OJR 2007: From MySpace to your space

OJR - Online publishers are wresting with ways to effectively create and manage online communities. At OJR 2007, participants turned to several examples on the Web to discuss content, anonymity and ways to make sure spammers don’t squat in your site’s comment section. Active user communities such as those flourishing on Bakotopia.com and Naplesnews.com illustrate that community networking elements can thrive on hyperlocal sites.OJR participant debated anonymous versus sourced reader comments, as well as ways to engage readers into joining an online community of readers.

Ask an interesting, or better yet, provactive question and you’re likely to introduce interesting user-generated content. But how do you keep your comments above board and free from spam infiltration?

Violinist.com Editor Laurie Niles maintains that integrity by requiring users to register under their own names.

“People behave when they’re using their own name,” she says.

When veteran journalist Mack Reed lauched LAVoice.org, he required names to post stories but left comments open. “It helped to keep people honest if they were posting under their real name,” he says. “The ones that ignored the rule are the ones who came there to cause trouble.”

OJR Editor Robert Niles introduced an important distinction in the degrees of anonymity, especially to guard against impersonization.

“There’s a difference between anonymity to your reader and anonymity to you as the publisher,” he says.

“One of the things I always want to make sure I’m doing on my sites if someone has a real reason to be anonymous, I want to give them a way to contact me. As publishers I want to make real sure we’re guarding against impersonation.”

66% view video online; prefer 15s ads, news, entertainment

MARKET WIRE - Advertising.com, Inc. announced the results of its online video study examining consumer perceptions, usage and response to online video and corresponding advertising. The study leveraged survey data acquired from a sample of 500 respondents over the age of 18, as well as advertising performance data generated from Advertising.com’s video network. The survey was hosted by online market research company InsightExpress.

Survey results indicate that approximately 66% of respondents view streaming video content at least once a week. 44% of video viewers are between the ages of 18 and 34, while 56% are age 35 and older.

The younger demographic is more likely to engage in activities such as watching TV episodes online, creating their own video content and forwarding video clips to friends. The 18-34 demographic also prefers to stream entertainment content such as music videos, television shows and movie trailers, while those age 35 and older are more likely to view news and sports clips. News and entertainment content are the most popular among streamers overall.

With regards to online video advertising, 15-second spots are not only preferred by consumers to TV-length ads but also perform better. End-play rates for 15-second spots are 20% higher than 30-second spots. In addition, when asked what would make video advertising more pleasurable, 66% of consumers ranked “shorter ads than television” as the number one factor.

“It’s fascinating how consumers are integrating streaming video into their old media consumption patterns — like watching TV episodes online,” said Rick Foster, vice president of video advertising products for Advertising.com. “But as the positive consumer response to shorter ads clearly demonstrates, not all the offline rules apply online. We must continue to watch and listen to consumers if we’re to maximize video’s value as an advertising tool.”

USAToday.com redesigned!

Perhaps the new USAToday.com will be the standard for tomorrow’s media websites. To sum up about the personality of the new site:

1. Interactive.
2. Social bookmarking/sharing functions.
3. Personalized.
4. Innovative navigation.

More comments from here.

Here is the quick guide to the overhauled USAToday.com:

See more big stories in the carousel.

Bigger, better

We know you want to know the biggest story right away. Our new carousel features bigger photos to highlight the biggest news. But we don’t just play one story big. By mousing over the carousel’s thumbnail images, you can quickly see more of the day’s big stories.

Get different takes on the news.

Keeping tabs on the news

Catching up on the news you’ve missed is another reason you come to USATODAY.com. That’s why we’ve created an easy-to-scan column of headlines. Or for more depth, analysis, and a different perspective, you can switch views to read one of our newsroom blogs. You can also keep tabs on what other news organizations are reporting through our “Across the Web” feature of feeds from dozens of other Web sites.

See what others are reading.

What’s everyone talking about?

Interested in what your fellow readers are following? When scanning headlines, you can quickly flip the stories to see which are the most popular. It’s a great way to keep up with the latest water cooler chatter.

Find special reports with ease.

Only on USA TODAY

Our reporters are known for their original cover stories; from data analysis to exclusive reports, USA TODAY always has the stories you want to read. Now you can find them grouped together every day.

Then add your voice to our coverage:

Make your voice heard.

