Recent blog entries included topics such as:
•Include Photo Books in your Marketing Plan
•Planning your Photo Book Layout puts you in Control
•Customized Photo Book Marketing: Set Yourself Apart
•10 Ideas for Printed Photo Books

Top Canadian web rankings for October 2007

2007-11-29T02:27:00.000-08:00

comScore release - comScore released its October rankings of the largest and fastest-growing Internet properties in Canada based on data from the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service. Microsoft Sites ranked as the most-visited property, while the beginning of hockey season made NHL Network the top-gaining property for the month.

“Hockey season is always a popular time of year here in Canada, and we’re seeing that reflected in the surge of activity to NHL Network in October,” said Brent Bernie, president of comScore Media Metrix, comScore Canada.

Top 10 Properties for October

Microsoft Sites captured the top position in Canada with 22.2 million visitors, followed closely by Google Sites with 22 million visitors. Yahoo! Sites, with 16.8 million visitors, ranked third for the month. Social networking site Facebook.com continued to grow, gaining 4% to reach 14.4 million of the 23.7 million Canadians online.

“Facebook has really surged in popularity among Canadians during the past year,” continued Mr. Bernie. “The site has grown from about 1 million visitors last October to 14 million visitors this year, positioning it as the top social networking site and fourth largest property overall in Canada.”

The largest increases in the top 10 were experienced by Wikipedia and Amazon Sites, both gaining 10% from the previous month.

Top 10 Properties by Canadian Unique Visitors*
October 2007 vs. September 2007
Total Canada – Home and Work Locations**
Source: comScore World Metrix
Property	Total Unique Visitors (000)
Property	Sep-07	Oct-07	% Change
Total Internet : Total Audience	23,590	23,678	0
Microsoft Sites	22,094	22,247	1
Google Sites	21,878	22,040	1
Yahoo! Sites	16,321	16,768	3
FACEBOOK.COM	13,841	14,428	4
eBay	13,318	13,876	4
Time Warner Network	12,149	12,259	1
Wikipedia Sites	10,796	11,846	10
Yellow Pages Group	9,185	9,998	9
Amazon Sites	8,857	9,719	10
Canoe Network	7,743	8,273	7

*Ranking based on the top 100 Canadian properties in October 2007.
** Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Top-Gaining Properties for October

With excitement surrounding the start of the season, the NHL Network experienced a flood of traffic, growing 44% to nearly 4 million Internet visitors, making it the top-gaining property in October.

Propelled by growth at video site Crackle.com, Sony Online jumped 27% to 2.6 million visitors. Video-sharing site Dailymotion also saw gains, growing 14% to nearly 2 million visitors.

Glam Media, which has experienced strong growth throughout the year in both Canada and the U.S., continued its upward trend with a 19% increase to 3.3 million visitors.

Top 10 Gaining Properties by Canadian Unique Visitors*
October 2007 vs. September 2007
Total Canada – Home and Work Locations**
Source: comScore World Metrix
Property	Total Unique Visitors (000)
Property	Sep-07	Oct-07	% Change
Total Internet : Total Audience	23,590	23,678	0
The NHL Network	2,731	3,931	44
Sony Online	2,066	2,626	27
Demand Media	2,338	2,876	23
Glam Media	2,813	3,336	19
General Motors	1,670	1,979	19
Disney Online	1,984	2,337	18
Branchez-Vous! Sites	2,061	2,405	17
WordPress	3,298	3,809	16
Answers.com Sites	2,727	3,144	15
Dailymotion	1,744	1,989	14

*Ranking based on the top 100 Canadian properties in October 2007.
** Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Los Angeles Times opens up newsroom with readers' blog

2007-11-29T02:24:00.000-08:00

Journalism.co.uk - The Los Angeles Times has launched a new blog to open up newsroom practices to its readers.

The Readers' Representative Journal will use a Q&A style to put readers' comments and questions about the paper's online and print editions to reporters and editors.

Regular features on the blog will include 'Whatever Happened to…', where readers can ask for updates on past stories, and 'Ask a Staffer', which will let the audience query how editorial decisions are made.

In addition users can view a staff directory and details of the title's ethics guidelines.

"The ongoing changes reflect The Times' overarching goal of becoming a more transparent and integrated news organization," said James O'Shea, Los Angeles Times editor.

"Most important, we're further opening the lines of communication with our readers and using new ways to make the newsroom more accessible."

The new blog will be hosted by the paper's readers' representative Jamie Gold and assistant readers' representative Kent Zelas.

Mobile advertising 101: tips for beginners

2007-11-29T02:22:00.000-08:00

ClickZ - Advertisers rushing into the mobile arena should take heed.

Maria Mandel, executive director of digital innovation at Ogilvy New York, advises them to crawl first by deploying SMS messaging; walk, by using banner advertisements or building a mobile WAP site; and then run by offering video or downloadable applications to consumers.

Mandel was one of seven industry executives who offered up mobile advertising tips at an educational program in New York last week called Mobile Ad Degree. The program, attended by over 100 people, was the brainchild of Ad Infuse and M:Metrics, two businesses specializing in the mobile advertising segment.

Mobile advertising solutions aren't limited to an advertiser's competency, and each component can be layered into a multi-message campaign. A short code (define) displayed in a TV, print, or outdoor advertisement invites users to participate and learn more about a product or service, or take part in an activity. Marketers then respond to the short code request with an SMS message. The response can contain a coupon, promotion details, a link to a WAP site, or instructions on how to access or download content.

According to M:Metrics VP of Consulting and Senior Analyst Evan Neufeld, 43 percent of U.S. mobile phone users send text or SMS messages, and an even higher percentage communicate through SMS in Europe. High adoption makes it an easy entry point to a mobile campaign.

Display and paid search advertising is another simple way to enter the mobile advertising channel. Advertisers can buy ads on a network such as Ad Infuse or Third Screen Media. Search and paid listings are bought through networks including Medio, JumpTap, and even Google, which recently began porting AdWords listings to its mobile search product.

Whether it’s a landing page or a fully-robust Web site, companies use the WAP protocol so their Web sites can be viewed on handsets and other wireless devices. Still, an even richer way for advertisers to engage consumers through mobile is through downloadable applications. These are programs that often provide convenient access to information, for instance in the form of local directories like Ingenio's TouchCall for the iPhone, or an entertainment vehicle including games and video content.

"You can't approach mobile like the Internet or other media," said Mandel. It's a personal device. Some of the best ad campaigns offer utility in the form of a useful application or some kind of entertainment such as video or a game, she said. Both utility and entertainment were included in a campaign for DHL created by Mandel and her team at Ogilvy earlier this year.

There are many practical uses for SMS. In one instance, Ansible Mobile enabled U.K.-based retailer Argos to let consumers waiting for out-of-stock items text a product-specific keyword to the retailer's short code and be notified when the store restocks the item. Additionally, Argos sends coupons offering discounts to customers who've asked for out-of-stock products, effectively growing its list for future communication.

One drawback to advertisers looking into mobile: Carriers don't provide data that metrics-minded advertisers crave to target messaging. Data include demographic and psychographic information, location, and other useful information.

Marketers beyond the trial stage can collect and tag information on consumer behavior and preferences, along with simple demographics to create long-term programs to keep consumers engaged with new products or promotions.

"Clients see mobile as a long-term CRM [customer relationship management] play," said Kevin Granath, VP of business development at Ansible. He works with clients to develop user profiles, segment, and send SMS messages to smaller, more targeted groups. His clients use a decision tree to more effectively target, enabling marketers to reach consumer segments much in the same way as triggered or segmented e-mail marketing campaigns online.

Products on store shelves and real-world sponsorships lend opportunities for mobile tie-ins. "There's unused inventory and promotional space," said Granath, referring to product packaging. "Start a conversation when picking up a bag of chips." By placing a short code or message linking to a mobile campaign, a marketer reaches consumers at the moment they pick up a product.

Other marketers have created mobile campaigns for the duration of a sponsored concert to provide updates or enrich the experience for attendees. Consumers become involved while physically at the event, or take part in an event through mobile content even when they're not present.

Ad Infuse and M:Metrics plan to put on their Mobile Ad Degree event in other cities; the next one will take place in London in a few weeks.

U.S. wireless subscriptions surge past 250 million

2007-11-29T02:17:00.000-08:00

ClickZ - Wireless subscribers in the U.S. have surpassed 250 million, according to a report released by industry group CTIA.

Cell phone subscriptions reached 250 million in just over 20 years and increased at a rate of 352 percent since 1997. In December 2002, the U.S. had 141 million wireless subscribers, 55 million in 1997, 11 million in 1992, and 91,600 in 1985, not long after mobile phones were introduced.

CTIA cites research from the FCC, which states 98 percent of Americans have at least four service providers to choose from. The same source reports mobile high-speed subscriptions increased by roughly 600 percent in 2006 to reach 22 million. Mobile wireless subscribers made up 60 percent of all new high-speed lines. Increased adoption in high-speed wireless lines signals the adoption of mobile Web applications.

CTIA is an international association serving the wireless telecommunication industry, representing carriers, manufacturers, and wireless Internet providers. The association gathered data on the U.S. subscriber base from carriers and other sources, including the FCC.

Finish publisher fuels newspapers with user content

2007-11-29T02:15:00.000-08:00

European Journalism Centre - Finnish news publisher Sanoma Digital has launched a user-generated news website that also uses an open-source journalism platform to gather material for a series of weekly freesheet newspapers. Launched last month, Vartti.fi is a fledgling project that allows users to break news by uploading multimedia content direct to the site.

Vartti editors also publish story threads on the website and ask for multimedia submissions from the readers - setting them deadlines for their contributions. The stories are then published in a series of ultra-local weekly papers distributed in and around the Helsinki area.

‘With the Jokela High School shooting we had one of the first pictures in Finland [from the scene] which was taken on a mobile phone, we then sold it on to publications in Norway and Sweden,’ Janne Kaijarvi, editor-in-chief of Vartti, told Journalism.co.uk.

The site also broke news about a train fire in Helsinki, Kaijarvi added, with reporters first finding out about the incident when a passenger uploaded a picture to the site from inside the train. Contributors are paid for pictures that make it into the print edition, usually in the region of 50 euros, for which Sanoma then takes the copyright.

Sanoma publishes seven local editions of Vartti in Helsinki and a further seven in other areas. Vartti.fi is just one of five news site start-ups which have been launched by Sanoma Digital, one of the largest Nordic publishers, since the start of the year.

Sample rates for freelance writing

2007-11-17T23:30:00.000-08:00

Useful info for me from writers.ca :)

"What should I charge for my work"
or "How much do I pay a writer?"

For both freelance writers and those that hire them, that frequently asked question lacks a simple answer. Fees charged by professional writers vary according to the work involved. Many factors affect payment including:

* the type of assignment (e.g., magazine article, speech, marketing report)
* the writer's skill, background and experience
* rights licensed to the client
* the number of words and/or time the project requires
* the number of interviews and research needed
* the types of rights being purchased

PWAC's rate guidelines are based on fee information we have collected from PWAC members across Canada and from various industries that regularly hire writers on a freelance/contract basis.

PWAC's information reveals large pay variations between markets and locations. For instance, writers tend to earn more in large cities than in other areas of the country. There are also large variations between writers: a very experienced, established writer can charge more for her work than someone just starting out. Therefore, the rates below are general guidelines only. You'll need to negotiate the exact fee depending on the particulars of the assignment.

Advertising Material
Copy/Scripts/News Releases
$350 to $500 per page
$750 to $1,000 per project for brochures
$75 to $150 per hour

Advertorials
(articles commissioned by advertisers)
$0.40 to $2 per word
$100 to $3,000 per article
$40 to $100 per hour

Corporate/Business Writing
Reports/ Marketing Plans/ Technical Writing
$1 to $2 per word
$300 to $12,000 per project
$50 to $125 per hour

Editing
Varies according to publication/project
$30 to $60 per hour
$500 to $20,000 per project

Ghost Writing
Articles
Generally 2-3 times the usual rate

Books
$10,000 to $50,000 flat fee
Entire advance + 50% of royalties

Government Writing
News Releases/Studies/Reports
$1 to $3 per word
$500 to $100,000 per project
$50 to $125 per hour

Newsletters
Writing only; layout extra
$0.30 to $1.50 per word
$400 to $6,000 per issue
$50 to $80 per hour

Newspaper Writing
Large Daily Newspapers
$0.30 to $1.00 per word
$250 to $2,500 per article
$330 to $1,250 per column

Smaller Community Newspapers
$0.10 to $0.50 per word
$75 to $1,000 per article
$75 to $500 per column

Online/Web Site Writing
Varies widely; "business" sites pay higher
$1 to $3 per word
$60 to $100 per hour

Periodical Writing
General Interest/Consumer Magazines
$1.00 to $2 per word
$500 to $10,000 per article
$400 to $1,500 per column

Trade/Special Interest Magazines
$0.30 to $2 per word
$500 to $4,000 per article
$300 to $1,000 per column

Scripts
Radio (highly variable)
$40 to $80 per minute of script
Television (highly variable)
$60 to $130 per minute of script

Speech Writing
$500 to $8,000 per speech
$60 to $130 per hour

Teaching/Instruction
$25 to $80 per hour
$200 to $800 per day

Translation/Adaptation
Literary
$0.10 to $0.20 per word
Other
$0.25 to $0.60 per word
$40 to $80 per hour

User-gen news complement MSM, not replacing it: study

2007-09-15T01:02:00.000-07:00

The Latest News Headlines—Your Vote Counts
September 12, 2007

Journalism.org - If someday we have a world without journalists, or at least without editors, what would the news agenda look like? How would citizens make up a front page differently than professional news people?

