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.
Forbes: Paid online content can't supplant ad revs
NY Times to begin charging visitors
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
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
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
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
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
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'
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
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
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 |
| myspace | |
| myspace | craigslist |
| craigslist | ebay |
| youtube | |
| yahoo mail | myspace.com |
| yahoo | |
| yahoo | youtube |
| ebay | yahoo mail |
| facebook login | yahoo.com |
| myspace.com | |
| 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
|
| ||||
|
| 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* | ||||
| Property | Total Unique Visitors (000) | |||
| 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
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
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."