Join the conversation

We’re strong believers that our stories are the beginnings of a conversation, not the last word. That’s why we’re excited to add comments to every story page. Now when you read an article on USATODAY.com, you can see what others are thinking and join the conversation yourself. We feature the most interesting comments at the top of our main pages.

Tell others which stories are worth reading.

Recommended

Sometimes you’ll come across a story that you want others to know about. That’s what our new “Recommend” button is for. A quick click and you can vote for a story you think others should pay attention to. Then as you surf the site, you’ll see which other stories your fellow readers want you to check out. It’s never been easier to see what everyone is reading.

Learn more about other readers.

Personal space

When you become a member, we automatically establish a personal profile page. As you interact with the USA TODAY community, your comments, recommendations and other contributions are automatically appended to your page. Your profile page includes a place for you to upload photos, write a blog, and the ability to send messages to other users. These pages allow readers to get a better sense of the site’s most active contributors.

Put your stamp on every page.

Avatar

Every one of our pages features a spot just for you: up there in the right-hand corner. That’s where you’ll be notified of messages left by other readers. Make yourself at home. Upload a picture of yourself, a funny icon, or choose from our selection of ready-made avatars.

Upload your photos.

Shutter speed

You’re not just a reader of news. You’re also a news observer and a news maker. So we’re going to be asking you to send us your photos. Whether its photos of dazzling thunderstorms or the latest breaking news, you can be part of covering the story.

Keep tabs on the USATODAY.com community.

Community center

As you contribute to USATODAY.com, you’ll also want to know more about how others are contributing. Our new community blog, “Community Center,” will keep you informed of the latest and greatest comments, user-submitted photos, requests for help with stories, and more. Think of it as gossip that won’t get you into trouble.

Continue to explore using new ways to navigate:

Know where you are and where you’re going.

No more asking for directions

It’s never been easier to find the stories you’re looking for. We’ve overhauled the navigation at the top of every page. Flyout menus show you how content is grouped. And breadcrumbs show you how to get back where you came from. We’ve also placed a site index at the bottom of every section front.

Discover similar stories.

Six degrees of separation

They say everyone is connected to everyone else by just six people. Now you can explore similar connections among stories. Using tags, you can jump from story to story by connections like never before. You can even see all the stories written by any given reporter. Once you start clicking tags, you might never stop.

Now you can find what you’re looking for.

Finding a better search

Sometimes the easiest way to find what you’re looking for is simply to search for it. We’ve overhauled search to make it much easier to use. The results are more accurate, the design is clearer, and now we include photos in our search results!

Reuters to start financial MySpace

The Guardian - Reuters is planning to launch its own version of MySpace this year - though its community website will not be aimed at teenagers. Instead, fund managers, traders and analysts are being targeted.

Reuters hopes to draw from the 70,000 subscribers of its messaging service as a starting point for its foray into the fast-growing sector of community websites.

“You will see us, later in the year, launch a version of MySpace for the financial services community,” said the chief executive, Tom Glocer. “It won’t have the latest hot videos and the ‘why I am into Metallica and the Arctic Monkeys’ blogs. Instead we are going to give our financial services users the ability to post their research or if they are traders, their trading models.”

The website will also be exclusive to Reuters subscribers. “People don’t want to have 100 friend requests from teenage girls in Florida if they are trading the credit derivatives market, but they probably are interested in being able to share research,” said Mr Glocer.

Reuters has been quick to embrace online potential. Last year it posted one of its journalists to Second Life, where he reports on events within the virtual world. The company has sold advertising on the billboards outside its virtual headquarters within Second Life. “I would still put this strongly in the realm of experimentation but it’s a nice controlled experiment that has probably paid for itself 10 times over in marketing,” he said.

Reuters reported yesterday an 8% decline in annual trading profits - to £308m - as it invested in its business. Revenues were £2.56bn, up 4.8% on an underlying basis. Reuters said revenues would increase at least 6% this year.

44% search health info from med websites

eMarketer - Are pharmaceutical companies filling an online health information void?

The volume of online health information presented by pharmaceutical companies may partially be due to patients’ perception that their physicians lack such data, according to a new Illuminas study sponsored by Cisco Systems.

“Physician” was the source named most often by respondents when asked which source they would most likely use to find medical information or health management advice. The study of US adults was fielded in January and February of 2007.