If a new crop of user-news sites—and measures of user activity on mainstream news sites—are any indication, the news agenda will be more diverse, more transitory, and often draw on a very different and perhaps controversial list of sources, according to a new study.

The report, released by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), compared the news agenda of the mainstream media for one week with the news agenda found on a host of user-news sites for the same period.

In a week when the mainstream press was focused on Iraq and the debate over immigration, the three leading user-news sites—Reddit, Digg and Del.icio.us—were more focused on stories like the release of Apple’s new iphone and that Nintendo had surpassed Sony in net worth, according to the study.

The report also found subtle differences in three other forms of user-driven content within one site: Yahoo News’ Most Recommended, Most Viewed, and Most Emailed.

The question of whether citizens define the news differently than professionals is becoming increasingly relevant. It started with offering visitors a sense of what others found interesting: what news stories were most emailed and most viewed?

Soon, establishment news sites like CBSNews.com allowed users to make their own newscasts. Then, names like Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us emerged as virtual town squares that became a way to measure the pulse of what the web community finds most newsworthy, most captivating, or just amusing. The trend continues, as even Myspace, the social networking site popular among 20-somethings, has launched a news page (http://news.myspace.com).

Indeed, these user-driven sites have entered the news business, or perhaps more accurately, they have entered the news dissemination business. Reporting is not a part of their charge. Instead, they turn to others for content and then they bestow users with the task of deciding what makes it on the page.

What do individuals do with that power? What kind of events or issues do they choose to highlight? And how does it differ from the news the mainstream press offers?

To find out, PEJ took a snapshot of coverage from the week of June 24 to June 29, 2007, on three sites that offer user-driven news agendas: Digg, Del.icio.us and Reddit. In addition, the Project studied Yahoo News, an outlet that offers an editor-based news page and three different lists of user-ranked news: Most Recommended, Most Viewed, and Most Emailed. These sites were then compared with the news agenda found in the 48 mainstream news outlets contained in PEJ’s News Coverage Index.

A total of 644 stories from the three user-driven sites and Yahoo News’s three most popular pages were coded for the study and then compared to 1,395 stories from the same time period in PEJ’s News Coverage Index. The report first compared the content of the user-sites to that of the mainstream press. Next, it compared the three user-sites to each other. Finally, the study looked at the three user-oriented pages on Yahoo News, comparing them to Yahoo’s editor-selected news page, to the other user-sites, and to each other.

Some key findings include:

* The news agenda of the three user-sites that week was markedly different from that of the mainstream press. Many of the stories users selected did not appear anywhere among the top stories in the mainstream media coverage studied. And there was often little in the way of follow-up. Most stories on the user-news sites appeared only once, never to be repeated again in the week we studied.

* The sources user news sites draw on are strikingly different from the mainstream media. Seven in ten stories on the user sites come either from blogs or Web sites such as YouTube and WebMd that do not focus mostly on news.

* The three user news sites differed from one another in subtle ways. Reddit was the most likely to focus on political events from Washington, such as coverage of Vice President Cheney; Digg was particularly focused on the release of Apple’s new iPhone; Del.icio.us had the most fragmented mix of stories and the least overlap with the News Index.

* On Yahoo News—even when picking from a limited list of stories Yahoo editors had already pared down—users’ top stories only rarely matched those of the news professionals.

* There were mostly similarities in what people are most likely to email each other versus what they recommend or view on Yahoo News. But there were some differences. Most Recommended stories focused more on “news you can use” such as advice from the World Health Organization to exercise one’s legs during long flights; the Most Viewed stories were often breaking news, more sensational in nature, with a heavy dose of crime and celebrity; and the Most Emailed stories were more diverse, with a mix of the practical and the oddball.

* Despite claims that the Web would internationalize consumers’ news diets, coverage across the three user-news sites focused more on domestic events and less on news from abroad than the mainstream media that week. Yahoo News, both on its main news page and three most popular pages, meanwhile, stood out for being decidedly more international that week.

In short, the user-news agenda, at least in this one-week snapshot, was more diverse, yet also more fragmented and transitory than that of the mainstream news media. This does not mean necessarily that users disapprove or reject the mainstream news agenda. These user sites may be supplemental for audiences. They may gravitate to them in addition to, rather than instead of, traditional venues. But the agenda they set is nonetheless quite different. This initial report is based on a limited sample—a one week snapshot—to get a first sense of differences and similarities in user-driven and mainstream media. PEJ intends in a future study to delve further into this area of research.

The Big Picture

Past research by PEJ has found that week-to-week mainstream media tend to focus on a handful of major events that they monitor continuously over the course of a week or a month. Whether it be floods in the Midwest, the death of Anna Nicole Smith or debate over the President’s “surge” policy in Iraq, a sizable amount of airtime or space is often spent on just a handful of “big” stories of the week.

The week of June 24 was no different. There were no major breaking events demanding special media attention, but a handful of stories emphasizing political events in Washington and conflicts abroad dominated.

During that week, the immigration debate led the coverage, accounting for 10% of all news stories in the News Coverage Index. That was followed by coverage of a major fire near Lake Tahoe (6%), the failed bombings in the United Kingdom (6%), events on the ground in Iraq (6%), Supreme Court decisions (5%), the 2008 presidential election (4%), flooding in Texas (4%), the policy debate in the capitol over the war in Iraq (4%), U.S. domestic terrorism (3%), and the missing pregnant woman in Ohio (3%). In all, the top ten stories that week accounted for 51% of all the stories in the Index.

In the user-generated sites, these stories were barely visible. Overall, just 5% of the stories captured on these three sites overlapped with the ten most widely-covered stories in the Index (13% for Reddit, 4% for Digg, and 0% for Del.icio.us).

The immigration debate in Congress, the biggest single story of the week in the mainstream media, appeared just once as a top-ten story on Reddit, and not at all on Digg and Del.icio.us. Similarly, the war in Iraq accounted for 10% of all stories in the Index and seven percent in the Yahoo-user material. Across the three user-news sites, it amounted to about 1%.

What were the favorite stories on the user-driven sites? For the most part, there were no dominant ones. The only story with any real traction was the release of the Apple iPhone, and that was just on one site (it accounted for 16% of the stories on Digg that week). Otherwise, users put forth a mix of diverse and unconnected news events from day to day. On the morning of June 26 on Digg, for example, a story about intelligent design topped the list followed by a story about a woman suing record labels for malicious prosecution. But by 5pm that day, both had vanished from the top ten.

Rank better on Yahoo with dynamic URL rewriting

2007-08-21T12:24:00.001-07:00

Search Engine Journal - Big news from the Yahoo Site Explorer team as they have announced a new dynamic URL rewriting service for sites which use multiple variables in their URL strings which may damage their ranking potential within Yahoo Search, even if the site is full of good relevant content and has lots of natural incoming links.

Site owners can now alert Yahoo about the dynamic parameters used within their URL strings. Yahoo Search can then ignore the variables and automatically rewrite the URL to make it more search friendly.

How does this help site owners? Yahoo says the rewriting of dynamic URLs effects everything from the crawling of a site to the distribution of link juice:

* A more efficient crawl of your site, with fewer duplicate URLs being crawled.
* Better and deeper site coverage, as we’ll be able to use our crawler capacity to find and index more new content on your site.
* More unique content discovered, as we’ll handle more dynamic parameters in your URLs (if you remove the content-neutral dynamic parameters).
* Fewer chances of crawler traps.
* Cleaner and easier-to-read URLs displayed in the search results.
* Better aggregation of link juice to your sites, which can help your pages rank better.

More on Dynamic URL Rewriting via the Yahoo Search Blog.

cannibalistic URLs

2007-08-19T12:39:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Journal - When you build a web site, you create paths to certain pages. Most web developers will put those pages in specific folders like: www.example.com/press-releases/ or www.example.com/store/ to give the site a logical structure. Unfortunately, depending on a slew of technical stuff like servers, file extensions, redirects and internal site links, that pretty path can end up looking like a number of unique paths to both users and search engines even though they’re really the same:

www.example.com/press-releases/
example.com/press-releases/

www.example.com/press-releases/default.aspx
example.com/press-releases/default.aspx
www.example.com/press-releases/?id=1
example.com/press-releases/?id=1

Why is this a problem?

Isn’t this just ugly code to some standards-compliant web freaks?

It’s a problem because when a link goes to that page (either from your site or another site) and it uses different paths (through a mistake or technical error), that path is seen by the search engines as unique pages. And when Google determines page rank from links to your page, if they find multiple pages, you could be splitting your best possible ranking.

Let’s use Play-Doh to demonstrate the principle.

If you have three page paths:

example.com/default.aspx
example.com/default.aspx?id=1
WWW.Example.com/Default.aspx

The first one might have just one or two links to it and a PR of 1. The second might have a few more links and a PR of 2. And let’s pretend the third has even more links with a PR of 3.

Unfortunately, page rank isn’t simple arithmetic, but for the sake of this discussion, if you could make all of those links go to the “same” page, you would be channeling greater link equity to one central location. This could potentially result in a PR of a big, beautiful 6, which should mean increased rankings.

How do you find out if you’re cannibalizing your page rank

First things first… open your website in a browser and type in the domain as www.example.com. Then type in example.com without the “www.” If the domains stay the same when you type either one, you need to designate one version over the other. For detailed instructions on how to do this, read Chris Hooley’s article, Canonicalize with .htacces. Your goal is to make one version redirect to the other.

Now that, that biggie is out of the way, you need to choose how you want your pages to look. I recommend removing extensions entirely if you are using folders (e.g. www.example.com/example/ versus www.example.com/example/index.htm). This is for a maintenance reason, but I am also partial to keeping pages in the root directory as much as possible, which means you have to show an extension like www.example.com/example.htm.

Whatever you choose to do, make sure you stay consistent in how you code your internal links. What I mean is that if you create a path on your site to www.example.com/example/, do not make the page www.example/example in another area of your site. This is one of the few times in life when it’s okay to play favorites!

You should also control the amount of variables appended to your path. Often, for tracking or programming reasons, variables are appended to URLs that can make your paths appear different. Try to limit them and again, be consistent.

To test for variables and path mistakes, create a Google Webmaster Central account and navigate to Webmaster Tools. Then go to the Links tab (after you have verified the site) and scroll through both the internal and external links. You should be able to easily eye serious issues. I also like to use Xenu Link Sleuth, which detects broken links, but also displays a list of paths on your site.

And, that’s about it, though there’s probably a lot I did not cover either from my own misunderstanding or tiredness. Either way, I got to play with Play-Doh and talk about page rank. It doesn’t get much better than that!

Online ads taking over

2007-08-17T13:31:00.001-07:00

The Internet Outsider demonstrates how the web is causing a shift in advertising dollars, according to the Web Strategist.

“US advertising revenue at 4 big online media companies–Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), AOL (TWX), and MSN (MSFT)–grew by $1.3 billion in Q2, or 42%.

US advertising revenue at 15 big television, newspaper, magazine, radio, and outdoor companies (Time Warner, Viacom, CBS, etc.) shrank by $280 million in Q2, or 3%.”

42% online vs -3% traditional

Read the bottom line on this spreadsheet analysis. Google is growing hand over fist at 96% while NYT has a decrease by 6%.

Online video will dominate: forecast

2007-08-13T15:04:00.000-07:00

eMarketer - Television networks, film studios, independent content owners, Web portals, social media sites, technology providers, online stores, brand marketers and consumers are all joining the Internet video revolution. They are changing the way digital content is created, distributed, consumed and monetized.

The Online Video report analyzes and compares the online video delivery channels that are creating both uncertainty and a sense of opportunity among media professionals.

Some players are fearful that the widespread availability of video content on the Internet will threaten the TV and film industries. Others see the potential to increase revenues through a variety of business models, including ad-supported streaming, pay-to-own downloads, subscription services and online rentals as a boon.

eMarketer projects that by 2011, 86.6% of the US Internet population will consume online video, up from 62.8% in 2006.

In raw numbers, that means the number of viewers will rise from 114 million in 2006 to 183 million in 2011.

Key questions the "Online Video" report answers:

What is the size and projected growth of the online video audience?

What are the leading types of online video content?

Which business models will prevail for video on the Internet?

How will the widespread availability of video on the Web affect TV viewing?

What are the top video content Internet sites?

Which devices do consumers prefer for viewing video online?

And many others...

eMarketer Reports—On-Target and Up-to-Date

The Online Video report aggregates the latest data from marketing and communications researchers with eMarketer numbers, projections and analysis to provide the information you need to make the right business decisions—right now.

Online Advertising to Surpass Newspaper Advertising by 2011

2007-08-07T09:18:00.000-07:00

Forecast: Internet Expected To Exceed All Other Ad Media By 2011

Private equity and investment firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) put out a new ad spending forecast, covered in MediaPost and the Financial Times. Driven by audience migration, the US Internet is anticipated to capture $61.98 billion and become the top ad medium in 2011. Traditional media will show slow, low single-digit growth while alternative media will grow at a compound annual rate of 17.4 percent during the forecast period.

According to the MediaPost write-up of the VSS findings, consumers are spending less time with media overall and less time with "push" vs. "pull" media in particular:

At the same time, the consumer migration to digital media--which require less time investment than traditional media counterparts (think 3-minute YouTube clips versus 30-minute TV shows)--has spawned a year-over-year decline in the amount of time consumers spent with media, VSS researchers say. The tally came in at 3,530 hours in 2006, a per-capita decrease of 0.5%. It's the first time since 1997, researchers say, that such a behavior has occurred.

Consumers are also migrating away from ad-supported media and spending more time with media they support, according to the VSS Forecast. Consumers spent an average of 1,631 hours in 2006 with consumer-supported media, such as the Internet and video games--a gain of 19.8% compared to 2001. Time spent with ad-supported media, such as broadcast television and newspapers, has fallen 6.3% since 2001 to 1,899 hours per person.

While forecasts are often inflated and make assumptions that don't come to pass as quickly as expected, VSS claims its forecasts are historically very accurate:

The VSS Forecast also features the industry’s most accurate spending forecasts, producing a margin of error of +/- 2% for 9 of the last 10 years. The margin of error for the 2006 forecasts was + 0.4%.

VSS projects paid search will reach roughly $8.7 billion by year end and $16.7 billion in 2011. The report also projects roughly $6 billion in local search and online yellow pages spending by 2011. All locally targeted online ad spending is expected to reach just over $19 billion by 2011.

Local Search Booms - Driving Offline Sales

2007-08-07T09:11:00.000-07:00

Need Hits - If you thought that local search is not affecting the way consumers shop offline then you would be mistaken! TMP Directional Marketing has released the results of a comScore study, revealing that 61% of local online searchers proceeded to purchase from a local business. Just under half made a phone call or visited the store offline, whilst only 6% made a purchase online!

While 33% of searchers still look to Yellow Pages for the majority of their local information, and 90% believe that print directories are "still a valuable source for shopping information." the majority (over 60%) of consumers use the internet to find local and business information. Half this number utilizes popular search engines like Google and Yahoo!, 17% choose to search Internet Yellow Pages (IYPs) and 13% use local search sites such as Citysearch, InsiderPages or Merchant Circle.

Despite the strong evidence, highlighting the benefits of investing in local search, Stuart McKelvey, CEO, TMP Directional Marketing, said that advertisers have been slow to embrace local search marketing efforts due to the lack of perceived value in driving purchases, and the cost of moving dollars from offline to online local directories. With only 6% of the 61% of local searchers actually purchasing online, and no tracking to link offline purchases to online searches, advertisers just aren't seeing the proven benefits of local search marketing.

"Online local search is a $9 billion market and growing. The consumer is there, and the opportunities for marketers to capture a share of this growth are huge," states McKelvey. Now is the time to invest in clever local search marketing to drive your offline sales!

Start your local search marketing with Local Search Listing. You provide us with your details. We submit your business to 46 major search engines and local directories, and create an optimized local webpage, displaying all your business information! Simple and smart local search marketing!

Toronto Star facing tough road but online taking on important role, CEO says

2007-08-02T06:31:00.000-07:00

CP - Despite its successful redesign, Canada's largest daily newspaper continues to face revenue challenges amid ongoing slippage in advertising, while online media has taken on a modest but increasingly important revenue-generating role, the head of Torstar Corp. said Wednesday.

The comments from a concerned Rob Prichard came even as Torstar (TSX:TS.B), owner of the Toronto Star and other media properties, released "solid" second quarter financial results showing overall profits climbing 15 per cent to $30.1 million or 38 cents a share.

"Our growth slowed in the second quarter despite year over year favourable cost comparisons," Prichard said in a conference call with analysts. "The second quarter was tougher than the first."

Three-month revenues rose 1.7 per cent to $397 million, with modest growth seen in newspapers, digital and at the Harlequin book publishing unit.

Prichard stressed the difficulties facing the Star, the country's biggest circulation paper, a trend he predicted would continue. Advertising linage fell 5.6 per cent for the quarter with ad rates barely eking out gains.

The "tough" revenue trends at the paper were offset by the discontinuance of the weekly Scoop, which cost the Star $3.1 million in 2006, and lower pension and newsprint costs, CFO David Holland said.

The redesign of the Toronto Star, which Prichard said has been "greeted with acclaim," will further yield significant savings in the order of $3 million a year because it will be printed on smaller pages.

Overall revenues for Torstar's newspaper and digital division climbed a scant 1.9 per cent to $281 million in the quarter compared with the year-before period.

At the same time, the newspaper's website torontostar.com is enjoying increased traffic and revenues as the company invests heavily in online media.

"Digital revenue for our newspaper and digital segment grew by about 50 per cent year over year, albeit on a modest base," Prichard said.

Although digital revenues accounted for just 4.3 per cent of the total in the quarter, that was still significantly ahead of the 2.8 per cent in 2006.

"This is an important achievement for securing our future," Prichard said.

Besides the Star, Torstar also owns the Hamilton Spectator and other papers in southern Ontario, including the Metroland community newspaper chain around the Toronto area.

The company's Harlequin division, publisher of popular romance novels, continued to perform well, especially in the North American series market.

"For the year as a whole, we expect Harlequin will deliver stable earnings despite the rising strength of the Canadian dollar as business growth offsets the foreign exchange headwinds," Prichard said.

In all, book publishing revenue was $116 million in the second quarter, up $1.4 million, including $900,000 favourable impact of foreign exchange.

On the Toronto Stock Exchange Tuesday, Torstar shares were off 15 cents at $21.85.

11 Ways to Boost Your Site’s Effectiveness using MyBlogLog

2007-07-31T17:42:00.000-07:00

YPN BLOG - Editor’s Note: When I asked MyBlogLog Community Manager, Robyn Tippins, last week to pen a post on how publishers can use MyBlogLog to drive traffic and keep their users engaged, she was on her way to the BlogHer conference in Chicago. So frantic was her schedule that I had little hope that I would actually see copy anytime soon. I needn’t have worried. Somehow, in between sessions, schmoozing, cocktail parties and late night runs to the 7-11 for more beer, she managed to bang out 11 useful and erudite tips you can use. Without further ado, let’s go straight to ‘em…

1. Make your Profile page deep
Don’t just fill in the basic information. Take time to make your profile page something that really communicates your personality. People are more likely to want to click through to your blog if they feel a connection to you. MyBlogLog is full of bloggers and site owners who want to find great sites. They are interested in networking, learning from you and in really making a friend. Make sure your page lists basic things like your location and your bio, but don’t forget to add your names on all the other social sites. People who share common interests and common online hangouts with a site owner feel as if they already know them. Making friends with your readers starts with a full profile page.

2. Use the search function
Look for people who share your interests. Check out their blog and let them know that you too like to ride horses or restore classic cars. Look for blogs that are similar in topic and find a few that you love. Subscribe to their RSS feeds and comment on their blogs. You’ll quickly realize that those people will usually come and bring the conversation back to your own blog.

3. Use your own picture on your avatar
While there’s something to be said for the safety of anonymity, readers seem to really like to see pictures of the authors they are reading. It also makes the Recent Readers widget show off a real community of real people. There’s nothing more fun that seeing that widget reflect the real look of your readers. It feels more concrete, tangible, than pictures of celebs and photos with your site’s name on it.

4. Stop posting your blankity-blank url
There’s no need to leave your url in any message on MyBlogLog. Your picture links back to your profile and if people are interested in what you have to say they’ll click through. People who send a URL in a message are often seen as “smarmy.” If you are doing this now, it doesn’t mean you are really smarmy, but it does mean you need to stop shouting for attention. You get more notice from people if they think you don’t need their attention, but deserve it. (Editor’s Note: I feel so dirty ’cause I just did that last week. Ouch!)

5. Don’t spam or attempt to game the system
Sure, if you are a reasonably talented programmer, any system can be leveraged illegally. However, people will rat you out with tags like Schmoe, with spam reports and by telling others of your behavior. And, once banned, it is rare that we offer a second chance. Don’t risk having your url and your name banned for pity traffic. Remember, when people visit your site and leave because it’s not a topic they are interested in, you gain absolutely no value. Spam traffic results in a larger load on your servers and no one caring long enough to read your content, much less pay attention to any advertising on your site.

6. Make your avatar attractive, hot even, but not racy
Due to a large outcry from our members, we’ve really cracked down on sexy avatars. Not only do you risk being banned if your image is outside of our image guidelines, you also run the risk of people clicking the red x themselves and banning you from appearing on their widget and on their pages. When people put our widget on their page we deeply appreciate the valuable real estate that has been entrusted to us. We never want to put them in a position that our widget brings unwelcome content to their site, their home. Sexy is OK, but cleavage, bathing suits and images designed to make someone, er, “excited” are out of place on a family-friendly site. Don’t make yourself invisible (i.e., get banned) on business blogs and family blogs just because you want attention.

7. Take advantage of the tags
Tags have been searchable now for a few weeks and by making sure that your keywords are on your page, you increase your chances of ranking highly on MyBlogLog for your chosen search terms. Plus, by taking a gander at the tags that you interest you, and who else has been tagged the same term, you immediately make MyBlogLog smaller and more intimate for you. With one click you can find ‘business bloggers’ and ‘gamers’ and dive into people who’ll likely become instant friends (and readers).

8. Give back
Spend some time in the MyBlogLog Users Group. Share your knowledge and gain instant credibility as a MyBlogLog expert. You’ll gain friends, readers and people will appreciate your generosity.

9. Make sure your RSS feed is valid
At feedvalidator.org, you can check to see if your feed passes the test. If it doesn’t, you may find that it doesn’t update properly on MyBlogLog. Take the time to make sure it validates so the visitors to your profile will see what you are all about, rather than have them think you haven’t blogged in weeks.

10. Apply to be a hot member
I’m tight with the person that picks hot members (grin) and I can put in a good word for you. However, you stand a much better chance at getting picked if you send me an email along with your picture (must be at least 2”x 3”) and what you are doing that is cool. Try to stand out from the crowd. What are you doing that will knock my socks off? Here’s a rare time that a little bragging is a good thing.

11. Watch what’s Hot in Your Communities
This list includes all the sites that you either write or read. If you joined a community or own a community, that site is one of Your Communities. The Hot part refers to the hot stories in all those communities. To really see what is hot in your area of the blogosphere, keep an eye on that box. It’s a great place for story ideas and inspiration for future series, and it is a brilliant way to know what resonates out there.

Social Media Optimization tips

2007-07-15T01:11:00.001-07:00

Make the Most out of your Social Media Marketing Campaign

Editor’s Note: In the first installment of this series, Louise Rijk offered an overview of social media marketing, or SMM. In the second, she went deep into SMM, giving advice on how to start your own social media campaign designed to get more users and links to your site. In this, the third installment, Louise shows you how to optimize your content for social media.

Publishing for profit is a numbers game. You can’t just put up a site and hope people will find it and click on your contextual ads or affiliate links, or—if you sell online—make purchases. You have to market yourself and your site(s) aggressively. As far as contextual advertising goes, publishers often need 1,000 page views or more by highly qualified visitors to generate just $1 in revenue (though this is not a hard-and-fast formula).