Yet the same study revealed a paucity of primary care providers who actually have a Web site with medical information.

The lack of physician Web sites with medical information may have created an opportunity for pharmaceutical marketers, since many online health seekers use search engines to find what they need.

Despite consumers’ reliance on search engines to locate health information, some marketers are leaving search campaigns to their competitors while concentrating on display ads, according to Jack Barrette, chief development officer for pharmaceutical at Yahoo! This year will see a shift in online ad spending to more search ads, as drug companies look for better direct-marketing results in their Internet budgets.

US Internet users now look online for health information routinely, and the percentage of people who do so has risen for the past three years, according to comScore Media Metrix.

eMarketer senior analyst Lisa Phillips notes that the Internet plays a greater role in consumer healthcare every year.

“Several studies regarding consumer behavior and health and pharmaceutical sites were published in the second half of 2006 by Manhattan Research, Harris Interactive and the Pew Internet & American Life Project, among others,” said Ms. Phillips. “Although the focus and the results varied, all showed more Americans than ever are going online to find information on drugs, medical conditions and health insurance.”

Manhattan Research reported that 116 million US adults used the Internet to find health information in 2006, compared with 41 million in 2001. Some 70 million were looking for pharmaceutical information, and 29.1 million sought additional information after seeing an ad in another medium.

Online retail sales reaches 4 year high

US Retail E-Commerce Sales Booming

eMarketer - All those sales have to come from somewhere. Retailers had very happy holidays.

US retail e-commerce sales (excluding travel) for the fourth quarter of 2006 were the highest they have been in four years, according to the US Census Bureau.

On an unadjusted basis, sales totaled $33.9 billion, up about a third from the third quarter of 2006.

The Q4 2006 e-commerce estimate increased 25.0% from a year earlier while total retail sales increased 4.0% in the same period. E-commerce sales in Q4 2006 accounted for 3.3% of total sales.

eMarketer senior analyst and e-commerce specialist Jeffrey Grau said that the disparity between e-commerce and total retail sales is significant.

“Retail e-commerce sales for Q4 2006 exceeded expectations by increasing 25% over the same quarter a year ago,” said Mr. Grau. “This is the biggest jump in Q4 sales since 2002 and is additional evidence that the Internet channel is stealing sales away from retail stores.”

Total e-commerce sales for 2006 were estimated at $108.7 billion, an increase of 23.5% from 2005. Total retail sales in 2006 increased 5.8% from 2005. E-commerce sales accounted for 2.8% of total sales in 2006, and 2.4% of total sales in 2005.

Overall retail holiday sales are by no means shrinking, having grown each of the past four years, according to eMarketer calculations of Census Bureau data.

Online retail sales have always been small fraction of overall retail sales, but if growth rates hold steady, offline-only retailers may no longer be able to ignore the online retail share.

NYT invites users to post video on website

Media Week - For the first time, The New York Times will begin posting user-generated videos on its Web site.

NYTimes.com has begun inviting soon-to-be-married couples to submit three-minute videos to the site which explain how the couple met one another. Couples that are selected to have their wedding announcement photos featured in the New York Times will also be eligible to have their videos run on the site.

“How We Met will allow our readers to share one of the most meaningful moments of their lives with other readers,” said Vivian Schiller, senior vp and general manager, NYTimes.com. “New York Times readers are a pretty creative lot, and we can’t wait to see the varied ways they’ll choose to tell their stories in video.”

Bloggers, citizen reporters vital to journalism in future, poll says

E&P - NEW YORK A new We Media/Zogby Interactive poll has found that most Americans think blogging and “citizen journalism” will prove vital to journalism in the future.The national survey of 5,384 adults found that 55% thought blogging was an important aspect of American journalism in the future, while 74% said they believed amateur “citizen” reporters would play a key role.

When asked about the impact of the Internet on journalism, 53% said that Web-based media provided the most opportunity for the future of journalism. 72% of respondents said they were “dissatisfied” with the quality of journalism in the U.S., but 76% thought that the Internet’s overall effect on the quality of journalism has been positive.

The poll also surveyed 77 members of the media at the recent We Media conference in Miami, finding that 55% of these media insiders were “dissatisfied” with American journalism today, while 61% thought that the media is out of touch with what Americans want from their news. 86% of those media industry insiders polled said that bloggers would be key to the future of journalism.