Taking advantage of social media is one inexpensive (if sometimes labor intensive) way to help you get more visits and, hopefully, more clicks and/or sales. That’s why so many articles you read online these days—whether published by major newspapers or on an individual blog—have an RSS button or one or more links to social media sites like Digg, Reddit, Slashdot, MyYahoo!, or de.lico.us (like the one above).

Social Media Optimization
But there’s more to it than just offering a way for visitors to bookmark and tag your content. To get the best results, your content itself should be optimized to perform better in social media.

Social media optimization (SMO) is much like organic search engine optimization (SEO). Whereas SEO is designed to help leverage your content in organic search, SMO is designed to help achieve greater visibility on social media sites. Your content might be very original and provide high value for your target audience, but if it’s disorganized and you have not provided an easy way for visitors to pass it along the social web, it probably won’t be effective in your social media marketing campaign.

To implement SMO, you have to make changes to existing content, site usability, navigation and information architecture to make it easier for visitors to interact with your content and to help virally spread it through the social web.

SMO Tips
There are many ways that content can be optimized for social media distribution. Here are a handful of tips that you can use to implement social media optimization:

Content Creation

Continually create content that is relevant to your target audience and organized in a way that it can easily be found and passed on to others. Highly targeted, relevant content increases the probability that visitors will link to you and distribute your content via social media or email.
Update your content frequently with new postings and promote these through email, RSS feeds and directories (e.g., podcast and blog directories). A side benefit of frequent updates is that search engines may crawl your site or blog more often for new content. Similarly, the more you post, the more you’re likely to get indexed by blog engines like Technorati.
Adding an “About” page is a tremendous opportunity to cement a relationship with your site or blog visitors. It puts a human face on an otherwise technical, dry and impersonal page.

Copywriting

Write your content specifically for the web. Writing for the web means using short, scannable and to-the-point (focused) copy. In general, on the Web, people scan first to sniff out the main points and then, if necessary, comb the page for more details.
Write attention-grabbing headlines that pique the interest of your audience. This is really important when you optimize content for voting sites like Digg or Reddit, because visitors often decide to vote for your content based on the headlines.
Put the information-carrying words in the beginning of the headings and sub-headings, and make the headings not wider than 60 characters. Copy Blogger offers free expert headline writing tips.
Don’t write in an over-promotional or exaggerated fashion. Credibility is more important.
Use the two-sentence test on web site copy. Ask yourself whether somebody reading the first two sentences on your page will take away the information you want to convey.

Copy Formatting

Use well-established web formatting techniques, such as bulleted lists, numbered steps and short scannable paragraphs to improve readability. Short paragraphs should be under five sentences. Each paragraph should have one topic sentence and one idea.
Use bulleted lists when items require no particular order and numbered lists for step-by-step instructions.
Vertical lists are more effective than run-on lists at conveying a sequence of events or ideas. Use vertical lists when you have four or more items to emphasize. Shorter lists are generally overkill.

Navigation

Don’t use non-standard links and navigation. As much as possible, follow standard link conventions. Make obvious what is clickable: For text links, use colored, underlined text (and don’t underline non-link text). Avoid using colored underlining text for anything that isn’t a hypertext link. Differentiate visited and unvisited links.

Interaction

Implement tools and functionality that encourage interaction, e.g., blog commenting, a feedback form, polls and surveys. This allows your visitors to participate in and expand the content on your web site or blog.

Viral Content Optimization
Make your web site or blog content viral. For example, instead of the traditional “Send-to-a-friend” message, consider the following:

“Tell your friends” is better than “tell a friend.” Suggest telling five or ten friends instead of one. Use multiple address fields, instead of just one, so that the message can be easily passed on to multiple people.
Make your content available through RSS feeds. Make sure you put the RSS subscription button in a prominent place. Also provide an explanation on what RSS is, and instructions on what visitors need to do to subscribe to your RSS feed.
Make tagging and bookmarking easy, by including language that encourages users to tag, bookmark and vote for your content.
Broadcast new posts in a newsletter to your subscription list.

Message Optimization

Make an offer sound exclusive (“Only three (what-evers) per customer”).
Make content into a gift that participants can give to a friend by offering coupon codes for discounts, samples, freebies and so forth

Government in the Age of Web 2.0

2007-07-14T06:53:00.000-07:00

New Report: The Blogging Revolution - Government in the Age of Web 2.0 Offers Tips & Best Practices for Public Sector Bloggers

Jun 19, 2007 20:18:32 GMT

In this new report, titled "The Blogging Revolution: Government in the Age of Web 2.0," commissioned by the IBM Center for the Business of Government, Dr. David C. Wyld, Maurin Professor of Management and Director of the Strategic e-Commerce/e-Government Initiative, Department of Management at Southeastern Louisiana University examines the phenomenon of blogging in the context of the public sector.

Wyld observes that blogging is growing as a tool for promoting not only online engagement of citizens and public servants, but also offline engagement. He describes blogging activities by members of Congress, governors, city mayors and police and fire departments in which they engage directly with the public. He also describes how blogging is used within agencies to improve internal communications and speed the flow of information.

Based on the experiences of the blogoneers, Wyld develops a set of lessons learned and a checklist of best practices for public managers interested in following in their footsteps. He also examines the broader social phenomenon of online social networks and how they affect not only government but also corporate interactions with citizens and customers.

The report examines the rise of blogging in the public sector, blogging options for public officials, the current state of blogging in government, case studies, a guide for public sector bloggers, tips for blogging by public sector executives, and some suggestions for possible metrics, as well as a look at the future of research on public sector blogging and many other topics.

A .pdf of the report can be downloaded here. Many thanks to Dr. Wyld for sharing this report with the Society.

Selling Web Advertising Space Like Pork Bellies

2007-07-03T17:17:00.000-07:00

WSJ - The next big Internet race might turn the buying and selling of advertising space on Web sites into the online equivalent of the pork-bellies pit.

Over the past few years, a host of small companies has started electronic exchanges where advertisers and Web sites can buy and sell online advertising space. The companies, with names like Right Media Inc., AdECN Inc., Turn Inc. and ContextWeb Inc., have been an obscure sideshow to a broader battle over Internet advertising.

That's changing quickly. The biggest Internet companies, including Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., are focusing attention and money on the emerging business, hoping to be first with the kind of large-scale, dynamic market for the ad industry that the Nasdaq market brought to stocks.

Over time there will be "a handful of winners that build very high-tech marketplaces," predicts Jim Barnett, chief executive of San Mateo, Calif.-based Turn. "That's what we're trying to do; that's what Google is trying to do."

Today, online publications and Internet companies have space for display ads built into their Web sites. Typically, that space gets filled with ads either the old-fashioned way -- through a salesperson -- or by a mix of computers and people called an ad network that automatically sells ads for the spot. But a significant portion of the available ad space -- called "inventory" -- remains unsold, or is sold for next to nothing. Enter the exchanges, which use automated systems to match buyers with sellers of unsold space.

With ad exchanges, member advertisers specify the price they're willing to pay for a certain type of ad spot, such as a banner ad that will be viewed by a female in Boston. When a woman in Boston pulls up a Web page of an exchange member with a banner slot available, software assesses the exchange's offer. If the price offered is better than the site's minimum rate for that page and higher than what it can get from other sources, such as ads sold by its sales staff, the site will usually accept the exchange-brokered offer. The exchange's computers can then deliver the winning ad to be displayed as the Web page loads on the consumer's PC. The exchange immediately notifies the site if it doesn't have a buyer for the ad space, and the site can then put in a nonpaying house ad or try other means to unload it on the fly.

Web sites rely on data such as IP addresses -- identifiers for PCs connected to the Web -- to know the general location, gender and other characteristics of the Web surfer pulling up an ad. Sites also use cookies, small files stored on users' computers, to track their Web activity, such as recent searches. Web publishers say the cookies generally don't allow them or advertisers to know the actual identity of specific users -- and any data are made anonymous. But for a car maker who might want ads to be shown only to consumers who had previously visited auto sites or had done car-related Web searches, for example, the targeting such technology makes possible can be attractive. By bringing together a lot of ad sellers, exchanges can potentially help advertisers buy a larger quantity of such specifically targeted ads across different Web sites.

AdECN says it can complete an auction for the ads on a Web page in 12 milliseconds after a consumer clicks to pull it up. AdECN runs an exchange where 28 advertising networks, which purchase ad slots from many different sites and sell them at higher rates to advertisers, buy and sell ads.

Exchanges usually collect payments for ads and pass them along to the sites, taking a commission. Ads are generally priced per thousand times they're viewed by consumers, a unit known in the industry as CPM.

Online ticket seller StubHub in recent months started using exchanges and ad networks to spread its reach to sports and music fans on the Web. (Historically, the company used ads tied to Internet search results on Google to reach customers.) The exchanges have allowed StubHub to place ads on a broader universe of sites large and small that it never had used before. Some of those, including ads on Gawker, a gossip blog, and Internet radio station Accuradio, led to ticket sales, StubHub executives say.

In a few months of use, ad networks and exchanges "have already become material to our marketing mix," says Michael Janes, chief marketing officer at StubHub. He estimates the company now spends about 15% of its budget (up from zero at the beginning of the year) for display ads over networks and exchanges. There's still some disagreement over the actual differences between networks and exchanges. But many industry executives agree that transparent pricing and an open neutral marketplace where anyone can buy or sell ads are distinguishing characteristics of exchanges.

Q Interactive of Chicago this month started selling some ads on its sites through the Right Media exchange. And it believes that buying ads on other sites through the exchange, which it has begun doing as well, will offer a 20% to 30% better return on investment than its previous practice of going around and buying ads from different sites individually. "Right now if you want to do a media buy you have to buy on a lot of different networks and with a lot of different publishers," says Q Interactive CEO Matt Wise. "Theoretically, with an exchange, one technology platform can cover an enormous swath of the Internet."

Or so the big players hope. Yahoo thrust exchanges into the spotlight in April when it agreed to pay $680 million for the remaining 80% of Right Media, following a 20% stake it bought last October. Yahoo said that it wanted to own Right Media as a way to take a leadership role in promoting the exchange model. The company has been selling some ad space on its site through Right Media, and says it has seen increases of over 50% in prices for ad spaces sold through Right Media compared with what it brought in for them on its own.

The Right Media acquisition followed Google's $3.1 billion deal to purchase DoubleClick Inc., which is building an ad exchange. DoubleClick last week began conducting transactions for actual ads on the exchange it has been building.

David Rosenblatt, chief executive of DoubleClick, estimates exchanges could eventually handle 50% of all display ad sales. He compares the exchanges to auctions that Internet search providers like Google used to ignite search-related advertising several years ago. "I think the exchange concept will have the same impact on the display market," he says.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has started developing a prototype of an exchange and has also considered buying one of the start-ups, say people familiar with the company. Microsoft General Manager Joe Doran declined to give details but said Microsoft has been studying the exchange model and "what it would take to build an exchange." But, he said, "it's still very early for the exchange concept to really catch on and drive to large scale."

Indeed, if the dream is to have the same kind of impact on advertising that spot markets had on commodities and stock markets on equities, one or more exchanges will need a critical mass of buyers and sellers. As with stock markets, "liquidity" is key for the ad exchanges: the more participants, the greater the chance of finding buyers and sellers.

But with a bevy of exchanges large and small, the industry risks not having a critical mass of buyers and sellers on any one exchange to make a viable market. "That's the thing that's uncertain," says analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence in Oakland, Calif.

It's also unclear what percentage of their ads Web sites will be willing to sell through exchanges. Many industry executives say the exchanges are suited only for "remnant," or leftover ads and ad space that the biggest brands aren't interested in. Big advertisers generally want to have more control over where the online ads appear and who sees them.

With exchanges, "the underlying assumption to that is you're buying a commoditized product that anyone can sell you," says Steven Kaufman, senior vice president at Publicis Group SA's Digitas interactive agency. Many of the high-end ads that Digitas handles require human negotiation and tailoring before appearing on a Web site. "That's not coming through an exchange," he says.

Others disagree. Such high-end ads represent at most 10% of the ad market, counters AdECN CEO Bill Urschel. "And everything else is up for an exchange."

Survey Forecasts Increased Use Of Ad Networks

2007-07-03T17:14:00.000-07:00

MediaPost - A NEW SURVEY OF DIGITAL media buyers and planners finds that 66% of advertisers plan to increase their use of online ad networks this year. In addition, 88% of respondents plan to use one--up from 77% in 2006.

The survey of 100 digital media buyers and planners was conducted by Collective Media, an online ad network. The survey found that while the use of ad networks and ad spending is growing, respondents indicated frustration over the number of ad networks and complexity of the marketplace.

For example, some 62% of the media buyers polled said there are currently too many ad networks. That said, only 17% of respondents maintained that all ad networks are pretty much alike.

"The ad network space is a cluttered and competitive arena. We wanted to learn more about it and how the use of ad networks is changing," said Joe Apprendi, CEO, Collective Media. The firm also sought to find out how it might lure more brand marketing dollars to its ad network. Currently, direct marketing budgets are responsible for the majority of revenues to ad networks.

The survey found that 80% of brand marketers are using ad networks for direct marketing purposes, while only 6% are using them for branding purposes. However, 40% are using ad networks for both direct and brand marketing purposes.

"That's a positive," Apprendi noted, adding: "As a result, they're not just measuring the performance on a pure conversion rate, but the interaction rate is becoming more important."

In addition, 20% of survey respondents considered affiliate marketing an alternative to ad networks and 18% considered e-mail an alternative, both tactics typically deployed by direct marketers.

Beyond that, 79% considered portals like AOL, MSN and Yahoo as an alternative to ad networks and 69% considered publishers an alternative.

"We found that ad networks aren't just being pigeonholed on a direct marketing basis alone," Apprendi said.

The survey indicated that 59% of agencies/advertisers limit their use of ad networks due to a perceived lack of editorial control including concerns over the types of ads being used and position, among other factors. In addition, 38% of respondents cited audience duplication caused by publisher overlap among ad networks as a major impediment to using networks.

When trying to determine what criteria makes one ad network different from another, more than 57% of respondents said that how an ad network targets audiences was the No. 1 differentiating factor. The survey found that reach (at 52%) and efficiency (at 66%) remain key drivers for why agencies/advertisers include ad networks in digital media plans.

The survey marks the first of a series of surveys Collective Media has planed to better understand how publishers and advertisers are using ad networks.

Online ad spending to grow fastest in Canada in next 5 years

2007-06-22T17:22:00.000-07:00

Globe and Mail - Internet advertising is expected to grow faster in Canada than anywhere else in the world over the next five years, however countries in Asia and Latin America will begin quickly closing that gap soon after, a report suggests.

The annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook published by the consulting and accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP predicts spending on Internet advertising in Canada will reach $2.03b (U.S.) by 2011.

That represents a compound annual growth rate of 23.5%. It is well ahead of the global rate of 13.4% and higher than in the United States, where Internet advertising revenue is forecast to grow 16.1% during that time.

Canadian ad spending online is being driven by the high percentage of broadband Internet users in Canada, which is higher than in most other parts of the world. Meanwhile, online advertising markets in Canada are not yet as saturated as in the United States.

"We have had higher broadband penetration rates than other countries around the world ... and we're now seeing a bigger shift in advertising revenue," said Tracey Jennings, leader of the entertainment and media practice for PwC in Canada.

Looking beyond 2011, however, countries like India and China are expected to make up a lot of ground on North America in terms of growth, Jennings said.

"What you're going to see over the next five years is the other countries' penetration rates are going to grow quite significantly. It just means we're kind of at the head of the curve."

The report predicts advertising trends between 2007 and 2011. It is watched closely by the broadcasting, print and online sectors each year as a gauge of global ad spending trends.

Over all, Canada's entertainment and media market is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 5.6% over the next five years, hitting 46.8b in spending by 2011, an increase from $35.7b last year.

While Internet advertising will grow fastest, other industries will continue to expand. Radio and out-of-home advertising, such as billboards, will see revenue increase at a compound rate of 11.7% during that time, to $2.8b in 2011.

Ad spending on TV networks and cable channels in Canada is expected to increase to $4.6b, at a rate of 4.5%.

Print media will see slower rates of growth, with ad spending on magazines expanding at a compound annual rate of 1.8% to $1.5b. The newspaper industry will see compound annual growth of 1% in that time, to $3.2b.

User-gen content's ad revenue to surge 4 times in 4 years: report

2007-06-21T12:44:00.000-07:00

eMarketer - The days of giant media conglomerates controlling the creation, distribution and monetization of content are fading. An explosion of user-generated content is reshaping the media landscape, shattering the status quo and creating new opportunities for marketers.

The User-Generated Content report analyzes the fast-changing new world of content ownership and distribution, where for the first time everyday people determine exactly what is created and consumed—not marketers or publishers.

Led by the companies that started the revolution—YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Photobucket and others—eMarketer estimates that US user-generated content sites will earn $4.3 billion in ad revenues in 2011, up from $1 billion in 2007.

CBCNews Partners with Technorati Bloggers

2007-06-20T02:34:00.000-07:00

CBCNews.ca reports it is the world’s first broadcaster website to partner with leading blog and social media search engine Technorati.com.

Technorati currently tracks over 86 million blogs. In a new level of interactivity, CBCNews.ca stories now include direct links to blogs around Canada and the globe that are discussing the news. It is designed, the CBC says, to give Canadians more ways to access comprehensive news coverage of local, national and international stories.

As part of its continuous commitment to enhancing the web experience for users, the new service can be found at http://cbcnews.ca/blogwatch

The announcement comes on the heels of CBC's interactive experiment, carried out through one of Canada’s most popular social networking websites, called The Great Canadian Wishlist, where Canadians are encouraged to share their wish for the nation. CBC News also has its own “wishlist” web page at www.cbc.ca/wish, where visitors can follow the discussions through the CBC blog.

CBCNews.ca also reports launching several new features recently, including: an embedded media player highlighting CBC News audio and video; a much greater emphasis on interactive features; compilations of the most popular news stories, from the most viewed to the most blogged; wider pages allowing for more content; prominent placement showcasing original online feature stories (in-depths, columns and photo galleries) and additional on-air highlights and podcasts.

Online sales lose steam

2007-06-19T07:29:00.000-07:00

NYT - Has online retailing entered the Dot Calm era?

Since the inception of the Web, online commerce has enjoyed hypergrowth, with annual sales increasing more than 25 percent over all, and far more rapidly in many categories. But in the last year, growth has slowed sharply in major sectors like books, tickets and office supplies.

Growth in online sales has also dropped dramatically in diverse categories like health and beauty products, computer peripherals and pet supplies. Analysts say it is a turning point and growth will continue to slow through the decade.

The reaction to the trend is apparent at Dell, which many had regarded as having mastered the science of selling computers online, but is now putting its PCs in Wal-Mart stores. Expedia has almost tripled the number of travel ticketing kiosks it puts in hotel lobbies and other places that attract tourists.

The slowdown is a result of several forces. Sales on the Internet are expected to reach $116 billion this year, or 5 percent of all retail sales, making it harder to maintain the same high growth rates. At the same time, consumers seem to be experiencing Internet fatigue and are changing their buying habits.

John Johnson, 53, who sells medical products to drug stores and lives in San Francisco, finds that retailers have livened up their stores to be more alluring.

“They’re working a lot harder,” he said as he shopped at Book Passage in downtown San Francisco. “They’re not as stuffy. The lighting is better. You don’t get someone behind the counter who’s been there 40 years. They’re younger and hipper and much more with it.”

He and his wife, Liz Hauer, 51, a Macy’s executive, also shop online, but mostly for gifts or items that need to be shipped. They said they found that the experience could be tedious at times. “Online, it’s much more of a task,” she said. Still, Internet commerce is growing at a pace that traditional merchants would envy. But online sales are not growing as fast as they were even 18 months ago.

Forrester Research, a market research company, projects that online book sales will rise 11 percent this year, compared with nearly 40 percent last year. Apparel sales, which increased 61 percent last year, are expected to slow to 21 percent. And sales of pet supplies are on pace to rise 30 percent this year after climbing 81 percent last year.

Growth rates for online sales are slowing down in numerous other segments as well, including appliances, sporting goods, auto parts, computer peripherals, and even music and videos. Forrester says that sales growth is pulling back in 18 of the 24 categories it measures.

Jupiter Research, another market research firm, says the growth rate has peaked. It projects that overall online sales growth will slow to 9 percent a year by the end of the decade from as much as 25 percent in 2004.

Early financial results from e-commerce companies bear out the trend. EBay reported that revenue from Web site sales increased by just 1 percent in the first three months of this year compared with the same period last year. Bookings from Expedia’s North American Web sites rose by only 1 percent in the first quarter of this year. And Dell said that revenue in the Americas — United States, Canada and Latin America — for the three months ended May 4 was $8.9 billion, or nearly unchanged from the same period last year.

“There’s a recognition that some customers like a more interactive experience,” said Alex Gruzen, senior vice president for consumer products at Dell. “They like shopping and they want to go retail.”

The turning point comes as most adult Americans, and many of their children, are already shopping online.

Analysts project that by 2011, online sales will account for nearly 7 percent of overall retail sales, though categories like computer hardware and software generate more than 40 percent of their sales on the Internet.

There are other factors at work as well, including a push by companies like Apple, Starbucks and the big shopping malls to make the in-store experience more compelling.

Nancy F. Koehn, a professor at Harvard Business School who studies retailing and consumer habits, said that the leveling off of e-commerce reflected the practical and psychological limitations of shopping online. She said that as physical stores have made the in-person buying experience more pleasurable, online stores have continued to give shoppers a blasé experience. In addition, online shopping, because it involves a computer, feels like work.

“It’s not like you go onto Amazon and think: ‘I’m a little depressed. I’ll go onto this site and get transported,’ ” she said, noting that online shopping is more a chore than an escape.

But Ms. Koehn and others say that online shopping is running into practical problems, too. For one, Ms. Koehn noted, online sellers have been steadily raising their shipping fees to bolster profits or make up for their low prices.

In response, a so-called clicks-and-bricks hybrid model is emerging, said Dan Whaley, the founder of GetThere, which became one of the largest Internet travel businesses after it was acquired by Sabre Holdings.

The bookseller Borders, for example, recently revamped its Web site to allow users to reserve books online and pick them up in the store. Similar services were started by companies like Best Buy and Sears. Other retailers are working to follow suit.

“You don’t realize how powerful of a phenomenon this new strategy has become,” Mr. Whaley said. “Nearly every big box retailer is opening it up.”

Barnes & Noble recently upgraded its site to include online book clubs, reader forums and interviews with authors. The company hopes the changes will make the online world feel more like the offline one, said Marie J. Toulantis, the chief executive of BarnesandNoble.com. “We emulate the in-store experience by having a book club online,” she said.

The retailers that have started in-store pickup programs, like Sears and REI, have found that customers who choose the hybrid model are more likely to buy additional products when they pick up their items, said Patti Freeman Evans, an analyst at Jupiter Research.

Consumers are generally not committed to one form of buying over the other. Maggie Hake, 21, a recent college graduate heading to Africa in the fall to join the Peace Corps, said that when she needs to buy something for her Macintosh computer, she prefers visiting a store. “I trust it more,” she said. “I want to be sure there’s a person there if something goes wrong.”

Ms. Hake, who lives in Kentfield, Calif., just north of San Francisco, does like shopping online for certain things, particularly shoes, which are hard to find in her size. “I’ve got big feet — size 12.5 in women’s,” she said. “I also buy textbooks online. They’re cheaper.”

John Morgan, an economics professor from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, said he expected online commerce to continue to increase, partly because it remains less than 1 percent of the overall economy. “There’s still a lot of head room for people to grow,” he said.

Title tags, image filenames, headline tags affect Google rank: study

2007-05-22T23:21:00.000-07:00

The German company Sistrix analyzed the web page elements of top ranked pages in Google to find out which elements lead to high Google rankings. They analyzed 10,000 random keywords, and for every keyword, they analyzed the top 100 Google search results.

Which web page elements lead to high Google rankings?

Sistrix analyzed the influence of the following web page elements: web page title, web page body, headline tags, bold and strong tags, image file names, images alt text, domain name, path, parameters, file size, inbound links and PageRank.

Keywords in the title tag seem to be important for high rankings on Google. It is also important that the targeted keywords are mentioned in the body tag, although the title tag seems to be more important.
Keywords in H2-H6 headline tags seem to have an influence on the rankings while keywords in H1 headline tags don't seem to have an effect.
Using keywords in bold or strong tags seems to have a slight effect on the top rankings. Web pages that used the keywords in image file names often had higher rankings. The same seems to be true for keywords in image alt attributes.
Websites that use the targeted keyword in the domain name often had high rankings. It might be that these sites get many inbound links with the domain name as the link text.
Keywords in the file path don't seem to have a positive effect on the Google rankings of the analyzed web sites. Web pages that use very few parameters in the URL (?id=123, etc.) or no parameters at all tend to get higher rankings than URLs that contain many parameters.
The file size doesn't seem to influence the ranking of a web page on Google although smaller sites tend to have slightly higher rankings.
It's no surprise that the number of inbound links and the PageRank had a large influence on the page rankings on Google. The top result on Google has usually about four times as many links as result number 11.