“We are now seeing mainstream acceptance of what we call the Power of Us — the value, credibility, and vital expression of citizen and collaborative media,” said Dale Peskin, a managing director of iFOCOS, the organization that conducts the annual We Media conference, in a statement. “We’ve arrived at a tipping point. A new definition of democratic media is emerging in our society.”

The nationwide poll also found that dissatifaction with the media is greater among those respondents who characterize themselves as “conservative,” with 88% saying they were unhappy with the state of journalism. A full 95% of those saying they were “very conservative” expressing negative sentiments about the current state of journalism. 51% of liberal respondents said they were dissatisfied with the quality of American journalism.

Other key findings from the nationwide survey:

– 72% of those asked said journalism is important to their community.

– 81% said Web sites are an important source of news, followed by television (78%), radio (73%), newspapers (69%), magazines (38%), and blogs (30%).

Online ad spending growth to slow down in 2007

eMarketer - Online ad spending may have to settle for heroic, rather than superheroic, growth.
Having grown by more than 30% for each of the last three years, online ad spending in the US will rise by less than 19% in 2007, according to new eMarketer estimates.

Lower annual growth rates are inevitable for any growing market; as total spending increases, each new dollar represents a smaller percentage of the total. Still, the widely expected fall in US economic growth will have the very real effect of constraining advertising budgets in 2007.

Online ad spending will not have negative growth for the foreseeable future. And at 18.9%, growth in 2007 will far surpass the levels seen in all other major media.

While online video advertising will eventually contribute far greater sums to the Internet totals, significant enough levels of spending will not occur for several years. However, 2008 will see spending bounce back, supported by the US presidential elections and the Summer Olympics, with slowing but still strong growth from 2009 through 2011.

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While virtually all researchers expect online ad spending to increase each year through 2011, five firms — Borrell Associates, Forrester Research, JupiterResearch, Oppenheimer and PricewaterhouseCoopers — see positive annual growth slipping into single figures for the first time since the dawn of Internet advertising in the 1990s (apart from 2001 and 2002, when online ad spending fell by 11.8% and 15.8%, respectively).

eMarketer’s view is more bullish, projecting annual growth falling to 13.0% by the end of 2011. This is based on three premises, according to eMarketer senior analyst David Hallerman, who made the projections.

1) Even if the economy slows down, continued growth in the online audience and the need for advertising to follow that audience will drive an ongoing shift away from other media, most notably newspapers and radio

2) The opportunities for better targeting and more accurate tracking offered by online advertising relative to other media makes spending on the Internet even more appealing in a soft economy

3) As online video advertising becomes more widely used, large brand marketers who have up to now only dipped their toes online will devote increasingly greater budget shares to the Internet

Chinese advertising to surge 20% in 2007: forecast

No more giant Mao posters, it’s all billboards and neon signs now.
According to figures from CTR Market Research (CTR), total advertising spending in China amounted to $36.9 billion in 2006, representing annual growth of 18%, and the firm estimates that total Chinese ad spending will grow another 20% in 2007.

Previously, CTR figures showed that ad spending in mainland China grew 18% in 2005, 22% in 2004 and 39% in 2003, so although growth is leveling off, the market remains robust.

“We’re optimistic about the China advertising market in the next two years leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics,” said Tian Tao of CTR, “and we expect the share of the top 100 advertisers will contribute to the double digit growth.”

According to TNS Media Intelligence, China is now tied with the UK as the world’s third-largest ad market, after the US and Japan.

In 2006, the US advertising market grew by 3.8%, while Japan and UK experienced negative growth of -0.2% and -1.8%, respectively.

CTR numbers show that the beverage and financial, investment and banking services sectors drove overall market growth, with ad spending increases of 48% and 33%, respectively, in 2006.

The spending increases were across the traditional media board, with radio having the highest growth rate, at 24%. Television ad spending was close behind, at 18%. Magazines were up 10%, and out-of-home and newspapers were up 9% and 4%, respectively.

Still, overall Chinese advertising spending in 2006 accounted for only 1.4% of GDP, vs. 3% in the US, indicating that China’s advertising market still has room to grow.

For more information on this huge market, read eMarketer’s China Online report.