Can you use that information to get high rankings for your own website?

While general advice can help you to get higher rankings, it is much better to get detailed advice specifically for your website and your keywords.

It might be that your keywords trigger slightly different ranking filters at Google and that the algorithms have been changed since Sistrix performed the study.

Online ads go go go

2007-05-18T18:57:00.000-07:00

Keywords: speak your audience's language

2007-05-15T01:49:00.000-07:00

Clickz By Fredrick Marckini January 24, 2005 - It's amazing how many marketers fixate on their site's HTML, believing that's where solutions to their search engine marketing (SEM) challenges are found. But they're looking inward when they need to be looking outward.

At a recent industry conference, I provided SEM assessments for Web sites belonging to audience volunteers. Participants invited me to review the sites in front of the other conference attendees and offer suggestions about how to initiate, or improve, their SEM campaigns.

Every brave volunteer's natural inclination was to immediately dig into their sites. That was the last place I wanted to look. It's as though marketers think their Web sites are the focus of their SEM campaigns. They're not. The audience is.

Many marketers worry about how they can attain top ranking without first understanding how their audience searches and where in search results they click. Consider these actual assessments I performed for the audience.

Home Healthcare Monitoring

One volunteer's company offers a system that remotely monitors certain medical conditions, allowing patients who would otherwise be in the hospital to rest comfortably at home. I asked the marketer to name the most important keyword her SEM campaign should target. The reply: "Home healthcare monitoring."

First, I searched for that phrase on the home page. Nothing. Clearly, this highlights a huge challenge.

Next, I used Overture's Keyword Selector Tool. This tool determines how many searches were performed on a keyword in the previous month. I input "home healthcare monitoring." Overture reported not one single search was performed on that term in the previous 30 days -- an even bigger challenge.

"Home healthcare monitoring" is an industry term. Sellers of these sorts of solutions use it to describe what they sell. As is too often the case, it's not how the audience describes it.

Users think about these services in terms of "medical alert," "alarms," and "systems." That the devices are installed in the home apparently isn't as important to them; they're interested in the systems' response features.

Some keywords that were searched:

"Personal emergency response"
"Medical alert systems"
"Medical alert system"
"Medical monitoring"
"Medical alarm systems"
"Medical alert devices"
"Medical alert alarm"

Next I looked at Overture's View Bids tool. "Medical alert systems" has multiple bidders; the current high is a whopping $14 per click. "Personal emergency response" is selling for over $3 per click. How do we know we zeroed in on the right language? There were clues.

First, "home healthcare monitoring" had zero or low-query volume. It also had no paid search advertising bidders. "Medical alert system" was queried more frequently. It had multiple bidders and a high bid price (suggesting it's valuable to competitors).

This problem is more common than you might think. Marketers think of solutions in their own terms, not in their audience's terms.

Here's my favorite example: A major bank's executives recently asked me to ensure their site could be found on every search for "lending" because they're one of the world's largest "lending" institutions. I pointed out what I thought would be obvious: Their audience wants to "borrow." Smiles slowly formed on their faces. They got it.

Ring Tones

Another assessment I performed was for a large telecom. It's active in a number of markets, including data, cellular service, and local and long distance services. I was asked to review a wireless product's Web site.

I asked the audience what keywords should matter to this company. Someone shouted out "cell phone." Someone else suggested "calling plans." Then, I heard it. Some smart marketer blurted out, "the brand!"

Yup.

Big brands often find their branded keywords are the most important and enjoy the highest click-through and conversion rates. Again, I referred to Overture's Keyword Selector Tool. The most frequently searched term was the brand name and the phrase "cell phone." But the second most frequently searched term was a surprise to everyone. It was the brand name paired with "ring tones."

I asked the marketer if ring tones were a profitable business. He assured me they are. Yet the phrase "ring tones" was buried deep in the site. I searched Google and Yahoo for the company name with "ring tones." Dozens of other companies showed up in the search results but not this major brand.

Though the company is engaged in paid search advertising, no one thought to bid for this keyword phrase or to feature it on the home page, even though the keyword included the brand and was the second most frequently searched branded term.

To experienced search marketers, these examples seem simple and intuitive. To others, especially those new to SEM, they aren't intuitive at all.

Before focusing on your site's HTML, first look closely at how your audience searches. How they search is probably different than what you'd expect. Looking inward instead of outward can leave a lot of money on the table.

Social network advertising booming

2007-05-11T12:34:00.000-07:00

eMarketer - In 2007, eMarketer estimates that companies will spend $900 million in the US — and $330 million outside the US — on social network advertising. Although the lead players, MySpace and Facebook, will continue their strong performance, hundreds of new social networking sites will give them competition.

The Social Network Marketing report analyzes the trends that are driving new competitors into one of the hottest advertising spaces on the Internet.

Since eMarketer published its first report on social network marketing, companies have latched with almost religious fervor onto the notion that consumers want to be socially connected online – whether on mass-appeal sites such as MySpace, on targeted niche sites and video sites or on mobile phones – almost everywhere.

However, is there enough interest among consumers in social networking to support so many ventures?

Key questions the "Social Network Marketing" report answers:

* How much money is being spent on social network advertising?
* What works and what doesn't in social networking marketing?
* How are video and mobile playing into the space?
* Will virtual worlds such as Second Life pose a threat to existing social networking sites?
* And many others…

eMarketer Reports—On-Target and Up-to-Date

The Social Network Marketing report aggregates the latest data from international marketing and communications researchers with eMarketer numbers, projections and analysis to provide the information you need to make the right business decisions—today.

'Hyper-local' news = the unmet needs

2007-05-06T22:36:00.000-07:00

E&P - The printed newspaper is a world unto itself. Version 1.0 of the newspaper website: ditto. Today's newspaper websites (what are we at now, version 2.0? 3.0?) are less provincial, but most still don't do a great job of reaching out to tap the larger information stream that is the web.

That is, you don't typically go to a newspaper website because you expect it to point you to all that is good and relevant to you on the web. That's what Google is for, eh? ... Of course, Google isn't great at local. Sure, with the search engines you can find good local information, but it's not yet a wonderful experience trying to find fine-grain local information and news from a wide variety of sources -- especially at the neighborhood level.

There is still an opportunity for someone to do a truly good job and become the king of hyper-local news and information. You would think that the obvious candidate for this would be the newspaper industry. But I suspect that newspapers' lingering provincialism -- their reticence to link to or bring in content that is completely out of their control -- will allow Internet entrepreneurs to own this space.

Is this where it's headed?

Lately, I've been watching Outside.in, a New York-based, venture capital-backed, new player in the hyper-local news and information space. Who knows whether Outside.in will turn into the Next Great Internet Thing, or eventually join the large ranks of Internet companies in the sky. But I do think they're on to something important -- and newspaper executives should be paying attention.

In a nutshell, Outside.in seeks to bring together and finely categorize news and information from all sorts of sources online, down to the neighborhood level. It's seeking to become the place you'll go to zero in on your neighborhood and find everything that's being written or produced about it -- as well as recruit original content about your neighborhood in a social networking experiment.

The website was created in part in reaction to the "placeblogging" trend. Placebloggers, of course, are usually individuals who write blogs about a specific geographic location. There are now thousands of people blogging about their communities -- covering large metro areas, or neighborhoods within cities, or small towns, or military bases, or boarding schools, etc.

Most of the placebloggers operate independently, perhaps writing a placeblog out of nothing more than love for and passion about their communities. Some have figured out how to turn them into small businesses by attracting advertisers. Some newspapers have staff members writing placeblogs, while others may pay independent placebloggers to produce content for them or otherwise partner with them.

But placebloggers are just part of the wealth of hyperlocal content that Outside.in is tapping. There are also community groups, government agencies, schools, and numerous institutions publishing content that's relevant to a place. Aggregate all that into a useful interface, and you start to have an interesting and useful news and information service -- albeit a disorganized, and ultimately unedited, one.

An unmet need

Outside.in founder Steven Johnson (an Internet pioneer known for starting the '90s online magazine FEED and for the website Plastic.com) says he and his team recognized that there was no place online that you could go and easily find all that information and news. "We wanted to grab as much of that as possible," he says. "We said, let's organize what's out there already" because no one else is doing a good job of that yet.

The process of categorizing all content that is fresh and locally relevant is something that can be automated to an extent, but it's still -- for now, at least -- partly a time-consuming editorial task requiring humans.

For example, Outside.in can identify a placeblogger, pick up his or her content feed (RSS), and because the blogger's location is known, put that content into a specific place feed (e.g., Boulder, Colorado). But what if a Boulder-based placeblogger writes a review of a restaurant she tried on a trip to Tupelo, Mississippi? That needs to go in the Tupelo area of Outside.in, and for now that requires a human editor to accomplish.

Outside.in currently employees about 10 freelance editors whose job it is to categorize content. If a placeblogger's item mentions a specific university, for example, an editor might add it to an Outside.in page and feed about that school.

Outside.in's content is nearly always geo-coded, and the site includes a useful map interface. So you can find your house on a map, then read all the content about your neighborhood: crime reports from blogs or police departments, restaurant reviews from a wide variety of people (and media sources), even local news from newspapers, TV stations, etc.

Johnson says that this ability to drag an online map around and see the news by geographic location (what's been happening within a mile of my house, my office, my kids' school?) -- from the huge variety of sources available on the Internet -- is powerful, and is where traditional media like newspapers "have done a lousy job."

(Adrian Holovaty's ChicagoCrime.org is somewhat in the vein of Outside.in -- a small slice of this hyperlocal online information pool. That website from a few years ago allows the user to find their block or neighborhood and see recent crime reports, giving a useful and powerful perspective on the crime situation near your home or work. ... Holovaty currently is chief technologist for Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive.)

There's more to Outside.in's model, and it's in its early days, so we'll have to watch as it evolves. But other things to note are:

-- The Outside.in community is designed so that users help the categorization process, to relieve editors of having to do everything (an impossibility if the site grows significantly).

-- When bloggers tag their own content appropriately (which is becoming increasingly common), it's easy for Outside.in to categorize it automatically.

-- The concept of "citizen media" is integral to Outside.in. Users are invited to submit content to add it to their geographic location, and the idea is that they can converse with and get to know their neighbors through this process. This original citizen content is added to the content gathered from around the web, to make the site rich and deep.

-- What in theory is getting built out is a "Wikipedia of neighborhoods." Just as many, many people contribute to Wikipedia, the online participatory encyclopedia, so too can many people who live in a neighborhood contribute what they know and their news to create a user-driven guide to neighborhoods.

Partnering possibilities

How does Outside.in mesh with newspapers? Is it purely competitive, or "co-opetition," or benign partner?

Johnson, who's currently in discussions with some newspaper companies, says one possibility is for newspaper websites to license Outside.in's feeds for neighborhoods and cities within its coverage area -- adding non-staff-produced local content and making the sites much richer. Details aren't worked out yet, but possibilities include reciprocal traffic -- where a newspaper's neighborhood content is fed into the Outside.in system in exchange for using Outside.in's neighborhood feeds -- as well as more traditional licensing.

I can see that as a possibility, though I wonder if a newspaper staff couldn't do the same thing itself, by assigning an editor or editors to find and continuously monitor local bloggers and local information sources.

Outside.in is still working on its revenue model details, but local advertising certainly will be key. In that respect, the company is yet another player looking to take local ad dollars away from local newspapers. Johnson expects to develop some sort of advertising share program, so by running Outside.in content and ads on your site, you get a cut. That, of course, is a well-worn model; many publishers participate in Google's advertising program, for example, and do quite well from that.

Why pay attention to this small company?

Simply put, Outside.in represents an approach to hyper-local news that newspaper companies should be considering. It perhaps points to the future of local news, which is not restricted to those hired or associated with news companies, but includes everyone in a community who is publishing neighborhood- or community-relevant news and information.

Rich Gordon of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, put it well in analyzing Outside.in's core concept: "In the digital age, content and aggregators and consumers and media users are members of a network. The key to success in a networked information economy will be to build hubs that enable connections. So I like Outside.in's concept." Of course, for that particular company, "The devil will be in the details -- how well they execute," he adds.

As an example of the potential value of this model, my hometown newspaper seldom has news about the elementary school that my youngest daughter goes to. But a hyper-local, non-provincial approach would mean that the newspaper website taps everyone outside of its staff and freelancers who are writing anything about the school -- teachers' or principals' blogs, the school district website, even parents of students who blog and happen to mention something going on at the school. It leverages the networked information infrastructure that has evolved over the last decade-plus.

Now that would be a really useful service that would truly tap the potential of online hyper-local news.

So, will entrepreneurs like Steven Johnson be the ones to accomplish this? Or will newspapers take the bold step of truly loosening the reins of editorial control and step up to the challenge?

Lessons learnt from Virginia Tech shooting

2007-05-06T22:13:00.000-07:00

E&P - Every time there's a hugely important or dramatic news event -- as with the recent shootings on the Virginia Tech campus -- new lessons are learned about our evolving media world. As I see it, two important issues arose during the coverage of that tragedy.

1. Traditional media have a hard time reporting outside of their own boxes, which when it comes to a really big news event is to the detriment of public knowledge.

2. The public demands everything that media knows about an event of this magnitude -- immediately -- while at the same time accusing news outlets of offering too much.

Needed: Reporting outside traditional boxes

Virginia Tech was the classic example of a news story so powerful and compelling that the public demands every tidbit of information available -- and right away. And in large part, news organizations oblige. They no longer wait till the presses roll, or for the 5 o'clock newscast. News goes online as quickly as editors can get it ready. For a breaking news event like Virginia Tech, the web is now the dominant medium, because of its speed and on-demand nature.

Some newspapers created blogs to cover the shootings and aftermath. On the day of the shootings, when the identity of the killer was not known, and details were coming in dribs and drabs, the breaking-news blog format was ideal. News consumers could learn (to a degree) what reporters were learning right away, rather than waiting for an assembled story to be produced.

Reporters latched on to MySpace and Facebook, finding entries in those popular social networking sites from people directly involved in the event. This provided not only fodder for journalists' reporting, but also leads to survivors and friends of victims, who could be contacted as part of the reporting process.

Compared to news coverage of, say, a decade ago, news media have come a long way. ... But not far enough.

Here's where I think most news organizations could have done a better job: Serving as an intelligent conduit to all the information (and "news") that flows onto the web and into digital networks during a major news event like this one.

Let's take Facebook as an example. The social networking site, which is dominated by college students, became a hotbed of activity on the day of the shootings. Students used it to ask if friends were safe, to report in, and to share news and gossip with each other. Some used the site to share their experiences with their online friends. Facebook users at Virginia Tech were on the front lines of a national tragedy, and they used the website to report what they saw and experienced.

Other students and those close to the tragedy wrote about their experiences in their personal blogs.

Obviously, Facebook and blogs provided incredibly important information to reporters covering Virginia Tech. (I'm not going to deal with it in this column, but some students fiercely objected to reporters "snooping" on their Facebook communications, which they consider to be "private" between them and their friends. I think that's naive on students' part, and that if they want privacy, they should not post in a way that makes what they publish on Facebook visible to anyone -- including reporters.)

But news organizations, I think, need to do more than use Facebook -- and all the other myriad sources of information, including personal blogs -- as reporting tools. Yes, they are that, and Facebook, et al are an increasingly important part of reporting on college-related news.

What I'm talking about is in having a news site link to and point people to all the pertinent information (and yes, gossip) that's flying around cyberspace during a major breaking news event like Virginia Tech. Instead of only having reporters digging through Facebook and the blogosphere looking for nuggets to include in their stories, and for sources, ALSO assign an editor to comb through the pertinent social networking sites and blogs. And create a section on your news website that packages and links to whatever's relevant.

Take the killer's Facebook page, or his student profile on the university website, or his MySpace page, if he's got one. I don't think it's enough just to report on what's been posted to his Facebook page and cherry-pick the best or least objectionable stuff, for example; let your audience see it all (yes, no matter how disturbing).

Did the killer show up in other online discussion forums? Are any of his class assignments online? Point your readers to those. Again, don't just use it as source material and fall into the old gatekeeper mode. The beauty of the Internet is that the public can -- and should, in my view -- have access to all the source material. For most stories, that's overkill and no one really cares about all that. But for a story like Virginia Tech, news consumers can't get enough.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that reporters change what they're doing -- finding and reporting on the important stuff, and sifting through the wheat to find the chaff. But in our age of lightning-fast communication, news organizations must supplement that with everything they can put their hands on for the big stories. Today's news audience demands it.

The end of the gatekeeper

Now we get into the "taste" issue. As in, when you reach outside of "conventional" reporting and link to information that's provided by other, unvetted sources -- especially in a horrific story like Virginia Tech -- you'll end up pointing your audience to, or outright publishing, some disturbing material.

In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings, traditional media had a significant decision to make in deciding whether to broadcast and publish the contents of the killer's "multimedia package" sent to NBC News. It included a disturbing video of the killer making his "statement" about why he was about to kill several dozen innocent people. NBC and others aired parts of the video.

Predictably, a great public debate ensued -- predictably, with a good number of critics contending that the killer's video message should not have been aired at all, because it served his pre-suicide purpose and glorified his crazy ranting. That the media carried Cho Seung-hui's video, that argument goes, tells future psycho-killers that they too can become famous -- and makes it more likely that the future will see more Cho's.

I'll come down squarely on the side of the argument that supports NBC's decision, largely because I think the public has a right to know. We have a right to information about him that can help us (maybe) better understand how the unthinkable happens. To my mind, it would be unconscionable for government and media to withhold that from the public. At the least, we need this to educate ourselves to watch for and prevent future Cho's from exploding.

But what about the taste and decency issue? About offering up unsavory and uncomfortable newsworthy material where youngsters will see it? Don't news editors have a responsibility to protect the public from the worst of the world? To withhold the worst of the news so as not to upset people as they sit eating breakfast or dinner?

This is where the difference in old (one-way) and new (interactive, on-demand) media comes to play. I don't begrudge NBC News from broadcasting only selected pieces of Cho's video. In media where the material is in the consumer's face -- network and cable TV, the daily newspaper -- some self-censorship is the only rational decision.

When it comes to news websites, however, all bets are off. Just as I said above that news sites when covering major stories should publish and link to anything that's relevant, so too do I think that they should share all relevant source material (in a big story like this) with their online readers.

Yeah, that's heresy when looked at from the old gatekeeper school of journalism. But with on-demand media, it's the news consumer who makes the decision about whether to click on that disturbing link or not. The digital-era consumer deserves to make his or her own decisions.

What online news organizations can -- and should -- do is provide lots of warnings and context about what's beyond that click. Want to see a student's cellphone video that she took in the classroom during the actual shootings, which shows people getting shot? (I'm being hypothetical here.) If I were sitting in an online news editor's chair, I'd either link to that, or maybe even publish it on my site. But I'd make the people who choose to see it well aware of what's about to be seen. I'd add age warnings, and I'd insert discussion of the personal implications of watching something so disturbing. ... You'd need to wade through all that before I sent you off to that content or that link.

Say no to nannying

I realize that many traditionally trained editors will react in horror to my suggestions. They'll contend that it's their job to not only sift through all the junk to find and present the important news, but also to protect the public from the worst of the society and the world -- the most graphic.

Hey, I was trained that way too, and long bought in to the idea that we journalists served a righteous purpose by shielding the public from the worst the world has to offer. ... As anyone who's ever worked as a wire editor at a newspaper (as I have) knows, the wires services routinely send over shocking images as part of big stories. (During 9-11, I remember how the Associated Press distributed images of a severed hand, and of bodies falling from the World Trade Center.) Editors use their gatekeeping power and seldom publish such disturbing images.

The big difference now, of course, is the Internet. Those types of graphic images now get thrust out to an international audience of online users. You can easily find them, typically, with a Google search or by browsing or searching blogs. News editors can keep on gatekeeping -- being our nannies -- but it's now a hollow role.

When a major story like Virginia Tech breaks, media can serve a public service by alleviating the need for news consumers to search the web and blogosphere for raw information about a big breaking story. Online users are already doing that -- because traditional media typically won't, out of concern for pointing to unvetted information or to disturbing content. I say, get over that. Why not provide that service for them, and thus become more relevant to the digital news consumer.

The world has become a different place -- where information (no matter how disturbing) now has fast and easy channels to a wide audience.

As I see it, news organizations need to adapt to this new reality. They can best do so by being the place where people looking for news go to find it in all its forms -- from professionally vetted and digested traditional news, to raw information from untested sources (eyewitnesses, bloggers, social-networking users, etc.).

News media's new job is to offer up all that's now available about the big stories, and provide some context to make sense out of the information chaos. It's an expansion of news organizations' role. Let's get to it -- rather than let Google do a better job in what should be media's role.

1Q'07 newsprint profits fall, data shows continued market decline

2007-05-06T22:07:00.000-07:00

While North American newsprint producers were releasing dismal returns for first-quarter 2007, the latest available market data reflect a continuation of the steady drop in U.S. newsprint consumption.

E&P - While North American newsprint producers were releasing dismal returns for first-quarter 2007, the latest available market data reflect a continuation of the steady drop in U.S. newsprint consumption.

Statistics released today by the Pulp and Paper Products Council (PPPC) show U.S. daily newspapers consumed 8.7% less newsprint year-over-year in both March and throughout first-quarter 2007.

Total U.S. consumption was even worse, dropping 12.4% in March and 12.2% year-to-date. March had the same number of Sundays in both 2006 and 2007, but there was one additional Sunday during this year's first quarter vs last year, the PPPC reported.

In recent days, first-quarter results posted by newsprint producers Catalyst Paper Corp. and Bowater Inc. reflect the grim condition of the market. Through the first three months, profits fell year-over-year by C$25.6 million (US$22.9 million) for Catalyst and by US$35.4 million for Bowater.

"The continued decline in newsprint consumption…led to price declines during the quarter," noted David J. Paterson, Bowater chairman, president and CEO. Increased recycled fiber costs and production curtailments also adversely effected profits.

Exports improve again.

The weakening of the loonie vs the U.S. dollar, however, provided some relief for Canadian producers, noted Catalyst. At the same time, a drop in value for the U.S. dollar boosted exports. Overseas buyers were also attracted by lower North American newsprint prices.

Overseas shipments of North American newsprint increased 7.0% in March vs a year earlier, the PPPC reported. Together with the 10.1% year-over-year hike in February, the two months' total just offset January's 17.2% loss and brings year-to-date even with a year ago, at 525,000 tonnes (down 0.1%).

The biggest year-over-year jump in March's overseas shipments was to Western Europe (up 82.6%), while Latin America grew by 6.2%. Japan and non-Japan Asia, however, fell by 34.7% and 16.3%, respectively. Through first-quarter, only Western Europe was ahead of a year ago, by 52.8%.

FOEX Indexes Ltd.'s latest report indicates that 30-lb newsprint in reels dropped just 26 cents, to US$595.87/tonne, for the week ending Apr. 17, indicating a slowing down in the rate of price erosion. However, this latest index is down US$31.88/tonnes, or 5.1%, since the beginning of 2007.

The Reel Time Report lists a price of $605/tonne for 30-lb newsprint in March, down $50/tonne since it hit its latest peak in September 2006. Bowater's average newsprint transaction price decreased $22/tonne in first-quarter 2007 vs the previous quarter, according to the company.

More downtime taken.

Bowater indicated in releasing its first-quarter results that it curtailed significant newsprint and specialty paper production during the first three months of 2007, resulting in the loss of approximately 68,000 tonnes of newsprint output and costing about $15 million.

North American newsprint production dropped 4.9% in March, to 947,000 tonnes and brought the year-to-date total to just under 2.9 million tonnes, 4.5% below a year earlier, the PPPC reported.

At the same time, the industry's operating rate declined year-over-year by 1% to 93% in March and 94% through the first three months of 2007. However, U.S. mills ran at just 91% in March compared to 95% in Canada. The rate was 94% for both countries through the first quarter.

North American mill inventories were whittled down by 14,000 tonnes in March, but were still 162,000 tonnes higher than a year earlier, according to the PPPC. The bulk of the drop in stocks occurred in Canada, which was down 13,000 tonnes in March, yet still 136,000 tonnes higher than a year ago.

Inventories held by North American newsprint consumers remained low and continued to decline. All U.S. users had 874,000 tonnes on hand at the end of March. This was 3,000 tonnes lower than a month earlier and 108,000 tonnes below a year ago. U.S. dailies stocks fell 13,000 tonnes in March and were down 52,000 tonnes from last March.

Newspapers continued to reduce the basis weight of newsprint used, with the PPPC reporting that the average g/m2 fell 0.8% year-over-year for both March and year-to-date, to 46.69 and 46.66, respectively.

Second-quarter could see some improvement in overall newsprint earnings due to lower fiber costs, Bowater indicated. In addition, the company expects its proposed merger with Abitibi-Consolidated Inc. would "improve efficiencies by reducing costs and increasing productivity."

Newscom offers 500,000 royalty-free stills from Getty Images

2007-05-06T21:55:00.000-07:00

E&P - Washington-based Newscom announced May 3 that it now offers more than a half-million royalty-free creative stills from Getty Images for editorial and commercial use in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

The new imagery will be sourced from the following six royalty-free Getty Images collections: Digital Vision (highly conceptual visuals with an aspirational feel and worldwide appeal); National Geographic (adventure, wildlife, travel and diverse cultures, through distribution arrangement with the magazine); Photodisc (array of authentic, contemporary content); Photographer's Choice RF (selections by top photographers worldwide, reflecting an eclectic range of styles and subjects); Retrofile RF (an "American family photo album" of vintage, black-and-white photography from the Black Box and George Marks collections); Stockbyte ("a range of subject matter in a clean, contemporary style").

This diverse assortment of creative content will join approximately 1.6 million news, sports and entertainment images and more than 260,000 Hulton Archive selections from Getty Images available via Newscom.

Women watch less video

2007-05-06T21:53:00.000-07:00

eMarketer - HisTube?

Online video is a business that has been years in the making. Thanks to the proliferation of broadband and the popularity of the YouTubes of the world, it is now what analysts at Piper Jaffray call "the new killer app of the Web."

But the app is not as killer for females as it is for males.

This year there will be an estimated 97 million females online in the US, compared with 91 million males. A clear majority. When it comes to viewing video online, however, their positions are reversed.

"While 78% of males watch video online, only 66% of females do," says Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and the author of the new Women Online: Taking a New Look report. "They are less likely than males to visit most video destination sites — even the biggie, YouTube."

The disproportion is all the more surprising because females watch more TV than males. So what do females watch online?

A study conducted by InsightExpress for Advertising.com indicated that news clips are the most popular type of online video for all US adult viewers.

A study by Piper Jaffray also found that news appealed to both genders (52.3% of adult men and 48.9% of women). After that, though, differences appeared. Men were more likely to watch amateur videos, music videos and movie previews. Women favored movie previews and then music videos.

Among female BabyCenter visitors, the most popular type of video was entertainment (chosen by 61% of respondents), followed by news (56%).

"Getting the female audience engaged is crucial for the success of online video, and over the next few years, marketers and online video content providers will need to figure out exactly how to get that job done," says Ms. Williamson. "They have no choice. They have to."

For a better understanding of what women are thinking when they use the Internet, read eMarketer's new Women Online: Taking a New Look report today.

China's online spending to skyrocket 5 times by 2010

2007-05-06T21:48:00.000-07:00

eMarketer - COD and patchy postal delivery. No wonder more Chinese don't shop online.

Chinese e-commerce is growing at a quick clip. eMarketer estimates that the average amount spent online per Internet user in China will increase roughly fivefold by 2010 from 2006 levels.

That sounds great, but it is typical of an immature market.

In 2006, 20 million Chinese Internet users had made at least one purchase online within the past year, according to iResearch. That is a 15% penetration rate. By 2010 the penetration rate will increase to 28%. By comparison, in 2006 the US penetration rate for online buyers ages 14 and older was 66%.

Chinese retail e-commerce has several hurdles keeping it from growing even faster. One is low credit card usage, thanks to fraud concerns by both sellers and customers. Nearly two-thirds of respondents in a China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) study said that they do not buy things online because they are unsure about how secure it is.

China also needs a secure infrastructure for settling transactions, but lack of regulations and technical standards have resulted in a poor online payment system. These two problems have made COD the most popular online payment method. Only a quarter of online buyers surveyed by AC Nielsen used credit cards.

A third major problem is that it is tough to physically deliver goods once the sale is made online. Despite postal authority and express delivery company efforts to build countrywide networks, slow service and high costs are still the norm. Outdated facilities and a lack of automation and managerial talent are to blame.

Online retailers are developing their own delivery networks to get around these problems. Over half of respondents to a CNNIC survey said that they received goods bought online through an express delivery service run by either a third party or an online retailer.

As with most Chinese markets, the potential is vast. Until these problems are resolved, however, the market will continue to have mere "growth," instead of "phenomenal growth."

Learn more about online retail in the Asia-Pacific region. Read the eMarketer Asia-Pacific B2C E-Commerce: China, Japan and South Korea report.

User-generated content will be king: media guru survey

2007-05-06T21:45:00.000-07:00

eMarketer - It's going to make someone rich. Somehow.

More than half of media and entertainment executives surveyed in Accenture's "Global Content Survey 2007" cite user-generated content as a leading threat to their bottom line.

Two-thirds of respondents believe that within three years their businesses will be making money on user-generated content. A quarter does not yet know how that will happen.

So is the glass half-full?

Respondents agreed that short-form video offers the best growth potential over the next five years.

While media and entertainment executives debate how to make money from user-generated content, user-generated online video continues to grow. Screen Digest's "User-Generated Online Video: Competitive Review and Market Outlook" reports that 55% of online video watched in 2010 will be user-generated, up from 47% in 2006.

Not all consumers are sold on the value of user-made video. According to a Synovate study commissioned by Clipblast! respondents disliked having to wade through user-generated content to get to the good stuff.

eMarketer's User-Generated Content: A New World of Online Advertising report will be published in May 2007. To be notified when it is released, click here.

Food, beverage online ads to jump 36% in 2007

2007-05-06T21:41:00.000-07:00

eMarketer - Food and beverage advertisers cut spending in nearly every major media last year — except the Internet.

This year, eMarketer estimates this category will spend $288 million advertising online, a 36.6% increase over 2006.

Why has Internet advertising become a meat-and-potatoes buy for food and drink marketers?

"Because food and drink is becoming an online staple for consumers who are searching the Internet for healthy eating tips and recipes, as well as for products they see advertised in other media," says Lisa Phillips, eMarketer Senior Analyst and the author of the new CPG Online: Food & Beverages Party On report.

"Eat, drink and go online" is the message food and beverage companies are sending to US consumers, and they are following their own advice.

In fact, according to TNS Media Intelligence, the Internet was the only medium to see more than a small increase in food and beverage ad spending last year. While spending in newspapers tanked almost 25% and outdoor spending fell 9.5%, online advertising gained nearly 27%, to reach $183.4 million (and TNS does not include search advertising in its calculations).

CPG companies, however, do not spend as heavily on paid search advertising as many other categories do, preferring to focus their Internet campaigns on branding, sponsorships and direct response such as e-mail.

"In the CPG segment, purchase consideration hinges more on in-store sales and discount coupons," says Ms. Phillips, "so paid search is not as paramount as in other industries, such as automotive or financial services."

eMarketer estimates CPG companies devote only 15% to 20% of their online spending to paid search.

"The shifts in food and beverage marketers' media mix in 2006 mirror what is taking place in other industries," says Ms. Phillips. "Last year, traditional media such as television, newspapers, radio and outdoor all lost share of spending within food and beverage budgets, while magazines and the Internet gained share. Even as total spending in other media fell 1.8%, Internet advertising rose, from 1.6% of the total in 2005 to 2.1% last year."

As a category, however, food and beverage advertising did not make the list of the top 10 advertising categories in 2006. Data from TNS show that the personal care segment was the only CPG category to break into the top 10, ranked eighth in overall spending last year, up 1.1% to $5.7 billion.

To feast on more CPG and food and beverage figures, read the new eMarketer report CPG Online: Food & Beverages Party On today.

Social networking for jobs

2007-05-06T21:37:00.000-07:00

eMarketer - Should Monster be scared?

Business-specific social networks have the attention of both employers and job seekers, and millions are using the sites.

LinkedIn, the best-known career social network, reported 89% growth in members from 2005-2006. The site has grown from 85,000 members in its first year to over eight million members.

Some large US employers are conducting searches on social networking sites to recruit highly qualified prospects that may not be actively job hunting. Today's job hunters are not only looking at online classifieds, but also are likely to view themselves as brands to be marketed online.

Young workers in particular use business-oriented social networking sites for career development, according to a survey by SelectMinds. For young workers, these sites function as a "job search engine," providing them with career information that is pre-qualified by its users and, therefore, credible.

Young workers are more likely to view career networks as beneficial. Nearly three quarters of GenYers said they viewed these networks as very important, compared with 66% of workers age 30-39 and 61% of workers age 40+.

eMarketer senior analyst Jeffrey Grau notes that "the proliferation of social networking sites, blogs and online discussion groups organized around niche topics enables employers to find job candidates with specialized knowledge and skills."

Mr. Grau added that the rise of business-specific social networks "does not reduce the importance of job-hunting sites. Besides the large, general job boards, there are a host of niche sites that specialize by, among other things, industry, geographic region and occupation. Niche sites such as these are ideal arenas for online advertisers looking to target their messages."

Get an in-depth look at the online employment market. Read eMarketer's Career Planning and Job Hunting Online report.

Search marketers keep spending

2007-05-06T21:33:00.000-07:00

eMarketer - No need to look elsewhere, search execs say.

According to the "US SEM Executive Survey, 2007" report, from JupiterResearch, two-thirds of search marketers expect to increase their spending this year.

Only 7% of search marketers expect to decrease spending, and 28% expect no change.

"Very few people are dissatisfied with search, and the ones that are tend to be smaller advertisers managing less than 1,000 keywords," said Kevin Heisler of Jupiter in a ClickZ interview. "We see many advertisers getting more aggressive with their spending, especially agencies. They've figured out what makes search so successful, and are content with the ROI."

According to search engine agencies surveyed by Intellisurvey and Radar Research for the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, in 2006 the average search marketer spent a little more than $138,000 for paid placement ads. However, the largest client spent more than $2 million.

Paid search is the largest component of search marketing, and is currently the key driver of US online advertising. eMarketer estimates that spending on paid search in 2008 will reach $10.2 billion. That is more than the $9.6 billion that was spent on all online advertising in 2004.

For 2010, when eMarketer forecasts US paid search spending at $14.21 billion, four other researchers come in below that estimate and five above.

To find what you need to know about search, read eMarketer's Search Marketing: Counting Dollars and Clicks report.

Marketing to social networking sites, targeted

2007-05-05T06:20:00.000-07:00

clickz - One in four adult Internet users in the U.S. regularly visits popular social networking sites, according to “iProspect Social Networking User Behavior Study,” a report sponsored by iProspect and conducted by JupiterResearch.

The study defines a social networking site as “one that allows Internet users the ability to add user-generated content such as: comments, review, feedback, ratings, or their own dedicated pages.” Sites such as MySpace, YouTube, and Amazon.com fit the study's classification of social networking sites.

While one quarter of the adult online population may be considered a small segment, lacking the reach of major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN, it accounts for 41 million people, according to Rob Murray, president of iProspect.

The audience visiting social networking sites is self-selecting in terms of looking for specialized sites to suit particular interests. These specialized sites deliver highly-targeted audiences.

Many of these sites target communities defined by their affinity to a vertical industry, business model, or interactive activity type, unlike MySpace and YouTube, which are designed to appeal to the mass population.

"Most marketers would far more prefer targeting a very think slice of a highly relevant audience than doing the mass marketer appeal," said Murray.

Beyond display and sponsored listings, opportunities exist for marketers. Past reluctance to get involved in online social communities signals marketers to remain cautious. "Participation on these sites can take a couple different forms," said Murray. "[Marketers] have to pick the right site, picking the one that most closely matches your online audience. Being very transparent in your communication is very important. Each community has its own rules of engagement; a marketer must abide by those rules."

Consumers visiting social networking sites generally do so through direct navigation and bookmarks. Secondary is navigation through Google and Yahoo, or links in e-mail. In addition to optimizing participation on a social networking site to be visible on Google or Yahoo, marketers need to ensure "that their content is of high enough interest, quality, or value that it will serve as 'link bait' or 'bookmark bait.'"

The report, conducted by JupiterResearch, is based on an Ipsos U.S. Online Consumer Panel of 2,223 individuals. The survey consisted of 25 closed-ended questions about behaviors and preferences regarding online holiday shopping, search, ISP and video, online social networking (on behalf of iProspect), and online dating. Data were weighted by AOL usage, online tenure, and connection speed, determinants of online behavior.